Thinking through patriotism

John Pierson: That's reflected in a younger version by our students. I was interested to see how saddened they were in reflecting on and showing some healthy doubt about what they were told and heard. I was starting to see, within a couple of weeks, the students doing a great deal of thinking on their own. Particularly on that first day, when quite a few seniors - who had a strong sense that they were about to go into the real world - knew that this is the world they were entering. They cornered me, and asked what I thought as an adult. The best I could come up with was: You're going to hear a lot of things from a lot of people, and it's all going to make sense, and whatever it is you think, just really try to think for yourself. And know that when you feel the strongest, it is probably most important then to think the hardest.

James Fraser: Those of us who have some reservations need to be less focused on our reservations and more focused on arguing that that is the definition of patriotism, including that celebration of freedom, including the freedom to think for ourselves.

Carolyn Marvin: I think one of the reasons that people get nervous about patriotism is that it really isn't about individual thinking for yourself, it's about a group. I don't want to make patriotism an individualistic kind of thing, except that we celebrate the kind of individualism in patriotism that serves the group ultimately. I think a really fundamental level of patriotism ... is the idea that it's a public witness to that group obligation. There's a kind of reverential patriotism that you see in draping the casket of the soldier with the flag,... and then there's a lighthearted patriotism that you see in advertising, in movies ... which is beautiful and imaginative and has its place.... What are the avenues that Americans have for understanding themselves as Americans? One is knowing this common vocabulary, which does not commit us to any particular course of action.

Carolyn Marvin: The flag is being used cheaply, and that's fine, and reverentially, and that's fine. The flag is not language, and if it's not, then we can have it as a common symbol, and not be disagreeing with each other, and there's some utility to that. We're a group with problems to solve; that seems to me the most important thing about the possibility of patriotism. We have many identities ...; all those have their own particular problems, but some sets of problems have to be solved at a national level. So let the flags fly, in any form: dismembered, cut up, rearranged.... What is valuable is, there's a plurality of flags.... It gives some opportunity to remind ourselves that we're connected in spite of our differences.

James Fraser: I partly disagree. One example is the car that's parked near my house that has two flags flying and a sign across the back that says, "God Bless America" and "Nuke 'em." I keep wanting to go and say, you have to make a choice. You can't fly a flag and say that, because that's not what this democracy is about. It feels to me that that's a wrong use of the flag, and if we're going to try to define patriotism as having some sense of decency and democracy about it, then some of that has to be challenged. That's a direct violation of what that flag is about.

Carolyn Marvin: That guy is part of the democracy too. He's willing to say in public what he thinks. If no one challenges him, then he won't know there's a challenge out there. But I don't want to have a patriotism that doesn't let that guy be part of the conversation.

James Fraser: I don't want to silence that person, but I don't want him to be able to define the nature of patriotism.

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