Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 3, 1994 TAG: 9407020013
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cody Lowe
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Like many members of my generation, though, patriotic reflection is often mixed with somber misgivings about what happens when patriotism becomes chauvinism.
The Vietnam and Watergate experiences during our formative years forced us - even those who were not part of the protesting, anti-establishment minority - to re-think the whole concept of patriotism.
The idea of blind allegiance to military authority, undermined 20 years earlier at the Nuremburg trials, was further eroded by open dissent not only on college campuses but in the ranks.
Many of us rejected the naive ``virtue'' we were taught as children in the 1950s of doing what a ``superior'' told us to do without thinking about objecting.
Armies of us had mothers who compelled us to learn how to make hospital corners and nickel-bouncing covers on our beds because that's the way the Army or Navy or Marines would expect of us when, inevitably, they drafted us.
In a decade, more or less, many of us - and many of our mothers - were disaffected with the idea of military service. Its glamorous image was in tatters.
Then we also faced the evidence of a president who was willing to break the law to keep his office.
There were far too many who could have joined in chorus with the Indiana congressman who said during the Watergate hearings, ``Don't confuse me with the facts. I've got a closed mind.''
Eventually, though, most minds - even Nixon's, I think - recognized that the nation could stand no more ``closed-mind patriotism.''
I regret it, but I have to admit that that era has left me still vaguely uneasy with the Pledge of Allegiance. I don't mind pledging allegiance to the republic in which I live. I'd be proud to defend it or my family or my fellow citizens if they were threatened.
The idea of promising to defend the flag - only a symbol of the republic - worries me, though. Too many times in our history people have draped themselves in the flag expecting some other citizens to die for ideas or ideals that weren't worth the sacrifice.
We are so easily led by flag wavers. That's primarily because there is so much to love about our country. We do an awful lot of things right. And we correctly have been willing to fight and die if necessary to preserve our freedoms.
The danger is that we will follow blindly someone who says the country is in danger, when - if we really thought about - we should know it isn't.
The parallels with organized religion are so obvious we trip over them here.
The fallen television preachers - and some who haven't fallen, yet - start out teaching their audiences perfectly reasonable Christianity. But some vice - usually the love of money - leads them to demand more and more unreasonable and unorthodox behavior of their flock.
By that time, those devoted followers can't imagine their spiritual leader deliberately taking advantage of them. So, they will believe - and do - the dumbest things.
It happens in every religion, including patriotism, where political leaders substitute as spiritual leaders.
The lesson of Vietnam was NOT ``Don't get involved in a land war in Southeast Asia you're not willing to go all out to win.'' The lesson of the fallen televangelists was NOT, ``Don't ever trust a television preacher.''
The lesson in both cases was, ``Think.'' Simple, really. Look behind the waving flag. Look behind the waving Bible.
Symbols, important as they are, are easily manipulated, easily misused. They are almost never worth dying for, though the ideas behind them may well be.
But ideas are so hard to pin down, sometimes. Hard to hold in the hand.
So when we are too unsuspecting - or too lazy - to think for ourselves, we can be misled into believing falsehood is truth or self-glorification is patriotism.
We have to work, sometimes, to find the truth - to find real patriotism - in the dim light of fireworks or over the deafening cannonade of the 1812 Overture.
by CNB