PATRIOTIC MEASURES ARE MORE THAN JUST FLAG WAVING
Scott R. Jensen, Assembly Speaker

Every time I introduce legislation to require that the American Flag be displayed in our public school classrooms and that the Pledge of Allegiance or the National Anthem be offered daily, the measures are belittled by many pundits. The cycle has repeated itself again this year with the inclusion of the Pledge measure in the state budget.

It is trendy among the cultural elite to mock our patriotic traditions and the lawmakers who promote them. However, I believe that we ignore these traditions at considerable risk. Our nation is unique. Unlike other nations, citizenship in the United States is not based on ethnic or geographic factors. In the United States, patriotism isn't allegiance to people of the same skin color or same bloodline. In the United States, patriotism is allegiance to an idea and a set of principles of government. As such, we have a unique responsibility in this nation to inculcate a knowledge, love and respect of those ideas in our youth.

Our nation has spent much of the last several years celebrating the "Greatest Generation." Unfortunately, less time has been spent pondering how that generation was created. They were taught at an early age to honor their country in a way today's academics and pundits would quickly deride. That generation, immersed from an early age in the traditions as well as the principles of our nation, made tremendous sacrifices – in many cases the ultimate sacrifice – fighting for the ideas America stands for. Simply put, they were willing to die fighting for their country because they believed our traditions, our principles, our values were right and those of the Axis powers were horribly wrong.

Today, our schools and our society go to great lengths to preach diversity and to claim that all cultures and nations are morally equal. A natural outgrowth of this trend is that patriotism is devalued and patriotic traditions like the Pledge, the flag, our military and our history are belittled. Today's elites constantly tell our children that our society, our country, our ideals are not objectively superior to those of other cultures.

These disturbing trends make me worry about the fallout of this thoroughly modern philosophy? Would the Greatest Generation have stormed the beaches at Normandy if they had thought the Third Reich was merely an alternative socio-economic model? Would they have fought and died in wars, hot and cold, to defeat communism if they believed that we really have no right to judge any other culture's decisions or traditions?

Throughout American history, an essential lesson has been repeated with each generation. Men suffered through the winter at Valley Forge because they believed in the American idea of liberty. Wave upon wave of Union soldiers marched to their death up Maryes Heights because they believed this country, this union, was an idea worthy of the sacrifice.

Our nation was not founded by men and women who believed that they were pursuing a morally neutral set of opinions. It was founded by men and women who declared, "We hold these truths to be self-evident." Only for such self-evident, objective, and absolute truths were they willing to pledge their lives their fortunes and their sacred honor.

Some of us still believe in those self-evident truths. We still believe in the objective superiority of our nation and its values. And like Washington, Jefferson, Adams and the rest, we believe we will only have the strength and courage to defend these American values if we are taught to cherish them from our youngest days. It is my hope that small steps like this ones recently signed into law in the budget can start us on the long road back to a nation where patriotism is not mocked, where our schools are not incubators for "summer soldiers and springtime patriots," and where America's "greatest generation" is a generation yet to come.