On a recent visit to a wealthy historical enclave in Virginia, I was hit with a now-familiar sight of dozens of Ukrainian and Pride flags fluttering in front of businesses and homes. The only (small) American flags to be found anywhere in town were hitched to a few lighting fixtures on main street, a pathetic nod to patriotism put there for the tourists by the local chamber of commerce.
It's unsurprising. For many on the Left, overt displays of patriotism have long been viewed as at best unsophisticated and at worst an expression of our chauvinistic attitudes. Over the past couple of decades, however, that disdain for patriotism has evolved into something far more pernicious.
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A few years ago, NPR deployed reporters to interview people about their views of the American flag. One man from Vermont, who, we are informed, is “white and leans conservative,” said he viewed “the U.S. flag as fairly simple and unifying,” while others (not white and, evidentially, less simplistic) held conflicting feelings regarding the flag, which they believed was often at odds with contemporary notions of equality. Still others believe that the flag was too controversial to fly. “With all the protests and the Black Lives Matter stuff happening,” one San Pedro, California, resident explained, “we took the flag down for a little bit."
Is there any other nation where citizens feel compelled to take down flags so as not to offend their neighbors? Seems unlikely. And what belief is imbued in those stars and stripes that could spark anger?
“To be an American is an ideal,” political theorist Carl Friedrich wrote in 1935, “while to be a Frenchman is a fact.” It has always been the case American life is based on a set of principles, largely revolving around personal liberty, faith, and social norms rather than blood and soil. Now, obviously, the land and culture matter. And without borders, we wouldn’t be able to sustain any of our ideals. But success doesn’t materialize from the ground. Rather, it lies in our ability to convince millions of people with disparate cultural backgrounds, outlooks, skin colors, religious views, and geographical origins to replace their old (bad) ideas with a shared respect for civic life, law and order, a meritocratic society, and individual rights of others.
All of this, no doubt, comes off as pathetically idealistic to the sophisticated political ear. Yet, in the past, almost every major debate, at least ostensibly, revolved around the best way to uphold those values. What happens when our disagreements are completely untethered from our heritage? Well, we’re going to find out.
A successful movement is afoot to conflate Americanism with “white supremacy,” and it has not only transformed the flag into a symbol of oppression, but it is destroying any shared sense of national identity or purpose.
The effort is, among other things, contingent on convincing large swaths of people that our history is inherently racist and thus unsuitable for adulation. The most well-known, though hardly the first, stab at rewriting our past was undertaken by Nikole Hannah-Jones’s 1619 Project, now taught in high schools around the country. It perpetuates the fantastical claim that “one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.”
Why would anyone celebrate a common heritage that’s true purpose was to preserve oppression? If the primary goal of the founding was propping up slavery, it means the American Revolution was despotic, the Declaration of Independence was fraudulent, and the Constitution, which codified those principles into a governing authority, is little more than an enduring weapon of white slaveholders.
Of course, even if the 1619 Project’s central contention was accurate, the stated ideals of the founding generation would still be invaluable in binding the national experience. But that’s the point, isn’t it? Liberals who spread this revisionism are interested in degrading the constitutional system that limits state power and inhibits their project.
A few years ago, New York Times editorialist Mara Gay relayed a traumatic trip she took out to the wastelands of suburban Long Island during the 2020 election. There, she encountered “dozens and dozens of pickup trucks with expletives against Joe Biden on the back of them, Trump flags, and in some cases just dozens of American flags, which, you know, is also just disturbing because essentially the message was clear. It was: ‘This is my country. This is not your country. I own this.'”
Are Democrats who fly American flags at political events saying they “own” America? Perhaps. Then again, political parties have long claimed to be the stewards of the republic’s true legacy. Gray, though, takes it further by contending that the New Yorkers flying the red, white, and blue see “Americanness as whiteness.” This is wholly projection. After all, it’s the progressive Left, and increasingly the entire Left, that believes “Black” should be a proper noun and sees the world and the flag — and the economy and sports and culture — through the prism of race or gender.
Now, it need not be said that the United States isn’t a utopia. Viewing the national flag with pride doesn’t preclude one from protesting its problems. Yet the conceit of the Left’s attack on our emblem of idealism and homeland is that it is inherently about injustice.
“When I take a knee, I am facing the flag with my full body, staring straight into the heart of our country's ultimate symbol of freedom — because I believe it is my responsibility, just as it is yours, to ensure that freedom is afforded to everyone in this country,” explained women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe, who until recently represented the nation on the world stage.
This oft-repeated claim is complete gibberish, an attempt to appropriate the language of patriotism to demean it. Athletes who refuse to stand during the national anthem disrespect the country because they believe its legacy is injustice. Colin Kaepernick wears a T-shirt celebrating a communist dictator, not Abraham Lincoln, because he finds this system corrupt. It’s not complicated.
But the Left’s identitarianism is increasingly evident in mainstream politics, as well. One of the bedrock ideals of republicanism, for example, is federalism: an ideologically neutral idea that protects states, communities, and minorities from being lorded over by faraway majorities. For years, anyone who mentioned the 10th Amendment would be placed in league with slaveholders and segregationists. Nowadays, as the Left attains power, the Electoral College has become “an instrument of White Supremacy” with “racist origins,” according to a slew of media outlets.
When Barack Obama, the first president to frame American exceptionalism as a matter of subjective geographical luck rather than objective truth, was in the Senate, he defended the congressional filibuster as an indispensable bulwark against majoritarian tyranny. These days, he says it is a “Jim Crow relic.”
Indeed, any argument that shows deference to the original intent of the Constitution is now allegedly a manifestation of this historical bigotry. Pieces with headlines such as “The Supreme Court's originalism is white supremacy,” “Originalism Is a White-Supremacist Scam,” “Originalism threatens to turn the clock back on race,” and “The Conservative Movement’s Favorite Legal Theory Is Rooted in Racism” litter the media landscape. We are bombarded with the idea that First Amendment “absolutism” is merely a defense of “hate speech.” There's even “The Second Amendment is not about guns — it’s about anti-Blackness,” as argued by Carol Anderson, author of the largely fictional The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, which was covered widely by the legacy media as a historical fact when it was released.
“White supremacy” no more defines American political life than National Socialism defines German life or pillaging and raping defines Norwegian life. Less so. The U.S. has a better claim to the high moral ground, considering it disposed of those evils of its own volition. The legacy of the flag resides with those who fought and died trying to free their fellow humans, not the slaveholders.
Racists and bigots exist, and sometimes, they perpetrate nefarious acts of violence against innocent people. And until human beings are reengineered, there will always be evil. But there is no funding or infrastructure supporting “white supremacy,” no religious denomination championing racial division, and no notable political faction or any leader with any constituency doing so. Certainly, there is no enduring American ideal celebrating or endorsing bigotry.
Most people not only view genuine racism as an immoral attribute but are terrified to utter anything that might even be construed as bigoted by others. In a nation where anyone is free to participate in political discourse, racist groups have a microscopic footprint. When a handful of cosplay Nazis show up in front of Disney World, the entire media might give them the attention they crave, but they are powerless.
Which is why the Left constantly creates new standards that allow it to smear its political enemies. Today, one must embrace the 1619 pseudo-history as fact and champion voting without photo ID or they are basically Bull Connor.
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And keep the flag-waving to a minimum.
It would be easy to write off the attacks on our heritage and the conflation of “whiteness” and patriotism as little more than cynical political posturing. It’s also true that in the past, Americans were guilty of romanticizing history, which is preferable to the guilt-ridden self-flagellation we’re now engaged in but still wrong. It seems to me, though, that we face a unique problem when millions of people who find their own flag objectionable see no problem virtue signaling with the flag of an Eastern European nation or one celebrating sexual or gender identification. It points to a degradation of unity. And if the American flag does become an emblem of conservatism, or worse, “whiteness,” in the eyes of half the country, it would be a disaster.
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at the Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and the author of five books. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.