It's worth adding that in England English people of Pakistani descent who would never fly a British or English flag are happy to fly pakistani flags to celebrate independence from Britain every year--usually with local indigeneous dignitaries participating.

In 2007 I was in Germany on a workcamp. Walking through her streets I noticed a large number of German flags hanging from peoples home fronts, shop windows, buggies etc. For a nation that was so humiliated only 60+ years ago I was happy to a see a sense of national pride creeping in again. Upon returning to London I suddenly noticed the very definite absence of English flags. When football season rolls around they come out in force, but on a general day to day basis there aren't that many, it's a case of find the flag instead of "Wallie". When I got back to work I made a point of hanging lots of little England flags and a few Union Jacks around the place. My boss then had a very stern word with me telling me that the Union Jacks could stay but that I would have to take down all the England flags in case someone thought we were fans of the BNP. Since when did the BNP get copyright on a flag that is revered by all English people most of whom wouldn't vote for the BNP? However the way things are going what with over the top PCness and multiculturalism, London boroughs banning Christmas in case it offends the muslims, etc... I'm not surprised (though I am disheartened) that more and more people are turning to the BNP.

Nobody is more anti-patriotic than the American Left. We have been fortunate enough to have had cowboys in office long enough to keep most "creeping sharia" from happening here, but that is not what the Dems want. They even condone the murder of the last great (Israel-supporting) Democrat by a PLO terrorist by covering up the obvious truth about the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. Reading the NY Times I get the impression that all the journalists are more closely allied with Iran than their motherland, and they are so committed to us losing this war that they can't even admit it when we're winning it, let alone the fact that it was absolutely the right thing to do, that we've decimated and humiliated Al Qaeda, and that the reason why we haven't been attacked in 7 years is because we're fighting Al Qaeda over there. They support the UN when they make resolutions, and then they support them when they seditiously make a concerted effort to never uphold them, and then to vilify our President for having the rocks to uphold the UN's sanctity by following through with the 12 twice-broken resolutions and the 25-year-old charter to create a Kurdistan. And academia is even worse than the press. Professors hate America. Period. There is not a single university in the US where one can learn the truth about the entirely-defensive Crusades, or a history department that will dare mention the 270,000,000 people who have been slaughtered in the name of Islam, or a women's studies department where they teach about the horrors to which women are subjected in the name of Islam in our very own towns. I attend the Department of Linguistics at Indiana University Bloomington, which used to be one of the most respected institutions for the study of linguistics in the world. Now I have to attend class with a bunch of malignantly narcissistic cult members who lack the equivalent of a free-world 9th-grade education, who say things in the classroom like "women are genetically inferior," "blondes are genetically inferior," and "nothing in the Koran conflicts with science," which means that they have never studied science, history, psychology, government, poli sci, ar anything else that children are required to know before matriculating to high school in the free world. EVERYTHING in the Koran conflicts with science: the sun does not set in a muddy puddle, the stars are not arrows being shot at Satan, menstruation is not a disease, sperm is not produced all throughout the male and female body and stored in the kidneys, etc., etc. Nor have they studied genetics, or they would not talk trash about blondes, since they would know that Arabs have 20x the rate of genetic defects and disorders and IQs which are on average 27 points lower than normal (borderline retarded) as the result of the 50-75% rate of consanguinity in the Arab world - see consang.net - from marrying their cousins, half-siblings, and nieces. They haven't taken psychology, or they would recognize that these statements are pure projection based on shame regarding their obvious genetic inferiority and misogyny, which is even more obvious, since women's sexuality makes men weak and stupid, since we can control them by batting our eyelashes, and yet, what two attributes do misogynists attribute to women? Stupidity and weakness. Can I call them on their obvious inferiority without getting in trouble? Of course not! Do they get in trouble for hate speech and sheer idiocy in the classroom? Of course not! Who's correct and has science on her side? The one who gets in trouble for speaking the obvious truth! Kinda defeats the purpose of education, doesn't it? Why? Because professors in America think like a bunch of spoiled rotten 10-year-old Communists who think that freedom should be free, that we should slit our own throats with multiculturalism, throw away the truth (since it has no place in academia), crawl around on all fours with targets on our asses, all the while praising Stalin. They America to be more Communist than any Communist country has ever been, that we should have paid maternity leave, increased tax breaks on behalf of all the dependent parasites who bleed the system and give nothing back, government financed child care, and infinite social services for illegal immigrants. It's nothing short of seditious and they should all be deported to Guantanamo. The head of our department has intentionally ghettoized our institution by admitting several Egyptian students based on 3rd-world academic standards, thereby violating every admissions policy in the book as well as ethics itself, and polluting my learning environment with medieval hostility, hate,and ignorance which has no place in the free world, let alone grad school. Did you know that having an Egyptian PhD does not even approximate an American BA? Higher education ends at 16 in Egypt, so an Egyptian with a BA is the equivalent of an American high school dropout, an Egyptian with an MA the equivalent of an American high school graduate (which is what he admitted in spades), and an Egyptian with a PhD is the equivalent of a college sophomore in the free world. But we're supposed to tolerate hate speech in the classroom, never call them on their intellectual or genetic inferiority, or their complete lack of morals, "religious" obligation to fund terrorism, their support of the 9/11 hijackers, inherent parasitism, Nazism, misogyny, shameless stupidity, etc., etc. It's disgusting. I just had to shame my department, not that I think that they're capable of shame anyway, but it felt right.

The US is different. Immigrants to the US over the last couple of hundred years tended to dump the old flags in the middle of the ocean, so to speak, and fiercely wave the US flag when they got to the US.

Why doesn't Bawer mention the outcome of this so-called "soft jihad"? The regular may 17th parade was hugely soccessful as always. Thousands of kids with parents from all corners of the world took part. As the Mayor had ruled, all flags were allowed. There wre thousands of flags. All of them were norwegian. Every single one. Even those carried by the muslim kids.

Regarding Bill's comment, though, I remember being a kid in Holland (now I live in the US) and having random adults stop me to scold me for wearing a star of David necklace or a kippah (skullcap), saying that it was inconsiderate of me to "remind everyone of the Holocaust" -- or some idiotic nonsense like that. This was before the massive Muslim immigration, but clearly, the idea that national/religious symbols were inappropriate for the public sphere predates the soft jihad. Europe as a whole, I believe, has confused patriotism with nationalism (especially since WWII) leaving many public realms unable to cognitively separate pro-fascism with an earnest love for one's country. Unfortunately, only the older, established communities in Europe (Christians and Jews especially) seem to be help up to this standard for which the new kids on the block are given a free pass. Why, I don't know, but I imagine it's either a) multicultural paranoia, b) fear for one's physical safety or c) class consciousness (the elite want a complete evaporation of national borders, so if you love a nation, then you're obviously a low class redneck -- like the Americans).

Not much remains to be added, the article is excellent and the comments perceptive. We have multiculturalism and tolerance for everything except love of one's own country and of Christian traditions. It comes down to the fact that most of us in the west are not willing to die for our faith or our country. And those who hate us know our weakness. But what to do? What will be the wake up call that works?

In America, some people call a confederate flag racist. I can understand both sides of that argument. But a Dutch or Norwegian Flag? Not any more racist than an Indonesian or Turkish one (remember what happened in East Timor and in Armenia, amoung other places).

Actually here in Bergen (Norway ) the main flag shown on 17 may was the Norwegian flag Also the flags of the countries that host the Sjømannskirken ( the The Norwegian Seamen's Church) meaning nearly all of Europe. But thats an International church and outposts for Norway. Comming originally from The Netherlands its a huge relief to see that it is still possible here , when I wore a tiny Dutch flag on the sleeve of my jacket I was scolded upon as being a racist and a neo nazi. It is time to fight this attitude although looking at the amazing speed the Dutch gov bows for the 900.000 muslims in The Netherlands this fight will never be won.

I'm from Holland and indeed my country seems to be in a process disintegration. The progressive tyrants of the past decades have weakened our minds and hearts to such an extent, that we have started to act like thralls in our own country. ----- Yesterday the Dutch Muslim Broadcast showed a program in which a Dutch and Dutch-Turkish family were to become acquanted with each other. The funny thing is that the Dutch family was obsessively trying to "integrate into the new multicultural society", having moved to a street with only immigrant families, sending their kids to a multi-ethnic (i.e. barren of aboriginals) school. The Turks, on the other hand, constantly emphasized their rejection of integration and the adoption of Dutch values. ----- Although it must be stressed that not all Dutch families are as xenophile and subservient as the one in the program, it is truly difficult not to view role division of submissive Dutch aboriginals and dominant immigrants as the direct result of progressive paradigm, which revolves around the demonization of the indigenous and romanticization of the Other. From this perspective, it is, in fact, obvious that the new division of roles is the forerunner of the total surrender of the supposedly inferior aboriginal values to the new masters' values from abroad.