An Old Sailor Bucks the Tide

He won't join those who think that patriotism demands conformity.

As an old sailor in the middle of my eighth decade, I figure I'll be piped over the side for the final time before too many years. When it happens, I hope they do it up royally with all the trimmings of a military funeral. After the bugler has finished and the sailors have shot their blanks toward the heavens, another sailor is supposed to give my widow an American flag on behalf of a grateful nation.

I just hope it gets that far. Nowadays gratitude seems to depend more on politics than service. I'm one of those who, after shucking his uniform, no longer feels like staying in step. I worry that Bertha might not even be offered a flag.

Not long ago I was following a huge pickup, which was plowing through traffic as if to say, "Look at me." The driver was flying a huge American flag on his truck. The big flag annoyed me. Annoying me might just have been the idea. As I drew nearer I could make out the message on his bumper sticker. It said, minus a vulgarity: "If you don't like this flag, tough. Go to leavethecountry.com." (There is such a site, but it appears unrelated to the bumper sticker's sentiment.)

I was a little embarrassed at resenting a display of the flag I had followed so proudly for so many years. But, more often than not these days, Old Glory is used as a symbol of exclusion; its very meaning is distorted. The American flag is supposed to stand for all of us.

Today we're vilified if all of us don't speak as one. Otherwise, they tell us, we'll lose those freedoms we cherish so much. How's that for a paradox? Still, the rhetoric is spawned by politicians, bellowed by jingoistic talk-show hosts and repeated endlessly in Internet chat rooms.

And it started at the top. Shortly after 9/11, the president told us: "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror." Not much room for dissent there.

Sure, he was talking to other nations, but one month later his attorney general, John Ashcroft, made certain the official version of patriotism applied to all of us. He said to a Senate committee: "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of goodwill to remain silent in the face of evil."

And some members of the House abandoned reason. French fries became "freedom fries" in the House cafeteria in protest of France's opposition to the invasion of Iraq.

In the presidential campaign, some Swift boat veterans of the Vietnam War have been giving their own curious definition of patriotism by questioning the patriotism of John Kerry, who fought in Vietnam but later spoke out against the war. Somehow they forgot to mention the other candidate, who stayed as far away from that war as possible.

So where does that leave a creaking 74-year-old veteran with 22 years, nine months and 11 days of service? If I disagree with the government on anything, will I still have the right to be honored by a flag.

Maybe when I check out, that sailor could just give my widow a little flag. That would be all right with me because I don't want to be mistaken for one of those who needs big ones and loud bombast to prove something. And whoever does my eulogy could tell my grandkids I was indeed patriotic but I got out of step with conformity now and then.

Keith Taylor is a retired Navy officer living in Chula Vista, Calif. His e-mail address is KRTaylorxyz@aol.com.