How long can that banner still wave?

In which your errant correspondent hoists the flag briskly, and lowers it, ceremoniously, at sundown.

They say that patriotism is the last refuge
To which a scoundrel clings

—Bob Dylan

If you know me (and let’s face it, if you’re reading this, you probably do), you know I am a huge fan of Bob Dylan and not at all a fan of the United States of America. And yet yesterday I had a sudden and intense urge to hang an American flag.

Wait, what? you say. Well, don’t worry—I didn’t hang a flag outside, in part because it was raining here, and you don’t hang a flag in the rain.¹ (Also: You shine a light on it if you fly it at night. You fold it properly. You don’t let it touch the ground. And you don’t print it on a paper napkin that you use to wipe your mouth and then throw away.) But you see on Thursday I read this statement from Keith Sonderling, who was sworn in that day as director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services—sworn in in the building’s lobby, “accompanied by a team of security and staff from the Department of Government Efficiency, the federal advisory agency led by billionaire Elon Musk.” He then issued a statement:

I am committed to steering this organization in lockstep with this Administration to enhance efficiency and foster innovation. We will revitalize IMLS and restore focus on patriotism, ensuring we preserve our country’s core values, promote American exceptionalism and cultivate love of country in future generations.

—acting IMLS director Keith Sonderling

You know what unpatriotic things the IMLS funds? Well, let me tell you just a few.

• Summer reading programs for children.

• Internet access for libraries in poor and rural areas.

• Scholarships for library school students.

• Books for the blind and visually impaired.

• And, of course, the workforce development and training that Republicans love to tout as the solution to getting everyone off the government dime.

Is there anything, I ask you, more Norman Rockwell than a children’s summer reading program at your public library? Is there an expression of patriotism more profound—aside, perhaps, from the Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima²—than this collage of children from summer reading programs around the country that I picked from a simple Google search?³

Public library summer reading programs, USA

The IMLS has been referred to as “obscure” by some news outlets, and indeed, it is, in the great scheme of the federal government, a tiny agency, with under a hundred employees and a budget of $294 million in FY2024—$266.7 million of which was given away in grants to libraries, museums, and archives. According to figures from the American Alliance of Museums, the IMLS accounts for a whopping 0.0046% of the federal budget.⁴

And yet what they do with that! Maybe you know this, but on average the public library ROI for any given community is about $4 in good to the town for every $1 invested in the library.⁵ Oh, I don’t need to tell you people what libraries mean and what they do. You know that, because you know me, and you read, and you care.

The IMLS is not by far the biggest victim of the Trump administration’s war on American democracy, and it won’t be the last. (The Department of Education was raided the same day, leading IMLS workers on Reddit to despair that the press was all there.) But the idea that they are defunding libraries to “restore the focus on patriotism” is what guts me.

I believe this country was founded by bigots and hypocrites. The “great compromise” I was taught to revere in school was dependent on the idea that some human beings were less than others—2/5 less, to be exact. I grew up after Vietnam, after Watergate, during Reagan. It was a hard time to believe in America.

In the days after 9/11 there were articles about 1960s radicals who were now flying American flags—the same ones who’d once listened to the Phil Ochs song I was playing on repeat at the time:

So do your duty, boys, and join with pride
Serve your country in her suicide
Find the flags so you can wave goodbye
But just before the end even treason might be worth a try
This country is to young to die

—Phil Ochs, “The War is Over”

In 1969, during that particular war, my father spent a few days holding a vigil beneath the American flag at Grinnell College to keep students protesting the Vietnam War from turning it upside down again. I’ve written about that quite extensively (and a few of you reading this were there). My mother told me the story when I was fifteen years old and on my way to a protest against the “first” Gulf War.

“Wow. If I’d been there,” I said, “I probably would have been one of the people trying to turn the flag upside down.”

“You and your father would have disagreed about a lot of things,” she said. “Call me if you need to be bailed out.”

My father, like many men of his generation, tried to serve in World War II. He did not make it through boot camp, but when he died, my mother, as his widow, was offered a headstone, burial in a national cemetery and, I believe, $100. She took the headstone and the money, and at his burial the oldest veteran in Enosburg Falls, Vermont recited “In Flanders Fields,” and my mother was presented with an American flag. It sits, properly folded, in her room to this day. I don’t know if we’ve ever flown it.

I’ve never thought of myself as a patriot, and I decry much of what this country was founded on and what it has perpetuated. But I will be damned if I let them take from me—from all of us—the things that we have, despite all of that, achieved. The Bill of Rights. The 14th Amendment. The 19th Amendment. The Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Environmental Protection Agency. The Americans with Disabilities Act. The National Labor Relations Act. The Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act. Brown v. Board of Education. Gideon v. Wainwright—and, perhaps more importantly, the many, many people’s movements that made so many of those things possible, because power, as we know, concedes nothing without a demand, and we are all stronger together.

The March from Selma to Montgomery, 1965. Photo by Matt Herron.

I did not think that the demise of American democracy would hit me so hard. I did not think I had a patriotic bone—or even a nerve—in my body. But I was wrong. I wrote most of this last night. This morning I woke up thinking of the images of the flag that perhaps best represent what I’m trying to get at: those carried by marchers in the Civil Rights Movement. Accordingly I’m going to give James Baldwin the final word here, with all the hope I have left.

For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.

—James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

1. There is, I have just learned, an exception for an all-weather flag. But my general point stands. I often want ask questions of the residents of a house I pass on occasion that has two American flags—one emblazoned with the text of the 2nd Amendment; the other with the Statue of Liberty and the caption “If you don’t like it here, I’ll help you pack.” I’m unclear on whether and how these meet the letter of the law.

2. Oh wait, I forgot—they tried to remove that, too.

3. Credits, clockwise: Lights! Camera! Read! at the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library; Reading is a Thrill from the Oak Park Public Library; a summer reading presentation on water safety from the Drowning Prevention Coalition of Palm Beach County; 2023 Dr. Seuss Summer Reading Program in Galveston County, Maryland; and the 2013 Library Summer Reading Program at the U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys, South Korea. (I don’t have certain information that U.S. Army garrisons receive IMLS grants, but they definitely depend on public funding.)

4. For the best coverage I’ve found, see this excellent overview from USA Today. Yes, really, USA Today.

5. Here’s one extensive presentation from Texas. Search for “library ROI calculator” and you can probably find one near you.