Mark Twain on the Treason of Saluting the Flag

[LiberalFighter]

The reference to the Superintendent of Public Instruction was inspired by Charles R. Skinner, the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of New York. On April 22, 1898, just two days before the Spanish-American War began, the New York State legislature passed a law "to provide for the display of the United States flag on the schoolhouses of the State ... and to encourage patriotic exercises in such schools." The law required that flags be bought and displayed at the schools, and instructed the Superintendent of Public Instruction to develop "a program providing for a salute to the flag at the opening of each day of school and such other patriotic exercises as may be deemed by him to be expedient." Skinner carried out this charge by developing a Manual of Patriotism for Use in the Public Schools of the State of New York. Published in 1900, it was immediately controversial. Describing the holiday exercises promoted in the book as "flag-fetishism," The Nation commented that "Lowell and Lincoln were never told to rejoice in the flag's 'pleasant face,' and were good patriots withal. Has the State Board really found a more excellent way? Reading drivel to children and making them sing doggerel can hardly have any effect except to vulgarize them." Reviewing the book in February 1901 after a similar law was proposed in Illinois, the Washington Post commented that "the Empire State should be permitted to have a monopoly of that kind of common school instruction."

Source: Mark Twain on the Treason of Saluting the Flag

[rabid_nerd]

1. It's all Skinner's fault

Damn you Skinner!

[LiberalFighter]

2. I think I finally found the source of the "My country always..." quote

There are twenty-five million families in Russia. There is a man-child at every mother's knee. If these were twenty-five million patriotic mothers, they would teach these man-children daily, saying: "Remember this, take it to heart, live by it, die for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete; that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it." With twenty-five million taught and trained patriots in the land a generation from now, my successor would think twice before he would butcher a thousand helpless poor petitioners humbly begging for his kindness and justice, as I did the other day.

The Czars Soliloquy
By Mark Twain
North American Review 180 (March 1905)

[immoderate]

3. More Twain--sounds familiar (from above link)

On "my country right or wrong," Twain:

I pray you to pause and consider. Against our traditions we are now entering upon an unjust and trivial war, a war against a helpless people, and for a base object -- robbery. At first our citizens spoke out against this thing, by an impulse natural to their training. To-day they have turned, and their voice is the other way. What caused the change? Merely a politician's trick -- a high-sounding phrase, a blood-stirring phrase which turned their uncritical heads: Our Country, right or wrong! An empty phrase, a silly phrase. It was shouted by every newspaper, it was thundered from the pulpit, the Superintendent of Public Instruction placarded it in every school-house in the land, the War Department inscribed it upon the flag. And every man who failed to shout it or who was silent, was proclaimed a traitor -- none but those others were patriots. To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, "Our Country, right or wrong," and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?

I just love this guy.

--IMM