> Not necessarily. As I said yesterday, the anarchists of the WWI era, when
> the IWW lived large and workers were conversant with anarcho-syndicalism,
> frequently spoke on platforms where the Stars & Stripes was prominently
> displayed. Emma Goldman, no anarchist slouch, was photographed making her
> case next to the flag. Many of the anarchists were European immigrants, and
> saw the flag as a symbol of the political freedom that made their agitation
> possible (even in the face of police and state militia violence). They took
> the Bill of Rights seriously, perhaps more seriously than did average
> "patriotic" Americans. H.L. Mencken, the Tory elitist, once housed Goldman
> while she was being chased by the feds, and he spoke of her intelligence and
> devotion to the American ideals that he often found childish and
> mob-oriented.
This all a bunch of bullshit. Emma Goldman wrote a beautiful essay against patriotism. What difference does it make if she appeared on a stage with a flag? That is irrelevant.
> The flag can mean many things, and this is overlooked by one-dimensionalists
> like Chuck0.
Excuse me, but I explained to you yesterday why anarchists don't embrace the flag. Anarchists are opposed to the nation state, nationalism, and patriotism. In case you haven't gotten out much lately, most people associate the American flag with the American state. As it was pointed out yesterday, people aren't flying the flag because they want to show that they support the bill of rights or anything like that.
The Symbols of Anarchy http://www.infoshop.org/faq/append2.html
PATRIOTISM, A MENACE TO LIBERTY http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/goldman/sp000064.html
>Yes, it stands for mass murder and repression, the bombing and
> starvation of innocents, genocide against the natives, etc. But it also
> stands for the Bill of Rights, a document (in concert with the Constitution)
> that came out of the 18th century Enlightenment, which, as any learned
> anarchist knows, contained many of the values that make up anarchism (at
> least my understanding of it).
"Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots,
each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others." -- Emma Goldman
> The flag also stands for jazz, rock n' roll,
> the beauty of baseball and basketball (my two favs), Warner Bros. cartoons,
> silent comedies, film noir, and, apart from the glories of pop culture, it
> also represents an effort at multi-ethnic and multi-cultural coexistence.
That's funny, when I listen to jazz or rock n' roll, I never think about patriotism, the American flag, or even America. I also don't associate film noir or other interesting aspects of pop culture with America(tm). I don't know, it sounds like you've been watching some shallow Ken Burns documentary on "Anarchism." Either that, or you've gotten a one-dimensional Warner Brothers version of it.
> Whenever he is asked what kind of society he'd like to see, Chomsky says
> that what we have is a pretty good start to something better. But it's up to
> us to expand and build on the framework that, perhaps inadvertently, the
> Founders created (elitists to a Dead White Man).
Chomsky is hardly a cheerleader for America. Given what he has documented about the American state's terrorism around the globe, I think he would agree that a good society probably won't develop from the current American system.
BTW, Chomsky also thinks that sports are stupid. I listen to sports radio all the time and I listened to the baseball playoffs last night, but since 9/11 I have to agree with him that sports are stupid. I had to accept this shortly after 9/11 when the *host* of a show on ESPN radio was calling for Afghanistan to be nuked. They only reinforce patriotism and other dysfunctional stuff in society.
I guess I'll stick with the unamerican sports like hockey and soccer.
Chuck0