BrianGarst.com

So lots of folks are talking about this story out of Florida:

An American flag with President Obama’s image in place of the stars flew over a Florida county’s Democrat headquarters long enough to enrage local veterans who called the altered banner “a disgrace.”

Lake County Democratic Party officials took down the flag, which flew just below a standard Old Glory on the flagpole outside headquarters in Tavares following complaints by local veterans. But merely taking it down wasn’t enough for several local veterans, who said they fought for the flag Betsy Ross made famous, not one with a politician on it.

“It’s absolutely disrespectful,” Jim Bradford, a 71-year-old veteran who participated in the Bay of Pigs Invasion told FoxNews.com. “It’s totally ridiculous. To put somebody’s picture there, to me, it’s a disgrace to do that.”

Nor is this necessarily the first time, but it is probably the most blatantly disrespectful.

This strikes me as a similar sort of political idolatry typical in dictatorships, albeit not as intense. Whether it be Saddam’s Iraq, Chavez’s Venezuala, Kim’s North Korea, or countless other contemporary and historical examples, folks living in a tyrannical society typically cannot escape the visage of their beloved leaders. This is not to say that Obama is or will be a dictator, but the parallels raise interesting questions.

The practice seems particularly common among leftwing dictatorships, though not exclusively so, whether they be communist or populist. Still, I wonder why this is and have come up with an hypothesis of sorts.

A common trait among most leftwing ideologies is a rejection of individualism for collective identity. The self is not the most important identity, the community is and it is typically represented by the state. But while the state may be the most important identity, they are hard to identify with at an emotional level. Enter the charismatic leader.

The leader provides a human face to represent the state, itself representing the community. The people can then emotionally adopt the leader as identity, since they have none of their own. This is why these leaders are capable of being so intensely loved by many while also being so cruel. Once you’ve made that emotional investment, the leader becomes unquestionable.

It is disturbing to see any folks, however many they may be, look at Obama in this light. He is not the state, and the state is not, or ought not be, our identity. We are free individuals.

political philosophy