A shopping website opens its display of American flags with this headline:

“Flags are a great way to display your Conservative values. Whether it’s a car flag, yard sign or traditional flag, display your values with one of our patriotic flags!” 

There’s something terribly sad about this.   No, many sad things.

When a person flies an American flag, the headline says, it shows he or she is patriotic.  And it implies that he’s MORE PATRIOTIC than other people.  Otherwise, why make the show?

That’s the first sadness of the website headline:  that flying a flag says anything about a person’s political identity.  In fact, 59 percent of Americans fly the flag – far, far more than the number of conservative Republicans.  How do we know who is right-wing and who is other-wing?

Conservative Republicans are out there making a show of flying the flag, and everybody is supposed to understand they’re unusually patriotic.

It’s like saying the brass section of an orchestra, because they make the most noise, loves music more than the other, more subdued, musicians.

Conservative Republicans imagine they’re communicating their super-patriotic message to a waiting audience.  

In fact, polls find that almost ALL Americans consider themselves patriotic.  A Pew Research Center survey showed that only 6 percent of Americans see themselves as less patriotic than other Americans.

It would seem that conservative Republicans who display American flags to show something to the world are only showing to other conservative Republicans – a recognition symbol like the Red Strings in North Carolina during the Civil War.       

Most Americans don’t see conservative Republicans as more patriotic – at least not as they understand patriotism.

That’s an important point. Many conservative Republicans DO understand patriotism in a different way from most people.  And the dictionary does indeed recognize two meanings of the word “patriot.”

The first:  “a person who loves, supports, and defends his or her country and its interests with devotion.”  This applies to almost all Americans, including conservative Republicans. 

The second definition:  “a person who regards himself or herself as a defender, especially of individual rights, against presumed interference by the federal government.”  The “patriots” in the American Revolution fit here.  They were rebels and revolutionaries. 

Many conservative Republicans also go under this definition.  It’s a constant theme in the words of right-wingers.  

In April, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz wrote:  “The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution….serve(s) as the ultimate check against governmental tyranny – for the protection of liberty.”  (Senator Lindsey Graham quipped, “Well, we tried that once in South Cartoon.  I wouldn’t go down that road again.”) 

This talk of insurrection fits in with regular right-wing messages, such as:  “A patriot must always be ready to defend his freedom against his government.”  (Ironically, a quote from environmentalist Edward Abbey)

This kind of patriotism shouldn’t be called patriotism at all.  Real patriots love their country, flaws and all.  We’re citizens of a great democracy.  We are of one soul around our great flag.

When somebody uses the American flag to DIVIDE us, he is not being patriotic.  He is a selfish partisan.     

I still remember the rush I felt in the movie theater on Wallace Air Station in the Philippines many years ago.  My family had lived for years in the mountains west of there and had come to feel that was our home.  We were on vacation on Lingayen Gulf and decided to go over to Wallace for an American hamburger and shake.  We also went to their movie, “True Grit” (John Wayne version).  The theater darkened – and suddenly the American flag fluttered on the screen, with the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

We were far from America, but it was MY FLAG.  The awful war in Vietnam couldn’t dim the glory of MY COUNTRY!  That wonderful flag stood for America’s long history of greatness – welcoming the world’s “tired and poor,” giving our young men to liberate others, helping our conquered enemies find democracy, making faraway disasters our own, greatness upon greatness. 

Almost all Americans share that beautiful emotion.

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Lee Ballard lives in Mars Hill.