Reclaiming the Flag
By Bill Moyers
Rolling Stone Magazine, May 15th, 2003

I wore my flag tonight. First time. Until now, I haven’t thought it necessary to display a little metallic icon of patriotism for everyone to see. It was enough to vote, pay my taxes, speak my mind and do my best to raise my kids to be good Americans.

Sometimes I would offer a small prayer of gratitude that I had been born in a country whose institutions sustained me, whose armed forces protected me and whose ideas inspired me; I offered my heart’s affections in return. It no more occurred to me to flaunt the flag on my chest than it did to pin my mother’s picture on my lapel to prove her son’s love. Mother knew where I stood; so does my country. I even tuck a valentine in my tax return on April 15th.

So what’s this flag doing here? Well, I put it on to take it back. The flag has been hijacked and turned into a logo – the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism. On Sunday-morning talk shows, official chests appear adorned with the flag as if it were the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. During the State of the Union Address, did you notice Bush and Cheney wearing the flag? How come? No administration’s patriotism is ever in doubt, only its policies. When I see flags sprouting on official lapels, I think of the time in China when I saw Mao’s “Little Red Book” on every official’s desk, omnipresent and unread.

But more appalling than anything are all those moralistic ideologues in Washington sporting the flag on their lapels while attacking dissenters as un-American. They are the people whose ardor for war grows disproportionately to their distance from the fighting. They’re in the same league as those swarms of corporate lobbyists wearing flags and prowling Capitol Hill for tax breaks even as they call for more spending on war.

So I put this on as a modest riposte to men with flags on their lapels who shoot missiles from the safety of Washington think tanks, or argue that sacrifice is good as long as they don’t have to make it, or approve of bribing governments to join the coalition of the willing (after they first stash the cash). I put it on to remind myself that not every patriot thinks we should do to the people of Baghdad what bin Laden did to us. The flag belongs to the country, not to the government. And it reminds me that it’s not un-American to think that war – except in self-defense – is a failure of moral imagination, political nerve and diplomacy. Come to think of it, standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.