Image Credit: Pablo Clavó Un Clavito

Recently, at a town hall meeting for the Barack Obama campaign, Senator Obama’s speech was interrupted by one of the photographers in the press corps, who demanded that Obama begin his meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance (see video here). In an interview with the photographer later, he stated that he insisted on it because he was “tired of them disrespecting our flag.” Of course, this was a pretty ridiculous assertion–how does holding a political event without the Pledge constitute disrespect? But this incident is an exaggerated example of how the symbolism of patriotism frequently threatens to undermine a real respect for the Revolutionary Ideals this country was founded on.

It’s impossible to go too far in America without coming across people who manifest patriotism daily. These are the people who are constant wearing patriotic shirts, put bumper stickers on their car letting everyone know their American, and pretty much know every in and out of the Flag Code. And while not everyone goes to this extreme, there are large numbers of people who demand such outward displays–such as the National Anthem being played, for reasons completely lost to the mists of time, before every sporting event. These displays are most particularly demanded of our politicians, who are constantly berated for not paying attention to one inane patriotic display or another (For an example, see the hoopla this campaign season over Barack Obama’s initial refusal to wear flag pins on his lapel).

The insistence on such displays often take me back to Sunday School and my favorite stories in the Gospels–the stories where Jesus thumbed his nose at the religious establishment of the day by valuing helping people more than following the strict letter of Mosaic law. A good example of this is Luke 6:6-10:

On another Sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Get up and stand in front of everyone.” So he got up and stood there.

Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?”

He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was completely restored.

The Jesus of the Gospels was constantly preaching the spirit of the Law–mercy, compassion, forgiveness–and berating those who ignored that spirit but prided themselves on their outward displays of righteousness.

In the same way, “Patriotism” in the United States today often comes as a matter of symbolism. Who’s wearing the flag pin? Who says the Pledge of Allegiance? Who knows how to fold a flag properly? Who’s willing to sign a loyalty oath? Even when matters turn to more substantive issues, the “Patriotism” is still largely about appearances. Politicians brag about their “public service” and demand sacrifices “for our country.”

But singing songs about how awesome America is and wearing red, white, and blue boxers doesn’t do anything to demonstrate a person’s patriotism. That’s because the United States of America is more than just the land located between certain sets of borders, and it’s more than just the institutions of voting, checks and balances, and all that. At its heart, the United States is a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” In other words, the heart of America is its ideals.

True patriotism, in the American sense, has nothing whatsoever with putting a flag on your car’s antenna or saying the Pledge of Allegiance. It has everything to do with being devoted to the idea that all human beings are “endowed with certain inalienable rights.”

There is a great apocryphal conversation between Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine, where Franklin allegedly said to Paine that “Where liberty dwells, there is my country.” In other words, a love of freedom and the American Revolutionary ideals is something that ought to transcend mere nationalism. The best part about this alleged conversation, though, is Paine’s response.

“Where liberty dwells not,” he said. “There is mine.”

In other words, Thomas Paine believed that he should fight for liberty, everywhere.

Now there’s no question that both men were devoted Americans (even if America later chose to reject Paine on the grounds of his religious beliefs). But both men were of the mind that the ideas that America was fighting for in her revolution were universal ideas. In their minds, and in the minds of many of the Founding Fathers, the ideals that they fought for were greater than mere nationalism. As Thomas Paine said in Common Sense, “[t]he cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.”

So the next time someone accuses a politician of being “insufficiently patriotic” because they aren’t wearing flag pajamas or reciting the Gettysburg Address before a fundraiser, realize that these are silly accusations. The question of patriotism is not about whether someone remembers to salute the flag. The question of patriotism is: how devoted are you to the ideals of liberty? What have you done to show that you have dedicated yourself to protecting the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”?

The cultural demand that Americans should “wear their patriotism on their sleeve” in the form of flags, stickers, banners, and insipid songs isn’t really an expression of American patriotism at all. It’s an expression of nationalism and the idea that Americans are somehow better than the rest of the world. Which is, of course, antithetical to the ideals of our country.

This is not to say that all civil rituals are bad. Far from it. For instance, I absolutely adore our National Anthem–which is why I think its demeaning for it to be sung before every sporting event. But these rituals are only important to the extent to which they remind us of the Revolutionary Ideals of our Founding Fathers–not the extent to which they tell us how cool it is to live in the United States.