The flag is up: America is for all of us

Larissa Phillips grew up with flag-flying grandparents and activist parents who thought "something had gone horribly wrong with America, and it was up to us to fix it," she writes on The Free Press. "They took us to more protest marches than parades."

She saw patriotism as hokey. This year, for the first time, she's flying the flag.

Larissa Phillips and her husband, Christian Dechert, hung the U.S. flag on their barn this year. Photo: Cindy Schultz/Free Press

When she lived in Brooklyn, all her friends were progressives, Phillips writes. In addition to small classes and a strong arts program, she looked for an elementary school where students didn't recite the Pledge of Allegiance. "I assumed a school requiring the Pledge would be tone-deaf to the problems with American culture. It seemed like an obvious tell; these weren’t our people."

Phillips started to change right after 9/11, when she saw Congress members gather on the steps of the Capitol for a moment of silence, then spontaneously begin singing God Bless America. She was shocked by the tears brimming in her eyes.

In 2010, the family moved to a farm in upstate New York. Her daughter's new school recited the Pledge. She helped her learn it. They both learned patriotic songs for Veterans Day: Her daughter's Brownie troop sang You’re a Grand Old Flag to a group of aging veterans at the library.

Some of her neighbors fly the flag, but liberals who've moved north see them as "taboo," she writes. Republican.

Phillips isn't sure why she chose to hang the flag on the barn door this year, she writes. It wasn't just one thing. "An accumulation of ordinary life experiences has led me to the realization that I absolutely, deeply love the best that this country has to offer — as well as some of the worst. Not only blue jeans and jazz music and snowboarding and Walt Whitman and Zora Neale Hurston, but also McDonald’s and televangelists and monster trucks and, sure, even the chaotic political mayhem that is an indispensable part of living in a wildly heterogeneous democracy."

"Yes, America is imperfect," Phillips concludes. "But so is everything: family and work and life. This is my country — the only one I’ve got — and I believe in it."

American pride has slipped to a "new low," according to Gallup's annual poll, Jesse Singal notes. But that means that 58 percent are “very” or “extremely” proud to be American. Add in those with "moderate" pride and it adds up to 77 percent. "Even at this historic low in American pride, Americans have a lot of pride!," writes Singal.

Most people in the left-of-center world take it for granted that America is "especially and uniquely bad," and "treat pro-Americans with contempt," he writes. Maybe they should rethink.

Next July 4 will be the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Many groups are trying to "rebuild civics education and rekindle Americans' understanding of patriotism based on their identity as citizens in a democratic republic," writes Bruno Manno in Forbes.

For example, the Progressive Policy Institute's American Identity Project has ideas on Teaching Students What It Means To Be an American. Public schools should teach the "ideas and values" that bind us together, avoiding dystopian America-bashing and jingoism, the project argues. Among the proposals:

"Schools and colleges should completely overhaul Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and Ethnic Studies programs . . . to remove grossly inaccurate and insulting race essentialist thinking."

Americans aren't as divided as people think, writes Manno. "Nearly three out of four Biden supporters (74%) and Trump supporters (71%) said it is extremely or very important to have public discussions about America’s historical successes and strengths," Pew Research reports. Seventy-eight percent of Biden supporters and 60 percent of Trump supporters said it is at least very important to have a public discussion about America’s failures and flaws.