Symbols pro and con

This mildly amusing cartoon, posted at Maggie's Farm, made me wonder whether the distinguishing factor is whether someone objects more to spurning an ideological symbol or to venerating it.

I, too, would resist being required to venerate a symbol I objected to.  To the extent that someone feels he is being pressured to express a political or religious view not his own, I have considerable sympathy for a discreet refusal.  Opening ceremonies at my public grade school included both the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord's Prayer; I cheerfully said the Pledge, without ever giving it much thought, but stood silently through the prayer.  I can't imagine what the school would have had to do to force me to join in the prayer.  Nevertheless, it didn't occur to me to raise a furious fist, spit on the floor, or go stand in the corner.  If I had tried any such thing, my parents wouldn't have backed me up, even though my father despised religion pretty openly.  Your religious views are your own, he'd have said, but that doesn't mean you get to insult your neighbors.  Don't make public theater out of your resentments unless you're serious about starting a fight, and then don't whine about the results of the fight.

By the same token, if I see someone making an obeisance to a Che banner, or a Communist flag, or a Satanic ritual, I'm not going to shoot them to make them quit, though I do reserve the right to separate myself from them socially, refuse to patronize their store, buy their books,  watch their TV shows, root for their sports victories, and so on.  They are free to do the same to me if they don't enjoy watching me put my hand over my heart when the Stars and Stripes are being honored.

My sense of the Progressive flashpoints lately is that they instinctively side with someone who breaks ranks and refuses to solemnize a traditional piety.  It's understood that such a stance signals a courageous refusal to go along with fascist orthodoxy.  They're also primed to feel threatened when someone venerates nearly any symbol; even if the symbol was innocuous yesterday, the whole fun is in being among the first to discover a lurking impurity.  Maybe the stitching on the flag was performed in an Asian sweatshop; maybe a past adherent of the creed once owned a slave or attended a church that wouldn't ordain women or gays.  It's so much fun to notice the clay feet of any idol that they've lost sight of what used to be an ordinary reaction to the desecration of a beloved symbol.  I'm trying now to think of Progressive protests over the desecration of one of their own sacred cows.  When such a thing happens, it tends not to take the form of an attitude to a physical icon.  The problem usually consists of symbolic action, like refusing to bake a cake.