The Times That Try Men’s Souls

By Noel Bagwell
November 17, 2008

Obama’s election brings out the sunshine patriots.

The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., has an interesting little piece titled “Winds of Patriotism Renewed”:

Ronnie Chapman has hidden away his American flag for much of the past eight years. “I felt it was no longer a symbol of the country I love, but of Bush and support for his war,” said the 48-year-old pharmacist from Cary. “The first thing I did the morning after the election was take it from my den and fly it proudly in front of my house.”

Chapman’s response to the presidential election reflects the emergence of an unusual–and some might say contradictory–new figure: the flag-waving liberal.

After a divisive presidency and strident campaign in which patriotism was used as a wedge issue, supporters of President-elect Barack Obama are hanging flags, donning Old Glory lapel pins and humming the national anthem.

“We just feel this pride and this swelling of joy,” said Cheryl Kimmel, 49, of Cary, who worked on Obama’s campaign with her 18-year-old daughter, Jeanelle Alexander. “We’re extremely proud to be Americans today.”

“For years it’s felt like patriotism was a Republican thing,” said Raven Moeslinger, 21, a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill. “Now I feel like we’ve reclaimed it.”

“The night after the election, I got in bed and started reading the Declaration of Independence for the first time in a long time,” said Sherry Harmon, 55, of Cary. “I felt I needed to touch base with our roots because I think we need to refresh our ideas of who we are as Americans.”

The paper notes that some Republicans see the flag-waving Democrats “as sunshine patriots, stirred more by partisan victory than love of country.” Don’t they have a point?

For the past eight years (and longer) we have heard from those on the liberal left that there is no inconsistency between loving your country and disagreeing strongly with the policies of its government. That is true. The country is bigger than the party in power; you can love the former while despising the latter. That does not seem to be the way the people in the N&O story feel, though. Their love for America is conditional upon their party being in power.

Of course, maybe this is a bipartisan phenomenon. If so, there must’ve been stories in 2000 (or 1980, or 1968–heck, we’ll even take 1952!) about Republicans or conservatives who, on their party’s return to the White House, suddenly started flying the flag or otherwise expressing love for their country for the first time in years.

See this article in its original context here.