An Unpatriotic American

I don't ever recall labeling any leftie I disagree with, "unpatriotic" no matter how often their paranoid oversensitive conscience tells them that their "patriotism is under attack". But after reading Howard Zinn's "Put away the flag", how can any American- from the left or right- read that piece of misguided rubbish and not think "unpatriotic" perfectly defines it? After all, how can one be a patriot by calling for the dissolution of boundaries and all concept of nationalism and sovereign identity? How is his op-ed not "un-American"? Does the simple act of exercising one's freedom of speech qualify one as being a patriotic American?

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.

Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours -- huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction -- what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.

If that's not enough bit of self-hatred, please convince me on how the following bit of "intellectual thinking" is "supporting our troops":

We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.

Yet they are victims, too, of our government's lies.

And those on the left wonder why they are constantly stigmatized and baggaged with labels like "un-American", "unpatriotic", and accused of "not supporting the troops"?