Other thoughts on patriotism

Boswell tells us that Dr. Johnson said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel way back in 1775, but I’m definitely not saying that Smith is a scoundrel. I believe that his sentiments are heartfelt. Most people were shaken by 9/11, and most are sometimes moved (but only sometimes, if we are honest) by patriotic displays of various sorts.

A problem with romantic effusion regarding patriotism is that, poetry aside, patriotism has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of anything. In other words, Johnson was sometimes right and sometimes wrong. Sometimes patriotism and its ancillary (often ordered) action can spur the best in people — stopping Hitler, for example — and sometimes it spurs us and others to the worst, improper actions, such as attempting to stop Ho Chi Minh’s decades-long fight for Vietnamese independence or MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Patton’s breaking up the Bonus Army’s 1932 protest in Washington (three dead, many injured).

A problem with undefined patriotism is that very often people die for a flag. Sometimes we bless this, deeming it necessary, and other times — most of them, really — we wonder. . . .

A knee-jerk reaction

There is a knee-jerk reaction about patriotic displays, perhaps only in America, that results in unpleasantness and division. I think here of my own experience at Veterans Stadium a few years ago. I happened to be carrying beverages and food back to my wife as some local singer’s rendition of The Star Spangled Banner began. Since my hands were full, I could not remove my cap. Nonetheless, a fan I passed felt compelled to rudely inform me that I should “show some respect.”

Shocker: I ignored him. This is not because I disrespect the sacrifices of military veterans and others (say, those who died covering wars for the American free press), but because, in that moment, I reminded myself of the totally mixed nature of all nations’ collective actions. Believe me, as much as Mr. Smith was touched by the horror of 9/11, I am constantly reminded of my grandfather’s comrades’ pointless deaths in the Ardennes — for who, for what, as Ricky Watters would say — and my high school classmate, a jerk as I recall, who was shot out of a helicopter over Vietnam at the age of 19.

American patriotism is nothing unless it reminds those who embrace it that the United States is one of the few countries involved in the evolution of the planet that actually allows us to think beyond songs about whether, say, bombing ISIS is a good idea (probably) or voting for a guy who characterizes Mexican illegal immigrants as “rapists” a bad one (also probably).