By Jon Landaw

A few weeks ago my 11-year-old daughter entered an essay contest at school sponsored by a local service organization. For this contest students had to write a short paper on the topic, “What the Flag Means to Me.” I easily recall receiving similar school assignments when I was her age. How effortlessly the stirring martial music of John Philip Sousa and George M. Cohan leaps to mind as the national banner parades across my memory bedecked in epithets. Old Glory! She’s a Grand Old Flag! The Stars and Stripes Forever! Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue! But when my daughter told me about her assignment, I shuddered inwardly, knowing only too well how closely this theme has been associated with jingoism (“the belligerent spirit of loud and aggressive patriotism”). During the Vietnam War, for example, many avid proponents of America’s right and duty to rid the world of the Red Menace would decorate their cars and trucks with decals of the American flag and bumper stickers declaring, “America: Love It or Leave It!”

Not wanting to burden my daughter with my own left-of-center views on this subject, but equally not wanting her to be manipulated by the fervent flag-waving that too often passes for reasoned political dialogue in these United States, I cautiously asked her about what she was planning to write about. “Oh, the good and the bad things about this country,” she replied. I should have guessed that she was sensitive enough not to interpret the Red, White and Blue as too starkly black or white.

In her essay she related the flag not only to the beauties of the American landscape but also to the destructive effects upon this landscape of widespread industrial pollution, praising the everyday joys of American family life but also remarking on the humiliation of the poor and homeless. Some time later her teacher informed her that her essay was not selected as one of the winners. Not because anyone thought it was badly written, she explained, but because the sponsors were only interested in positive images of flag and country. There was no place in this contest for negative or critical views. “America: Love It or Write about Something Else!”

I have often wondered if this brand of boastful, unquestioning patriotism is unique to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Consider, for example, the British in the centuries before the dismantling of their vast empire. The typical Victorian colonial officer has often been portrayed as someone so haughtily convinced of his own, and his nation’s, superiority that by conquering the world he is actually doing the poor wogs a favor, bringing them all the benefits of British civilization, the Queen’s English and decent cup of tea. But I sense some fundamental difference between British pomposity and American boastfulness. Perhaps it is simply that, unlike the British, Americans are not very secure in their role as world leader. Maybe that is why, like victors in the annual Super Bowl, they have to pump themselves up by continually proclaiming, “We’re number one; we’re number one!” Perhaps, like Australians conscious of being descended from convicts, they are afraid their outcast origins will be their undoing. Use the wrong fork at a diplomatic dinner and spend the rest of the evening in the kitchen with the servants.

Anyway, maybe it is time for me to cease indulging in the guilty pleasures of broad generalization and cultural libel and return to my original theme, assuming – over-optimistically perhaps – that this column possesses anything coherent enough to be called a theme. The 18th century English man of letters, Samuel Johnson, once declared, “Patriotism is the last refuse of a scoundrel.” This remark is as relevant to current social phenomena – such as football hooliganism, in which drunken yahoos drape themselves in the Union Jack, puke their way across the Channel, and run riot in Rotterdam or Brussels while cheering on the English side – as it was in Dr. Johnson’s day. And on the other side of the pond, when American politicians want to take a break from prostituting themselves to big business interests, they can always count on an enthusiastic crowd response to such patriotic pronouncements as “The United States is the moral leader of the world!” (By the way, the same Dr. Johnson once remarked, “I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.” What an excellent example of equanimity.)

Turning to a contemporary news item for final evidence of America’s moral superiority, consider the case of convicted killer Horace Kelly. Because California law maintains the death penalty, broadly supported by politicians in both major parties, Kelly faces execution. But there is a catch. As reported in The San Francisco Chronicle, “A century-old statue prohibits the state from executing a death row prisoner who has become insane while in prison, even if the prisoner was found competent during his trial, as was the case with Kelly.” So in addition to finding him guilty of murder, the jury must determine that Kelly is sane enough for the state to kill him. To quote the newspaper again: “If nine of the twelve jurors say Kelly is incompetent, he will be sent to a prison psychiatric facility until he recovers his sanity. If found competent, he will face death by lethal injection.” I have heard of hospital nurses waking up a patient in order to administer a sleeping pill, but this is a bit extreme, don’t you think?