On this July 4, we would do well

to renounce nationalism and all its symbols:

its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems,

its insistence in song that God

must single out America to be blessed

Patriotism has turned into jingoism

U.S. veterans and others, outraged over an "art" exhibit featuring the American flag stuffed in a toilet and another lying on the ground, stormed the Phoenix Art Museum.

One protester reached into the toilet where the flag was on display and proudly removed it as a guard wrestled with him to put it back.

"That's my flag and I'm going to defend it. No son of a bitch is going to do that."

One of the effects of nationalist thinking

is a loss of a sense of proportion

The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor

becomes the justification for killing

240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11

becomes the justification for killing hundreds

of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq

Howard Zinn [below] makes some valid points about these symbols which for America’s entire history has meant:

Enslavement, oppression, genocide, exploitation, inequality, prejudice, racism, bigotry, Anti-Semitism, Orientalism, sexism, chauvinism, militarism, homophobia, classism, discrimination of every kind, xenophobia, and a serious disorder of national ignorance.

These following two quotes I believe reinforce the sins that national pride and a nation’s symbols have when it comes to lies, deceit, and one that ultimately leads to dishonor over morality.

Especially, when its leaders lie and stamp all over the constitution and the law without fear of retribution.

In other words, under Bush and Cheney, America has in fact become a Fascist-Dictatorship, and one look at the U.S. Supreme Court which supports the “unitary executive” should wake everyone up to this fact of a Hitler-like rule in America as of right now.

Its time to wake up and start to take articles like this one a lot more serious than one would have in the past.

The awful waste that patriotism necessitates ought to be sufficient to cause the man of even average intelligence from this disease. Yet patriotism demands still more.

The people are urged to be patriotic and for that luxury they pay, not only by supporting their “defenders,” but even by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires allegiance to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, and sister — Emma Goldman

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battles; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them in uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other — Thomas Carlyle

It is tragic to realize that this country was founded on the genocide of the native people and on the backs of slaves.

It is even more tragic to know that it all continues today. Patriotism is too much like religion, a fantasy to gain control and power.

I see nothing to celebrate on July 4th. I will celebrate when all the troops are brought home and we start to us our power and money to do good not to kill or make new weapons.

The American Flag: Red, White & Bloodshed

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed. Patriotism has turned into jingoism.

Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

These ways of thinking — cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on — have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more).

But in a nation like ours — huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction — what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.

Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.

That self-deception started early.

When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians.

The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession.”

When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: “It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day.”

On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our “Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence.” After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: “We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country.”

It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to war.

We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, “to civilize and Christianize” the Filipino people.

As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying:

“The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness.”

We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.

Yet they are victims, too, of our government’s lies.

How many times have we heard President Bush tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for “liberty,” for “democracy”?

One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail in 2004 that God speaks through him.

We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.

We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.

Howard Zinn @ Progressive