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Roundup: Media's Take

Renée Loth: A National Service Corps Could Redefine Patriotism

Renée Loth, in the Boston Globe (August 10, 2004):

[Renée Loth is editor of the Boston Globe's editorial page.]

AFTER THE Sept. 11 attacks, I put a small American flag in my front window. Some of my most liberal friends were appalled. The flag conjured up visions of jingoistic, Fox-watching rednecks, they said. Displaying it tagged me as a guns, guts, and God kind of gal, a vengeful Rambo in heels. At the very least, it meant that I was for bombing the daylights out of Afghanistan.

No, I protested. The flag is merely a symbol. It can celebrate any aspect of America we choose: freedom of speech, community, separation of church and state. Or just solidarity with the fallen. What better time to take back the flag, I said -- to make it stand for more progressive values?

After a while, it seemed my hoped-for shared custody of the flag wasn't going to take. Like liberals who proclaim their superior eco-politics by slapping recycle stickers on their low-emission cars, the flag just seemed to be a permanent fixture of the Hummer and pickup truck crowd.

The struggle to control the symbols of patriotism reappeared at the Democratic National Convention, awash in a sea of military metaphors. John Kerry criticized people who"wrap themselves in the flag" but question the patriotism of anyone who protests the status quo."That is not a challenge to patriotism," he said."It is the heart and soul of patriotism." It was one of the best applause lines he stepped on all night.

So Democrats showed they too could produce full-throated chauvinism. I don't know how it looked on TV, but to me it seemed artificial, as contrived as the multicultural coalitions the Republicans trot out at their conventions every four years to show they're the party of inclusion.

The unseemly tug of war over the flag is just another sorry example of how polarized we have become in this nation. We need a new definition of patriotism to cut across the partisan divide. And rather than continue to parry with symbols, the new American patriots could make an important statement with a program of substance: comprehensive, possibly even mandatory, national service....