So, we are largely a nation of test-takers rather than critical thinkers. This can tell you a lot about the obsession so many have with the American flag and the national anthem.

We have a two-pronged litmus test on something called patriotism. Do we revere the American flag and stand at proper attention for the singing of the national anthem?

There is so much more to life than being beholden to the term patriotism. If you want some intelligent conversation about it, listen to CNN’s Alisyn Camerota and John Berman’s discussion this morning on New Day with Bob Costas about patriotism, Trump, the NFL, and much more.

I presume that patriotism has something to do with loving your country and serving it as well. But when you think about it, if serving your country does an injustice to our global society or it simply does not make sense, are we supposed to blindly follow?

Think a little more. A flag is a piece of woven cloth. How it looks is …. how it looks. In the case of the United States, the symbolism of thirteen stripes of the original thirteen colonies and the fifty stars for the current fifty states is a good piece of near-trivia to know. But if you drill down on this, you recognize that nearly half of the original thirteen colonies were denizens of slavery. And among the fifty current states, our original sin of slavery has influenced enough people in our national government to gridlock measures to improve quality of life. So, if we’re talking about the substance of the U.S. flag, there may be more imperfections than we want to acknowledge, particularly if you’re African-American.

Yet it is so hard in this country to move away from revering a flag and toward having an honest conversation that includes critical thinking. So, we don’t, and we distill honoring the flag to supporting the military. And yes, it’s good to honor the soldiers, because many are brave and honorable, and most have been sent on fool’s errands because we don’t think through the consequences of our policies.

We as individuals, we as a country, we as citizens of Earth, are ever-changing works in progress. As stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

That’s a tall task and one that will challenge each of us our entire lives. We don’t have time to waste on bragging about ourselves and dwelling on symbolism while ignoring quality of life issues.

Oh, and by the way, it’s a game that conservatives love to play. It’s called the politics of distraction. Think about the flag and the anthem, and then don’t do squat about addressing poverty, human rights, a clean environment, and international peace.

If you graduated from high school, you spent 10,000 hours in classes. Is the best you can do to have a fixation about a piece of cloth while ignoring quality of life? It’s time to move on. We can do better, and it’s good that we have some in our society who are currently reminding us of that.

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Every July 4th, I think about Howard Zinn’s insightful essay on nationalism and its overused, over-hyped symbols. Like most everything written by Zinn, it’s compelling, poignant and virtually timeless. Although Zinn wrote it in 2006, during the height of the Iraq War, as a reflection on the faux patriotism of our national birthday and of the actions of the George W. Bush administration, I am always struck by its relevance to current events, so I’m republishing it–again. And I’m wondering, if he were here today, WWZS [What Would Zinn Say] ?

Put Away the Flags, by Howard Zinn

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, along with 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 becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.

Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.

That self-deception started early.

When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession.”

When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: “It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day.”

On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our “Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence.” After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: “We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country.”

It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to war.

We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, “to civilize and Christianize” the Filipino people.

As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: “The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness.”

We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.

Yet they are victims, too, of our government’s lies.

How many times have we heard President Bush tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for “liberty,” for “democracy”?

One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail in 2004 that God speaks through him.

We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.

We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.

© 2010 The Progressive

[Editor’s note: Howard Zinn (1922-2010) authored many books, including “A People’s History of the United States,” “Voices of a People’s History” (with Anthony Arnove), and “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.” Please read Matthew Rothschild’s “Thank you, Howard Zinn,” for more about his legacy. This article  was distributed by the Progressive Media Project in 2006.]

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