Give Us Back Our Damn Flag
The leftist case for patriotism

by Peter Dreier and ***** Flacks

Since 9/11, patriotic expressions in public life have dramatically soared.
We see displays of the Stars and Stripes on cars, businesses, T-shirts,
caps, lapel pins and even tattoos, along with bales of CDs with patriotic
songs. During periods of social and political turmoil, Americas leaders
have always sought to impose rituals of loyalty, civics lessons and other
forms of patriotic observance. In that tradition, George W. Bush has tried
to define opposition to his war policy as unpatriotic. His first response to
9/11 included the declaration that either you are with us or you are with
the terrorists, a comment aimed not only at leaders of other nations but at
domestic critics as well. (The misnamed Patriot Act was clearly designed to
stigmatize dissent.) And the buildup to the Iraq invasion was framed by
endless miles of star-spangled bunting and the continuous looping of God
Bless America.

This post-9/11 patriotic fervor has revitalized the conventional wisdom that
love of country is synonymous with conservatism. Conservatives, we are told,
wave the flag. Or wear it on their lapels. Leftists, by contrast, only scorn
it. Or burn it. Since the Vietnam War era, many liberals and progressives
have been uncomfortable about patriotism. They equate it with jingoism and
militarism. They have been reluctant to wave the flag. They werent sure it
was theirs. And George W. Bushs brand of blind my country right or wrong
jingoism has, on this Fourth of July, only deepened the dilemma.

But some progressives are now challenging this conventional reflex, no
longer conceding that conservatives have a monopoly on Old Glory. During the
weeks before Bushs invasion of Iraq, the anti-war movement countered with
bumper stickers illustrated with an American flag that proclaimed, Peace Is
Patriotic. Since then, demonstrations against the invasion and occupation
of Iraq have been festooned with American flags. The Veterans for Peace are
doing more than any official body to publicly honor those who have given
their lives in combat, creating symbolic Arlington cemeteries with crosses
marking the war dead in a growing number of cities.

Take Back Our Country, a line used by Pat Buchanan when he declared a
cultural war at the 1992 Republican Convention, has now become a rallying
cry for liberals. John Kerry has been appropriating the key line from
Langston Hughes Depression-era poem Let America Be America Again as a
campaign slogan.

Indeed, throughout the nations history, many American radicals and
progressive reformers proudly asserted their patriotism. To them, America
stood for basic democratic values economic and social equality, mass
participation in politics, free speech and civil liberties, elimination of
the second-class citizenship of women and racial minorities, a welcome mat
for the worlds oppressed people. The reality of corporate power, right-wing
xenophobia, and social injustice only fueled progressives allegiance to
these principles and the struggle to achieve them.

Nevertheless, progressives are faced with the tough question of what exactly
it means to be patriotic in an increasingly global economy and
interdependent world. Multinational corporations based in the U.S. obviously
have no loyalty to this country. They do their best to outsource jobs to
low-wage countries and to avoid paying taxes. (Ironically, most American
flags are made in China, and Wal-Mart, whose founder, Sam Walton, promoted
the motto Buy American, now imports 60 percent of its merchandise and
accounts for about 12 percent of all U.S. imports from China, most of it
made under sweatshop conditions.)

But the slogan Buy American, which sounds patriotic to some and
protectionist to others, isnt much help if youre a progressive hoping to
shop with a conscience. Most apparel produced in the U.S. is made under
awful sweatshop conditions by companies that exploit immigrants and violate
minimum-wage and other labor laws. Even the Department of Defense buys some
of its uniforms from companies that operate sweatshops.

Progressives show their patriotism today by looking for a union label in
their American-made clothes, or they can look for a fair trade label on
various consumer goods made overseas. (Help is available from several
nonprofit groups: www.fair <http://www.fair/> tradefederation.com;
www.transfairusa.org; www.nosweat <http://www.nosweat/> apparel.com; and
www.unionlabel.org.) The American activists whove protested at World Trade
Organization and World Bank meetings to demand better living standards for
Third World workers arent simply do-gooders. When workers in China or
Mexico get paid a living wage, American companies have less incentive to
move jobs from U.S. soil, and those workers have more money to buy U.S.-made
products.

But lets get back to the Red-White-and-Blue. The flag, as a symbol of the
nation, is not owned by the administration in power, but by the people. We
battle over what it means, but all Americans across the political
spectrum have an equal right to claim the flag as their own.

Most Americans are unaware that much of our patriotic culture including
many of the leading symbols and songs that have become increasingly popular
since September 11 was created by writers of decidedly progressive
sympathies.

For example, the Pledge of Allegiance itself was originally authored and
promoted by a leading Christian socialist, Francis Bellamy (cousin of
best-selling radical writer Edward Bellamy), who was fired from his Boston
ministry for his sermons depicting Jesus as a socialist. Bellamy penned the
Pledge of Allegiance in 1892 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of
Christopher Columbus discovery of America by promoting use of the flag in
public schools. He hoped the pledge would promote a moral vision to counter
the climate of the Gilded Age, with its robber barons and exploitation of
workers. Bellamy intended the line One nation indivisible with liberty and
justice for all to express a more collective and egalitarian vision of
America.

Bellamys invocation of American patriotism on behalf of social justice is
part of a hidden tradition. Consider the lines inscribed on the Statue of
Liberty: Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to
breathe free. Emma Lazarus was a poet of considerable reputation in her
day, who was a strong supporter of Henry George and his socialistic
single-tax program, and a friend of William Morris, a leading British
socialist. Her welcome to the wretched refuse of the earth, written in
1883, was an effort to project an inclusive and egalitarian definition of
the American Dream.

And there was Katharine Lee Bates, a professor of English at Wellesley
College. Bates was an accomplished and published poet, whose book America
the Beautiful and Other Poems includes a sequence of poems expressing
outrage at U.S. imperialism in the Philippines. A member of
progressive-reform circles in the Boston area, concerned about labor rights,
urban slums and womens suffrage, an ardent feminist, for decades she lived
with and loved her Wellesley colleague Katharine Coman, an economist and
social activist.

America the Beautiful, written in 1893, not only speaks to the beauty of
the American continent but also reflects her view that U.S. imperialism
undermines the nations core values of freedom and liberty. The poems final
words and crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea are
an appeal for social justice rather than the pursuit of wealth.

In the Depression years and during World War II, the fusion of populist,
egalitarian and anti-racist values with patriotic expression reached full
flower. Aaron Coplands Fanfare for the Common Man and A Lincoln Portrait
are now patriotic musical standards, regularly performed at major civic
events, written by a member of a radical composers collective.

Langston Hughes poem Let America Be America Again, written in 1936,
contrasted the nations promise with its mistreatment of his fellow
African-Americans, the poor, Native Americans, workers, farmers and
immigrants:

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

In 1939, composer Earl Robinson teamed with lyricist John La Touche to
write Ballad for Americans, which was performed on the CBS radio network by
Paul Robeson, accompanied by chorus and orchestra. This 11-minute cantata
provided a musical review of American history, depicted as a struggle
between the nobody whos everybody and an elite that fails to understand
the real, democratic essence of America.

Robeson, at the time one of the best-known performers on the world stage,
became, through this work, a voice of America. Broadcasts and recordings of
Ballad for Americans (by Bing Crosby as well as Robeson) were immensely
popular. In the summer of 1940, it was performed at the national conventions
of both the Republican and Communist parties. The work soon became a staple
in school choral performances, but it was literally ripped out of many
public school songbooks after Robinson and Robeson were identified with the
radical left and blacklisted during the McCarthy period. Since then,
however, Ballad for Americans has been periodically revived, notably during
the bicentennial celebration in 1976, when a number of pop and country
singers performed it in concerts and on TV.

Many Americans consider Woody Guthries song This Land Is Your Land,
penned in 1940, to be our unofficial national anthem. Guthrie, a radical,
was inspired to write the song as an answer to Irving Berlins popular God
Bless America, which he thought failed to recognize that it was the
people to whom America belonged. The words to This Land Is Your Land
reflect Guthries assumption that patriotism, support for the underdog, and
class struggle were all of a piece. In this song, Guthrie celebrates America
s natural beauty and bounty, but criticizes the country for its failure to
share its riches, reflected in the songs last and least-known verse:

One bright sunny morning in the
shadow of the steeple
By the relief office I saw my people.
As they stood hungry I stood there wondering
If this land was made for you and me.

Stimulated by the recent nostalgia for World War II, old recordings by
left-wing performers of the 1940s Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and the Almanac
Singers, Josh White, Burl Ives, Leadbelly, and Paul Robeson are,
fortunately, undergoing a revival. This was material deliberately created to
promote the war effort, expressing the passionate fervor of left-wing
resistance to fascism. The best songs also express the conviction that the
fight against fascism must encompass a struggle to end Jim Crow and achieve
economic democracy at home. Indeed, President Franklin Roosevelts speeches
during that period reflect many of the same themes and images. And if you
add to these songs the scripts of numbers of Hollywood war movies and radio
plays by some of Americas leading writers some of whom were later
blacklisted it becomes clear that popular culture in support of that war
was largely the creation of American leftists.

Even during the 1960s, American progressives continued to seek ways to fuse
their love of country with their opposition to the governments policies.
The March on Washington in 1963 gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, where
Martin Luther King Jr. famously quoted the words to My Country Tis of
Thee, repeating the phrase Let freedom ring 11 times.

Phil Ochs, then part of a new generation of politically conscious
singer-songwriters who emerged during the 1960s, wrote an anthem in the
Guthrie vein, The Power and the Glory, that coupled love of country with a
strong plea for justice and equality. The words to the chorus echo the
sentiments of the antiVietnam War movement:

Here is a land full of power and glory;
Beauty that words cannot recall;
Oh her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom
Her glory shall rest on us all.

One of its stanzas updated Guthries combination of outrage and patriotism:

Yet shes only as rich as the poorest of her poor;
Only as free as the padlocked prison door;
Only as strong as our love for this land;
Only as tall as we stand.

Interestingly, this song later became part of the repertoire of the U.S.
Army band.

And in 1968, in a famous anti-war speech on the steps of the Capitol, Norman
Thomas, the aging leader of the Socialist Party, proclaimed, I come to
cleanse the American flag, not burn it.In recent decades, Bruce Springsteen
has most closely followed in the Guthrie tradition. From Born in the USA,
to his songs about Tom Joad (the militant protagonist in John Steinbecks
The Grapes of Wrath), to his anthem about the September 11 tragedy (Empty
Sky), Springsteen has championed the downtrodden while challenging America
to live up to its ideals.

Steve (Little Stevie) Van Zandt is best known as the guitarist with
Springsteens E Street Band and, most recently, for his role as Silvio
Dante, Tony Sopranos sidekick on The Sopranos. But his most enduring legacy
should be his love song about America, I Am a Patriot, including these
lyrics:

I am a patriot, and I love my country, Because my country is all I know.
Wanna be with my family, People who understand me. I got no place else to
go.

And I aint no communist,
And I aint no socialist,
And I aint no capitalist,
And I aint no imperialist,
And I aint no Democrat,
Sure aint no Republican either,
I only know one party,
And that is freedom.

In the midst of a controversial and increasingly unpopular war, and with a
presidential election under way that will shape the nations direction,
there is no better way to celebrate America than to listen to Van Zandts
patriotic anthem. And while doing so, maybe waving a flag and remembering it
s also yours.

Peter Dreier teaches politics at Occidental College and is co-author of The
Next L.A.: The Struggle for a Livable City (University of California Press).
***** Flacks teaches sociology at UC Santa Barbara and is the author of
Making History: The American Left and the American Mind (Columbia University
Press).