Newsletter #250 — July 1, 2024

What Does the 4th of July and the U.S. Flag Mean? The Burgesses, Deborah Laufer, Ashok Panikkar, and Sanda Kaufman Discuss

With the Fourth of July coming up, we've been thinking and talking about the meaning of Independence Day in today's United States. It seems to be very different from when we (the Burgesses) were kids.  Way back then (in the 50s and 60s), it was a fun holiday celebrated by all. There were family get togethers, backyard neighborhood barbecues, races, parades, and lots of flags (almost everybody in our neighborhoods flew the flag).  And after dark there was always a fireworks display together with patriotic music — the National Anthem, "America the Beautiful," and "I'm Proud to Be An American."  We all sang along proudly, as we were, indeed, "proud to be an American."

But now many of us are no longer proud to be Americans. Rather, a great many people that we know and read about seem ashamed of America. For many, America is seen as having been built on the twin sins of slavery and colonial conquest — sins from which it has never recovered.  Seeing the US as an oppressor state, student activists at elite U.S. universities are now condemning the United States and embracing  Hamas and its terrorism,  while also chanting "death to America" and citing Osama bin Laden as a sympathetic figure who deserves praise for "standing up to American oppression." What we find so disturbing about these stories is not that there are a few, we think misguided, college students who embrace these views. It is the fact that so much of our society seems to support, or at least acquiesce to, this way of looking at things.

These days, flying the American flag no longer simply means that you are proud of America. Rather, it is taken to mean you support Trump, who is seen by the right as their best hope for restoring America's former glory.  The left, of course, sees Trump as a terrifying would-be dictator and all around evil actor (even when Hamas and bin Laden are not).   Few Democrats would consider flying an American flag outside their home.

And for the first time ever, my progressive town, Boulder, Colorado, isn't going to have a fireworks display this year, as they couldn't get anyone to pay for it.  The city hasn't paid for it in years, but local businesses had stepped up to do so — until now.  Apparently, it is no longer seen as good advertising to sponsor a patriotic fireworks display.

A few days ago, Deborah Laufer shared Rick Reilly's column in the Washington Post, "Since when does Donald Trump own the American flag?" Ashok Panikkar responded saying

This is why we (liberals and progressives) are certain to lose the country (to the MAGA folk). On July 4th, few liberals can even summon up the enthusiasm to wholeheartedly wish each other 'Happy Independence Day'. Trump supporters own the flag for a simple reason — they are proud of the USA, their country. No 'ifs', 'buts', or caveats ("I love America except for Slavery, Jim Crow, Vietnam, Iraq, capitalism etc"). They think it is the greatest. Period. 

It doesn't matter that they (like Trump) may not understand or manifest their nation's finer or more complex values. They love it. So, this is not about Trump — it is that he represents people who are proud of America. To own the flag, we have to love it first.

This embrace of nationalistic pride stands in sharp contrast to the worldview of those on the international, cosmopolitan left who tend to somehow see national borders and cultures as hopelessly out of date.

Sanda Kaufman, who was born in Romania, joined our conversation by noting that in the U.S. 

People used to fly flags all over the place — in fact friends visiting from abroad observed it with surprise, because in Europe people don't (if you see a flag,  it's the mark of a government office and not a voluntary choice). 

The drop in flag flying has been gradual. I have observed (not a scientific poll ) that it has slowly become a hint, not necessarily of Trump support, but of being "on the right." As Ashok pointed out, on the left, the flag — and what it symbolizes — has mostly become uncool (same in western Europe by the way,  though they express it differently). We (my husband and I) like seeing flags, because for us, being American is an accomplishment, since we weren't born here (and have seen other places), so we get that it's not perfect here. But it still beats the alternatives, much like capitalism does.

In my patch,  where hardly anyone votes Republican,  there are hardly any American flags (perhaps one per street,  or fewer). But people must still like flags (and what they communicate) because they fly all sorts of others, ranging from school sports teams flags to other countries' flags and LGBTQ flags. It has slowly become a polarizing issue. In the moment, given the two choices, I guess the flag may suggest Trump support, but in four years I doubt the flag will suddenly make a comeback. But flying it or not will remain a hint of the deep left-right division, unless we figure something out to bridge it. 

And Deborah added that

It is time to realize that being proud of the flag and proud to be an American goes back to valuing all the wonderful things this country stands for and upon which it was founded.  Sure, there were mistakes and missteps along the way. I’m not going to minimize them. However, when did education about our great country become only about the mistakes? One of my beloved memories is going to the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, DC to see the American Flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the “Star Spangled Banner” at Fort McHenry in the harbor in Maryland.  Further, the 13-Folds Ceremony of Old Glory for fallen US soldiers is particularly poignant, and infused with meaning and honor. But it shouldn’t be as a last rite that we realize all that the flag represents. Rejoice with the flag in life - especially on July Fourth. It is a an incredible honor to have such a symbol of freedom. 

Can the Constitution Reconcile America?

We see a lot of truth in what our friends were saying, and in that vein we were particularly interested in Barton Swaim's recent column in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Can the Constitution Reconcile America?" Right now, of course, people on both the Left and the Right are trying to undercut or amend, or even get rid of the Constitution, which is seen by many on both sides of the aisle as an "outdated" and "unworkable" document.  The Left, for example, wants to get rid of the Electoral College and some want to junk the Senate too (because it gives unfair advantage to states with small populations, which coincidentally are largely Republican). Those in more sparsely populated states, by contrast, see the Senate as one of the few mechanisms they have to prevent themselves from being overrun by the big, coastal, left-leaning urban centers.

A more radical proposal comes from, Ryan Doefler and Samuel Moyn of Harvard and Yale respectively, who argue that the U.S. should dump the Constitution completely because it it orients politics toward the past, not the future. As they explain:

[C]onstitutions — especially the broken one we have now — inevitably orient us to the past and misdirect the present into a dispute over what people agreed on once upon a time, not on what the present and future demand for and from those who live now. This aids the right, which insists on sticking with what it claims to be the original meaning of the past.

Arming for war over the Constitution concedes in advance that the left must translate its politics into something consistent with the past. But liberals have been attempting to reclaim the Constitution for 50 years — with agonizingly little to show for it. It’s time for them to radically alter the basic rules of the game.

And then there is the right, which is firmly supporting Trump, even though he advocates suing news organizations that write stories that he doesn't like, using the Justice Department to prosecute his enemies, rounding up and deporting masses of people, and being a "dictator for a day" if he is re-elected.  Indeed, he wrote on social media shortly after announcing his 2024 campaign that "Massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution."

Barton Swaim, however, draws from Yuval Levin's new book American Covenant, to argue that "The U.S. Constitution was written to bring together a fractious and disunited nation, so if we’re looking for ways to bring together a fractious and disunited nation, maybe we should consider the U.S. Constitution." The "snide antimetabole," Swaim points out, was his, not Levin's.  (And for anyone who, like me, doesn't know the word "antimetabole," it means a figure of speech in which a phrase is repeated, but with the order of words reversed.) The U.S. Constitution, both Levin and Swaim argue, was designed specifically to force parties to consider the interests of the other and to negotiate constantly in order to get things done. Swaim explains this by comparing U.S. democracy to the British parliamentary system.

In Britain, when one party wins an election, it can do more or less what it wants until the next election, with the opposition there mainly to criticize it. By contrast, even if an American party wins big, it may not win both chambers of Congress and the presidency, and even when it does, the minority retains enough power to force the majority to negotiate.

The intended consequence: Both parties are compelled to consider the interests of the other. The framers, particularly Madison, understood that the U.S. was far too large, culturally disparate and attitudinally centrifugal to be governed by a parliamentary system.

When discussing his book with Swaim, Levin observed

[O]ne of the [Consitution's] framers’ chief concerns was that democracy can menace minorities — numerically small groups or factions that can find themselves abused or treated unjustly by majorities. “That concern should resonate with a lot of progressives,” Mr. Levin says. “Somehow it doesn’t, because there’s an assumption at the root of modern progressivism that it speaks for the majority and that the majority is somehow silenced by the Constitution.”

The progressive left over the past 25 years has developed an unlovely contempt for the Constitution’s countermajoritarian institutions; hence the periodic talk of abolishing the Electoral College, packing the Supreme Court, eliminating the Senate filibuster or even the Senate itself, and adding blue states to the union. All these ideas assume that progressives hold a clear majority and that the Constitution stops them from exercising their rightful prerogative. 

But all of these institutions are ones that force both sides to talk with, listen to, and make deals with the other.  Do we really want to do away with that? Instead of complaining about or trying to undermine or alter the Constitution, wouldn't it be better to learn how to take advantage of the mechanisms that it already provides for encouraging collaborative governance? 

The Electoral College, for instance, is one such institution.  As Levin explains:  

It forces us to fight our political battles in the middle. [Without it,] the Democrats would just focus on California, because there are a lot of people in California, the Republicans would just focus on the South. ...

[With the Electoral College] you can run up your numbers as much as you want in California and the South.  [But] If you didn’t win states in the middle — Michigan, say — you didn’t win the election. To win Michigan, you have to speak to the middle of the country. You have to speak about the issues that you are uncomfortable with as a Republican or a Democrat.

Levin went on to explain that both sides seem to think that if we had a "real democracy," things would go their way all of the time.  "I don't know what country they're living in, but that's not true," Levin observed. 

[I]f anything ought to be clear from the last quarter-century in American politics, it is that neither side holds a consistent majority. “Simple majoritarianism,” Mr. Levin observes in his book, “is of no use when there aren’t simple majorities.”

Is it even possible for one party to win big, as in 1932 or even 1980, Swaim asked? Levin replied:

I think the idea that you could win big is no longer plausible to most people in our system, but I think you could still do it. There is room now for either party to win 55% of the vote in a presidential election, which would be a big win at this point. But it would require one side to think about how to appeal to the other. Our constitutional system is intended to force us to think that way. The only way to win is to build a big coalition. That’s how we’re different from the parliamentary systems, but somehow we’re not letting that signal reach us.”

He went on to explain that rather than trying to grow their coalition, both sides are focusing on revving up their base to increase turnout of their existing coalition. And, we would add, the strategies they use to do that — focusing, for instance, on the evils of the other side, and ignoring or even burying any information that makes your own side look bad — is just driving us further and further apart, and is leaving increasing numbers of people despondent, thinking that America and American democracy is irretrievably lost. 

Liberalism versus Republicanism

Both Swaim and Levin make a distinction between "liberalism," or "liberal democracy" (involving free markets, the rule of law, individual rights, representative government, etc.) and "republican" principles and government, which, Swain said, emphasizes "the citizen’s obligation to improve the polity and strengthen its institutions: in short, to seek the common good."  This is a notion that used to be commonplace, but no longer is, on either the left or the right. To illustrate, "I've mentioned before," Swaim wrote, "Benjamin Franklin,[when] asked what the Constitutional Convention had produced, didn’t reply, “A democracy — if you can keep it.” [He said "a republic — if you can keep it.]

Swaim continues by quoting Levin:

In a healthy republic, he continues, “you’re not just standing around waiting for somebody else to fix your problems. You don’t only think about what other people owe you, but also about what you owe them. These are the habits that we’ve tended to lose, I think , in part because we’ve come to understand our system in liberal terms. Liberalism is a good thing, too, but liberalism describes rights and privileges. It’s less concerned with duties and responsibilities.”

Reading that brought me back to my research on the word "antimetabole," which LitCharts illustrated with John F. Kennedy's quote "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." And he was a Democrat! My, how times have changed! 

Might We Consider These Questions on the Fourth?

These are all important points that are worth considering as we celebrate, or not, this Fourth of July.  Even if we are not celebrating, we think we owe it to ourselves, our families, and our neighbors to think long and hard about what kind of country we want to live in.  Do we want one run by terrorists who kill anybody who doesn't worship as they do (as those who are supporting Hamas on U.S. campuses implicitly seem to prefer)? Do we want one with a parliamentary system in which the majority (which might well be the other side) can trample the minority even more than they do now? Do we want one that is so polarized, fearful, and hateful that 20-25% think that violence might be necessary to set the country on "the right track?"

If not, then maybe we should consider and value the strengths of our system and our country, not just its shortcomings.  Maybe we should consider how to improve the U.S. system for all of us, instead of how to improve it for half of us, or burn it down in anger, leaving all of us in the rubble. And for a start, maybe we should consider flying a flag — not to show our support for Trump or for Biden, but rather to show our support for America, and for Western Liberal Democracy, which, despite all it's shortcomings and all its flaws is still, as Winston Churchill famously observed "the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

-------------------------------

Lead Photo Credit: Flag: Open Source from https://picryl.com/media/close-up-shot-of-an-american-flag-3e3eee and Rubble: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1064723#google_vignette

Please Contribute Your Ideas To This Discussion!

In order to prevent bots, spammers, and other malicious content, we are asking contributors to send their contributions to us directly. If your idea is short, with simple formatting, you can put it directly in the contact box. However, the contact form does not allow attachments.  So if you are contributing a longer article, with formatting beyond simple paragraphs, just send us a note using the contact box, and we'll respond via an email to which you can reply with your attachment.  This is a bit of a hassle, we know, but it has kept our site (and our inbox) clean. And if you are wondering, we do publish essays that disagree with or are critical of us. We want a robust exchange of views.

Contact Us

About the MBI Newsletters

Two or three times a week, Guy and Heidi Burgess, the BI Directors, share some of our thoughts on political hyper-polarization and related topics. We also share essays from our colleagues and other contributors, and every week or so, we devote one newsletter to annotated links to outside readings that we found particularly useful relating to U.S. hyper-polarization, threats to peace (and actual violence) in other countries, and related topics of interest. Each Newsletter is posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.

NOTE! If you signed up for this Newsletter and don't see it in your inbox, it might be going to one of your other emails folder (such as promotions, social, or spam).  Check there or search for beyondintractability@substack.com and if you still can't find it, first go to our Substack help page, and if that doesn't help, please contact us. 

If you like what you read here, please ....

Subscribe to the Newsletter