Patriotism and Democrats

Do Democrats get to wave the flag?

The Fourth of July is a patriotic holiday.   Republicans call it theirs.  Democrats should claw it back.

The bi-partisan consensus after World War 2 was that international agreements, especially the UN, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, plus the various multilateral treaty alliances (NATO, SEATO) were all good for America.   The theory was that if we cooperated then we wouldn't have to fight another big war.  

Yes, they were good for the world, but they were unabashedly good for America, too.

Democrat John F. Kennedy said we would bear any burden and pay any price, but post WW2 a partisan division was starting to form, complicated by the fact that there were leaders in both parties on both sides of the divide.  Republicans were taking the position of being more anti-communist than were Democrats.  Joe McCarthy was a Republican but his vigorous anti-communism was essentially bi-partisan, because it focused on presumed leftists and communist spies and sympathizers in the Eisenhower State Department.

Notice what is missing at anti-war rally.   (No American flags)

By 1960 Richard Nixon, then a California Republican Senator, helped identify party with anti-communism.  He won election calling his opponent "soft" on communism.  By the late 1960s the battle lines had begun to form up--but again with crossovers.  Democrats were pursuing the war in Vietnam but the most vigorous dissent to the war was from Democrats.  Republicans were congealing as the pro-war party--but again with exceptions.  Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon was a Republican and an anti-war dove.  

By the election of 1972 the two political parties had largely jelled into two camps.  Nixon and Republicans were the do-more militarily anti-communist party and George McGovern and Democrats were "do-enough-but give peace a chance" party.  

Republicans began defining patriotism and the military as Republican symbols.  Democrats made a fateful move: they let them do it.

By 1967 and 1968 displays of the flag were associated with being in favor of the war in Vietnam.  I displayed a flag in my dorm room at Harvard.  It drew attention.  People wondered if I were actually a very rare pro-war hawk college student.  I said no, quite the opposite.  So why the flag?  I said that resistance to the war was the patriotic position and that people who pursued a pointless, self destructive war that drove the Vietnamese more firmly into the influence of the Chinese, were the ones hurting America.  

Berkeley Protest.  (No Ameerican flags.)

It was too late.  The flag had become a Republican, pro-war symbol.  Note the lack of American flags in anti-war protest crowd scenes.

Democrats need not "move to the center and become conservative" to deserve and identify with the flag symbol.  Democrats can become more like themselves, holding actual progressive values.

It had been a foundation of liberal, progressive thinking that international cooperation via multilateral organizations served America's interests.   As the great international peacekeeper, whose navy keeps the oceans free for international trade for all countries, it is objectively true that it is in America's interest that ideological and border disputes not grow into regional or world war.  A Democrat seeking national prominence can assert this clearly and vigorously.  The UN is not here simply to help Latvia or Ghana.  It is here to help America.

He or she need not argue for sentimental values of "give peace a chance."  There is noting wrong with giving peace a chance but progressive liberals who established the UN argued for it entirely on the basis of American interests.   A Democrat can assert that world trade is better for American jobs than are trade wars and tariffs.  A liberal can accept the Trump's premise that the goal should be American interests and American jobs, but then argue that the best way to accomplish this includes world trade.   Accept the goal, not the means.

One need not accept Trump's belligerence and pugnaciousness to recognize the appeal to American of his goal: American jobs and peace.  Jobs and peace are liberal values. That goal is not "selling out."  It is restoring original principles.

Hillary, and Democrats, did not see this as a problem.

Democrats became the party of anti-Trump instead of the party that represents their own interests.  Theybecame afraid that doing so would look like they "went Republican", so they switched to saying that we were all better off if Mexican workers were better off, asserting the value of sharing (a liberal value) but not the value to us of sharing (a conservative value.)  They said to ignore our immigration laws, in part because Trump said with such rancor that we should enforce them.


Auto manufacturing near the southern border means goods go back and forth, bringing jobs to America.  Democrats can make a good, pro-American argument for active trade with Mexico.   We need not fight with China an do aggressive posturing to assert what is good for American jobs and workers.   I-phones by Apple get final assembly in China but some 95% of the value-added margin takes place in America.  That final assembly is the least profitable part of the whole process of making an I-phone and the part least appropriate for Americans to covet.  It would be as if growing coconuts were a barely-break-even commodity crop in Hawaii, but the state of Alaska decided that Alaska had a coconut trade imbalance with Hawaii and fought to regain coconut parity with the least valuable commodity Hawaii grew.

Values of Order, Discipline, Respect, Patriotism

The aggressive "no apology exceptionalism" voted by Republicans caused Democrats to push to the opposite side, apparently uncomfortable asserting national interest and patriotism.  A great many Americans are reflexively patriotic.  They want affiliation.  Their hearts swell with notions of our team, our people, our interests, our country.   Jonathan Haigt has written about the moral values of liberals and the moral values of conservatives.  Liberals and conservatives both value the need for Caring and Fairness.  But Loyalty, Respect for Authority, and Sanctity are values particularly associated with conservatives.

Five moral values.  Everyone accepts the first two; conservatives all five.

Respect for elders, authority, country.

Progressive/liberal politics need not be disloyal, disrespectful, or favor disgusting things.   Cosmopolitan urbanites might have bumper strips that say "Coexist" and they might eat snails at French restaurants but they would not be offended by expressions of loyalty, authority and purity.   It would be a political "freebie" for Democrats.  They can announce their patriotism, their respect for people of faith, their love of their parents, and their dislike of lead and coal dust poisoning their children.  It would not be phony.  Those are liberal values, too,  and there is no offense between these values and the policies of liberals.    Isn't clean air and water a liberal value?  Don't liberals teach their children to be kind, to respect their teachers, to love America?

Teaching Respect, Obedience, Identity

What liberals must not do is sneer or shame conservatives for being flag wavers or for being superstitiously religious or for being small minded by thinking that some foreign customs are unappealing.  It is not a liberal value to sneer at others. A great many good, progressive things in America were asserted by liberals acting out of faith and patriotism.  Martin Luther King asserted exactly that idea: America fulfilling its own great and good destiny, through liberal policies.  Liberals are not compromising or selling out or "moving to the center" by acknowledging fully and without hesitation the legitimacy of asserting loyal, patriotic values.  After all, liberal policies are, in fact, in America's interests, as liberals evaluate them.  They need not change policies. They need to accept that those policies are patriotic.

Some of this is a re-adjustment of symbolism.  Democrats and liberals need to understand and integrate into their minds that the three color photos above, showing soldier, a senior, and a boy saluting the flag are images that evoke genuine feelings of identity and affection in a great many people.   Some liberals may consider them "hokey" or "cliched".  Those liberals misunderstand their own country and their attitudes are toxic to the success of liberalism.  A great many voters, in whose interest it is to vote for Democrats, do not do so because they feel that hostility, and they resent it.

Democrats should stop doing that.

A Democrat who will re-unify the party will be one who better understands Americans, and he or she can start by reviewing the photographs in this blog and absorb what appeals to Americans and what does not.