Rod Dreher, of Benedict Option fame, opined on X that countries where “basic patriotism is demonized” are “on the brink of civil conflict.” He made his observation in response to a post by a British man in Devonshire whose display of the Union Jack in his garden elicited a note from a neighbor telling him it generated “alarm and de-stress” (sic). The gentleman’s response was to raise a larger flag. (A link to the X post is below.)

Sunday’s posts separately included an American woman gleefully burning a U.S. flag to express her disdain for Donald Trump’s immigration policies. X regularly features people who are “triggered” or “anxious” about seeing Old Glory. One poster last week assured us she felt more secure in a neighborhood festooned with “Pride” flags than with American flags.

I will not treat these comments as trigger bait, though I’m sure many people want to do so. I will take them seriously because they tell us something important about the state of patriotism globally — if we have ears to listen.

In the United States, burning flags was christened by our own “generation of ‘68” as a form of protest, beginning with the Vietnam War. Yes, flag incineration is not something as old as the Republic, despite the Supreme Court’s 1989 protection of it in Texas v. Johnson. It is rather as novel as the discovery of new “reality” in the 1960s. (It’s why Merle Haggard’s 1969 hit “Okie from Muskogee,” here, makes a point in its refrain that “We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse.”) After Vietnam, flag burning was largely a phenomenon of America’s enemies, e.g., the “death to America” crowd in Iran. In recent years, however, it’s been taken over by Americans.

Why? After all, whatever one thinks of President Trump’s immigration policies, one’s beef is with him, not the United States. If you insist that Donald Trump doesn’t “represent” America (even if America elected him), why are you torching a symbol that should express our overarching unity despite partisan differences? Perhaps you really don’t consider it “our” country? Consider the paradox: to protest illegal immigrants, one is burning the flag of the place to which, the law notwithstanding, those immigrants chose to flee and stay.

Perhaps it’s because the “critical thinking” skills and the “complete history” that is being taught to America’s young people is intended to tear down rather than build up pride in their country. America is a country lacking an immaculate conception (except as patroness). Instead, it suffers from various “original sins,” like European colonialism, none more invidious than slavery. In such a vision, America has never been a country worthy of love; at best, it might someday become worthy of that affection if it ever “lives up to its ideals” in a woke universe whose moral goalposts are perennially mobile. To me, this state of affairs makes perfect sense why President Trump is right in demanding that we take back the narrative of American history from those who would paint this country as forever failing their moral “sense.”

That might explain (though not excuse) burning the American flag and the anemic state of American patriotism among parts of our population. But what generated the antipathy to the Union Jack in Chudleigh of Devonshire?

Well, wokeism and illegal immigration are in some ways further advanced in England than here. While it got a major boost under Tony Blair and his “Cool Britain” Labour government, Conservative governments also bore responsibility for untrammeled immigration. While liberals played the “race” card in America, they played a pair in the UK: race and colonialism. When I was a vice consul in London 25 years ago, I was amazed at the number of Nigerian, Jamaican, Ghanian, and other Third World immigrants who had “permanent leave to remain” (the UK equivalent of “permanent residence”) stamped in their foreign passports.

But I want to suggest another factor for Europe’s patriotic anemia: the EUropean Union (I insist on that spelling because the EU pretends it is the “voice of Europe”). The EU was born of a desire to stamp out “nationalism” — especially German nationalism — as Europe’s “original sin.” But it’s not just a German thing. I personally was surprised when my Polish-born wife’s first impression of American flag flying was “excessive” compared to what she saw in Poland. (Truth be told, there the flag is considered property of the state and, given that she grew up in a satellite “state” nobody considered to be theirs, I get it). It’s why the Brussels clerisy invented its own flag (which, like the constant references to “Saints” Adenauer, De Gasperi, and Schuman, also coopts Marian allusions), which winds up paired with national flags. The only places in Europe I actually saw citizens proudly wave their national flags with the fervor of Okies from Muskogee were in Norway and Switzerland — countries that have kept the EU at arms’ length and whose voters repeatedly said “no.”

Between the UK elites’ colonialism guilt and the residual denationalization that came from 40+ years in the European Union (a departure some Britons still want to reverse), I’m not surprised the British gentleman’s neighbor in Chudleigh labelled him a “far right wing thug.” Just like the paradox of burning the flag of the country to which illegal immigrants come to protest immigration enforcement, Britons suffer a similar fate. The white field/red cross of the St. George flag of England is clearly despised, though there’s never any suggestion of “chauvinism” to be attributed to Scotland’s St. Andrew’s cross flag or Wales’s dragon flag. The Union Jack is one rung above the St. George flag: better than “little England” nationalism but still a symbol of “oppression” for Scottish nationalists bent on kowtowing to Brussels or Welsh nationalists agitating for a country that was last independent about 750 years ago.

The Church cannot sidestep a share of responsibility for this state of affairs when it constantly speaks loudly of the “rights” of foreigners entering a country while talking about national sovereignty rights and legitimate patriotism sotto voce. The former has to be actuated; there never seems to be an existential situation where the latter prevails.

The Church rightly denounces the excessive nationalism that fueled the mania of Nazi Germany. But it does no one a favor when it does not clearly and forthrightly distinguish that deformed “patriotism” from the normal and healthy love of country that citizens rightly have. In Europe, it also bears responsibility by its regular and unqualified paeans to “unity” and “integration” within the EUropean Union, often at the diminishment of national rights, interests, and pride. That full-throated praise flows up even when EU “integration” comes at the cost of Catholic interests, including the forthright acknowledgement of Christianity’s constitutive role in the formation of European identity.

Postscript:
Completely independently of the preceding essay, the White House August 25 issued a Presidential proclamation (here) promising to prosecute flag burners and fight “desecration” of the American flag. I have three thoughts on this.

First, the usual suspects are already decrying the order as another step towards “authoritarianism” and “fascism” and suppressing “protest.” We need to push back on that narrative. As noted above, the idea of flag burning as “protest” is very much a phenomenon of the “Generation of ’68,” the Vietnam-era revisionism that considered everything preceding it the work of the Dark Ages. Even then, however, it was years before flag arson became mainstream. After Vietnam, it was mostly the work of the Middle East “death to America” crowd. “Protest” used to mean assembling, marching, and petitioning. The March for Life is a very “traditional” protest: a rally, speakers, a march up Constitution Avenue, a descent upon the halls of Congress to voice one’s views to senators and representatives. “Protest” in the revisionist narrative means performances: flag burning, interfering with federal law enforcement (including maybe hurling “nonlethal” objects like sandwiches or stones at those officers), occupying unauthorized spaces and interfering with other peoples’ rights to go about their affairs without having to be engaged with your “protest,” whether that means attending class or driving down a public highway. “Protest” is not legitimate just because you decided to be there, do this, or be in my face.

Second, the Supreme Court decision protecting flag arsonists — Texas v. Johnson — was narrowly decided (5-4). Yes, Antonin Scalia sided with the majority; yes, Antonin Scalia was sometimes wrong. The Justice Department should give the Court every opportunity to reverse itself. Congress failed by not advancing President George H.W. Bush’s proposal for a Constitutional amendment to overturn Johnson.

Third, note the word President Trump used in his proclamation: “desecration.” It is not his invention. It does not arise from a fevered August mind. Americans used to talk that way about the flag. The Flag Code envisioned burning not as a form of “protest” but when a flag “was no longer a fitting emblem for display” (e.g., has been tattered by the wind and needed to be retired). I’d note that’s what Catholics do with sacred things, e.g., consumable blessed items that have been worn out, like scapulars or holy pictures. Ash Wednesday ashes are not a “protest” but the proper disposition of blessed palms. If Catholics’ sense of the sacred has been attenuated, what of secular America’s?

[A link to the Dreher post mentioned at top is here.]