Flag schmag.

In response to a student's insistence that we must salute the flag to evince our patriotism:

Has anyone ever figured out calmly what effect the flag drills, patriotic pageants, and other such maudlin buffooneries, now raging everywhere in the federal union, will proabably have upon the rising generation? Go look at one of these exhibitions if you are in doubt...If this is a good way to inculcate love of country, then a good way to inculcate a love of aquatic sports would be to play upon the kids with a fire hose. It is, in fact, precisely the best way imaginable to make patriotism loathsome. The young emerge from their banal gestures and recitations with a firm conviction, probably never to be broken in after life, that venerating the flag is an operation not distinguishable from learning the multiplacation table, taking castor oil, or getting washed behind the ears.

-- H.L. Mencken, "The Psychic Follies," November 7, 1926.