I don’t understand this weird American obsession with flag. I was looking at some photos of Trump’s rallies. Flags everywhere - on shirts, hats, glasses etc. And this bizarre cult of the flag - “it cannot touch the ground” etc.
At the end of the day the flag is just a piece of cloth. If you worship any flag or take offense to any flag, you need to get a life.
Coming from a country that doesn’t have this sort of thing it’s really weird as an outside observer. Students have to swear allegiance to the flag every morning too which is the sort of thing I would imagine happens in north Korea or dictator states.
They don’t have to. It would be unconstitutional if they did. What happens sometimes unfortunately, for teachers to sort of discourage not taking part, or potentially punish the student for an “unrelated” reason. The school I went to only did the pledge once a year though.
I was suspended from school multiple times for refusing to pledge allegiance when I was in high school in the states.
Then you would have had legal recourse to sue and no one told you your rights.
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/west-virginia-v.-barnette-the-freedom-to-not-pledge-allegiance
That flag worship thing always seemed like a weird cult thing to me. I suppose Americans might not see it that way since they grew up with it.
The context of the origin of the US’ pledge of allegiance is it came shortly after the end of their Civil War when there was still a lot o political tension. A desire was born to instill national loyalty in children.
However, today as mentioned by another commenter, students cannot be legally compelled to recite the pledge, nor punished for not reciting the pledge as decided by the Supreme Court in 1943 using the first amendment as the base.
I mean, i’m swiss and we did a thing called “Geistige Selbstverteidigung”, mental self-defense, with mythos of Wilhelm Tell & focus on independence in WW2. But we don’t anymore. Why do you still do?
Probably comes from a combination of belief in American exceptionalism, tradition, and either popular opinion remains with reciting the pledge or a lack desire to change.
States are managed individually for the most part and only 47/50 still require reciting the pledge (with some exceptions). Without a call for change from the people, it would be political suicide for any lawmaker to come out for a change like this. Opponents could use this decision as a claim of lack of patriotism.
Wait til you learn about the Texas Pledge!
I’m no nationalistic fanatic of the flag, but is it really so difficult to understand that the flag is a symbol?
Obviously each flag, be they for nations or other groups, represents more than just a piece of cloth to many people. Taking offence at someone else’s identifying with what a flag symbolizes is not okay. But, I tend to look skeptically at worship of any kind of idol, be it flag, cross, or text. That still doesn’t mean it’s okay to hate or persecute people for their beliefs, even if they appear silly to you and as long as they don’t hurt others.
One group can demonstrate their respect for the nation by physically following some rules around the flag and others can demonstrate their loyalty to their ideals of the nation being violated by flying the flag upside down or burning a flag.
A flag or banner is not just a piece of cloth, never has been.
IMHO human beings are more important than stupid symbols. If you don’t respect humans and their non violent choices, the symbol lost all its meaning, especially the one about being the “land of the free”.
Nationalism is part of fascism. Just a FYI, it used to be illegal to make clothes out of the US flag. It’s only because of capitalism that it changed. And yes, any nation that goes flag crazy is stupid. Why do people fly a flag at their residence? We know what country we are in.
Nationalism is part of fascism.
Being nationalistic in itself doesn’t in any way imply fascism.
But nationalism is still a key component of fascism. Or do you know a fascist system that is or was not nationalistic?
You’re correct, but it’s a non sequitur comment. There was no reason to point out the coincidental fact that “nationalism is part of fascism” and they’re right to refute the suggestion that fascism is implied by nationalism. It’s the other way around.
They may have been trying to implicitly claim that the US is fascist and that’s why it’s nationalistic. But… that’s not what fascism is - fascism is not a collection of traits but a small group of distinct class-collaborationist ideologies. The USA is liberalist, and that has resulted in it being an ultranationalist, militarist, socially-stratified state easily compared with fascist states.
US Flag Code:
The success of flags on https://canvas.fediverse.events (!canvas@toast.ooo ) still shows that it’s a way for people to identify.
Interesting to see how New Zealand tweaked their own, though.
Fascism.
