I was just a boy in the 1960s. My adolescence wasn’tinfused with the civil rights struggle or the sexual revolution or the VietnamWar, but with their aftermath.
My high school teachers were ex-hippies and Vietnamvets. People who protested the war and people who served as soldiers. I wastaught more about John Lennon than I was about Thomas Jefferson.
Both of my parents were World War II veterans.FDR-era patriots. And I was exactly the age to rebel against them.
It all fit together rather neatly. I could neverstomach the flower-child twaddle of the ’60s crowd and Iwas ready to believe that our flag was just an old piece of cloth and thatpatriotism was just some quaint relic, best left behind us.
It was all about the ideas. I schooled myself in thewritings of Madison and Franklin and Adams and Jefferson. I came to love thosenoble, indestructible ideas. They were ideas, to my young mind, of rebellionand independence, not of idolatry.
But not that piece of old cloth. To me, that stoodfor unthinking patriotism. It meant about as much to me as that insipid peacesign that was everywhere I looked: just another symbol of a generation’ssentimentality, of its narcissistic worship of its own past glories.
Then came that sunny September morning whenairplanes crashed into towers a very few miles from my home and thousands of myneighbors were ruthlessly incinerated — reduced to ash. Now, I draw and writecomic books. One thing my job involves is making up bad guys. Imagining humanvillainy in all its forms. Now the real thing had shown up. The real thingmurdered my neighbors. In my city. In my country. Breathing in that awful,chalky crap that filled up the lungs of every New Yorker, then coughing itright out, not knowing what I was coughing up.
For the first time in my life, I know how it feelsto face an existential menace. They want us to die. All of a sudden I realizewhat my parents were talking about all those years.
Patriotism, I now believe, isn’t somesentimental, old conceit. It’s self- preservation. Ibelieve patriotism is central to a nation’s survival. BenFranklin said it: If we don’t all hang together, we allhang separately. Just like you have to fight to protect your friends andfamily, and you count on them to watch your own back.
So you’ve got to do what you can tohelp your country survive. That’s if you think your countryis worth a damn. Warts and all.
So I’ve gotten ratherfond of that old piece of cloth. Now, when I look at it, I see somethingprecious. I see something perishable.
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About Author: Frank Miller -New York, New York
Frank Miller is a comic book artist whose titlesinclude “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns" and “Sin City" (which heco-directed for the movie). Miller recently announced that he`s working on anew graphic novel in which Batman pits himself against terrorists.
As a child of the 1960s, comic book artist FrankMiller thought patriotism was a sentimental value. After the 9/11 attacks,though, Miller believes patriotism is essential to our national survival.
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