Dangerous Patriotism
Madison vs. the Pledge, part II.

By Michael M. Uhlmann, who writes from Milwaukee.
October 17, 2001 9:20 a.m.

he lot of a school-board member in Madison, Wisconsin, these days is not a happy one.

In a gesture demonstrating what can happen when your reading habits run the gamut from The Nation to Mother Jones and back again, the board last week sought to override a state law requiring students to either recite the Pledge of Allegiance or sing the national anthem. School board members in Madison, you see, are different; they take literally, without any sense of the intended irony, Dr. Johnson's remark that "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."

Some kids, after all, may not believe in God, so the Pledge of course had to go. The anthem's sentiments, for their part, were, well, dangerously one-sided and jingoistic — you know, all that stuff about "bombs bursting in air" and "conquer[ing]... when our cause is just" might convey the wrong lessons about September 11. Indeed, the statutory requirement, taken whole, was little more than an un-American exercise in coercive patriotism. And never mind that the statute itself specifically stated that children would not have to participate if they or their parents declined. We know not what course others in Wisconsin may take, said the school board patriots, but as for us, we will comply with state law only insofar as allowing the lil' darlins to endure an instrumental version of the national anthem. Allowing them to sing the actual words, after all, might prompt inappropriate thoughts.

So much for freedom of speech in Madison. Having done their duty, by way of protecting the dissenting consciences of the young, board members retired to their beds on October 8 with dreams of ACLU awards dancing in their heads. Then all hell broke loose. Within hours, the school system was inundated with hostile calls and e-mails, rising to some 20,000 by week's end. Virtually every elected official in the state from governor to dogcatcher (other than the board members themselves) joined in the critical chorus. Mumbling about being misunderstood and indicating a willingness to reconsider, the board scheduled an emergency session for October 15.

Chalk one up for reality therapy. More than a thousand citizens came to Monday's meeting, which had to be re-sited to a local high-school auditorium to accommodate the overflow crowd. The session began even before it was gaveled into order, when the audience rose in a spontaneous recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by much flag-waving, huzzahs, and occasional heckling of board supporters. This prompted board member Bill Keys, author of last week's gag rule, to protest that the adults present only confirmed his fears that schoolchildren would be "pressured" to behave patriotically. He was concerned, he said, with "litmus tests and artificial displays of patriotism."

Eight hours and 165 speakers later, the Keys gag rule dropped into the dustbin of history. The board voted 6-1 to rescind its earlier prohibition, with Keys the only dissenter. Wisconsin's version of Madisonian enlightenment being what it is, however, the board didn't go down without staging a symbolic fight. Schools may now offer a recitation of the Pledge or a singing of the anthem, as state law requires, but only if preceded by this announcement: "We live in a nation of freedom. Participation in the pledge is voluntary. Whoever wishes to participate may stand, those who do not may sit."

Nothing better captures the disposition of intellectual elites who dictate the fashions of many university towns. At one level, of course, the required announcement is nothing more than an expression of sound constitutional law which the state statute itself explicitly recognized. So considered, very few would disagree with the sentiment. But in the context of the week's events, Madison's new dispensation has precisely the character of a package warning label. The shibboleths of the Sixties are dying, but they die hard: Although the board couldn't quarantine kids against the expression of patriotic sentiment, it nevertheless felt obliged to warn them against its potentially injurious effects. Patriotism, for some, has become a toxic substance.

In the wake of September 11, the reflexive Leftists lullaby themselves to sleep with cheap symbolic victories of just this sort. The rest of America, however, now seems poised to ensure that their nights will be long and restless. Maybe the Madison school board should move to Manhattan to see how the warning-label idea plays there. Failing that, it looks as if the good citizens of Wisconsin will do what has to be done.