Re: Nationalism

(I wonder who will read this. I follow this blog via RSS, so I see updates no matter how few and far between. But I'm guessing most visited the site directly or via bookmark and gave up on new content years ago. So enjoy, Brian and Bryant.)

Yup, I saved Brian's post on nationalism... back in May, dang...

In theory
I think people should be free to do what they want as long as they're not hurting each other. There's nothing implicitly disrespectful about wearing a nation's flag, and people should be allowed to be proud of their personal affiliations.

Food for thought:
Should a student be allowed to wear a swastika at school if he's a Neo-Nazi? How about if he's Hindu or Buddhist? Should we ban the wearing of gang colors? What if a new gang comes up for every color of the rainbow? Or if you just really like red? If a rock band is coming to play at the school, should no one be allowed to wear a shirt with any other band on it, for fear of offending the performing guests?

What if a Cambodian student wears the Cambodian flag, not necessarily to oppose or offend anyone, but because there's no school-recognized day for them to celebrate their nationality? It seems imbalanced to begin with that only a select few nationalistic holidays are recognized.

We often don't know the underlying reason for others' behavior, and making assumptions and limiting freedoms is a dangerous path to go down.

In practice
In the real world, I admit I would guess that the flag-wearing was not a coincidence, and I can see why it could be taken in a negative way and might result in animosity or worse. So I see how preventive measures might be justifiable.

In closing
If it's just a handful of guys wearing American flags, and they intend it to be anti-Cinco-de-Mayo, and the only result ends up being that they're exposed as being jerks to the rest of the school, is that a bad thing?