EDITORIAL: July 4th – Put Away The Flags, by Howard Zinn
God bless the “Untied States” – Let 50 (or 1,000) flags fly…
Put Away The Flags
by Howard Zinn
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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.
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, alongwith 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 becomesan arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.
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Howard Zinn, a World War II bombardier, is the author of the best-
selling “A People’s History of the United States” (Perennial Classics, 2003,
latest edition).
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