Article: Put Away The Flags

It was quite a slow day for news, but this article made quite a controversy on the Randi Rhodes Message Board yesterday afternoon. This is Howard Zinn's article that appeared on Pittsburghlive.com two days ago...

Put away the flags
By Howard Zinn
Sunday, July 3, 2005

We would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols on Independence Day -- 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.


http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/opinion/columnists/guests/s_349480.html