Flags, flags,flags, flags

  I spent a short time in the US recently and while New York and environs wasn’t coming down with Stars n Stripes, it wasn’t short of them either.

We’re talking here, of course, about the American national flag. The head-bangers who invaded the Capitol building in protest against the fact that Biden got more votes than Trump – they carried a rich supply of the American national flag. On UK TV these days, when they’re showing mug-shots of footballers before a Premier League game, they’ve taken to including a small national-flag icon beside each player, so you’ll know where the player in question comes from. And of course we had our own period of fleg hysteria, when it was proposed that the number of times the Union flag should be flown on Belfast City Hall might be a bit less than 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

It’s weird. People who are GAA fans tend to expect the Irish tricolour will be on display at games. When asked if they’d favour a reunited Ireland with a new flag,  the percentage of people in the south prepared to go along with that is sadly small. 

Let me be blunt: what the fork is wrong with people? During the 1960s, anti-war demonstrators burnt the Stars and Stripes, causing US outrage. When the Irish tricolour is devoured by an Eleventh Night bonfires, a lot of people feel very indignant.

Why? In the name of God, why? It may be something that we’ve decided will stand as a symbol for Ireland, but it’s still just a piece of cloth. When eejits go out of their way to burn the flag, they’re literally burning no more than a piece of cloth. Big deal. In the world of really serious stuff, flag burning doesn’t really rate.   

And yet people feel strongly about protecting the symbol of their country,  presumably because they love their country so much.  So here’s a suggestion. How about finding a concrete way to express your love for your country? Act in ways that make it clear to people: this guy really cares about his country.

It’s a sentence we all know, yet most of us have difficulty following through on the advice of John F Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you; bask rather what you can do for your country”. 

If half the energy that was expended defiling national flags or fuming over their destruction –  if even half of that time was spent doing things that showed love of country in action, that benefited the country, we’d have a country full of people, not at each others’ throats over symbols but a country full of people who know the difference between pirouetting on the public stage and doing things that showed love in action.