Academic Essay - NCTC Students
FIRST PRIZE
Stars and Stripes: The Controversial Pattern of Patriotism Ashlyn Fowler Throughout the ages, people have chosen objects to represent their beliefs and way of life. Scots and Irish alike don clan tartans, Nazis wore swastikas, and 4H students have a particular affinity for the four-leaf clover. However, there is one symbolic object that plays an increasingly controversial role in our everyday lives. Display it, carry it, burn it, revere it, acknowledge it as your own or reject it as a symbol of outdated sentiment, the American flag and the question of what it represents is a culturally relevant topic as we continue to see people take different stances on how they respond to the stars and stripes. In his essay “That Old Piece of Cloth,” Frank Miller lays out his own journey in determining the value of the flag in his own life. Surrounded as a boy by veterans of both wars and social revolutions, his original contempt for the symbolic material was transformed into admiration after experiencing the events of 9/11 (161-163). He believes in the American flag as a symbol of ideals and patriotism that are crucial to our country’s survival. To understand the shift and eventual outcome of Miller’s thinking, it is necessary to grasp the historical and sociological implications of the age that Miller grew up in prior to the attack on September 11th. The ‘60s, an era of radical movement, was a historically tumultuous time. In 1962, JFK was assassinated. 1963 saw Martin Luther King Jr. delivering what would become a historically significant speech. People from all over gathered in streets and occupied buildings to protest the Vietnam War and bring attention to the civil rights movement. In addition to the free-thinkers who rode the emotional roller coaster of societal belief, Miller was surrounded by those who had served in the military, mentioning that even his parents were “WWII veterans. FDR era patriots” (161). The circumstances for soldiers returning home after World War II were very different than those returning from the Vietnam War. Post WWII, the United States had an economic boom, and the nation relished in the victory. Soldiers were welcomed home with excitement. However, those returning from the Vietnam War experienced a different homecoming. The Vietnam War was seen by most as a lost cause, and soldiers were not welcomed home with the same enthusiasm of a nation experiencing a victory. In an article for Vietnam, James Wright summarizes the feeling well: “Most Americans did ignore them--many disliked them for what they represented, and some feared them for the dark anger they believed the veterans harbored. One reporter wrote of the returning veteran, ‘Silently he is slipping thru the back door of the nation which sent him to war.’” As a result, Miller grew up in an environment where, between the flower-power and anti-war movements and the outcome from the Vietnam War, excessive devotion and seemingly misguided patriotism produced a skeptical view of any symbol of undying loyalty and devotion. In recalling how he felt toward the flag, he says it was “just another symbol of a generation’s sentimentality, of it’s narcissistic worship of its own past glories” (162). In contrast to the aforementioned influences, the post 9/11 setting was significantly altered by the historical event and the sociological impact that followed the attack. Historically, September 11, 2001, is not a date any could forget easily. The country experienced horror first hand, watching as the twin towers collapsed in ruins. According to The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist AtThe April Perennial 53
