Re[Bavarian triumphalism

[Marie A. Failinger]

As it happens, one of my students just wrote a paper on whether one can
compare attempts to ban the Stars and Bars in government settings with the
ban of Nazi symbols.  As she pointed out, there are not only historical
and cultural differences, but also textual ones (with the German
constitution, which stresses human dignity/respect where ours might stress
freedom/rights).  Nevertheless, to emphasize the profound differences does
not defeat the possibility of cultural comparison--i.e., in this context,
to ask why a defeated culture might want to hold on to its cultural
symbols, in the case of Bavaria, a culture that might perceive religion to
be defeated in modern Europe rather than politics.

 On Wed, 20 Aug 1997, Michael McConnell wrote:

> In connection with the Bavarian crucifix case, Sandy
> Levinson asks:
> >
> > Does everyone on this list agree that this would be (and ought to
> > be) an easy case in the US, i.e., that the state most certainly could
> > not display a crucifix in a public school.
>
> This strikes me as an un-Levinsonian question. What does he
> mean by it? Does he mean to ask whether the same result
> would obtain if there were a region of the U.S. with a
> 1,000 year tradition that would be disrupted, or if the
> U.S. had never adopted a constitutional amendment
> disestablishing religion at the state level? Isn't this
> like asking whether it would be an "easy case" for Bavaria
> to remove the Stars and Bars from flying over the lander
> capitol? Can issues of this sort be ripped from their
> cultural context?
> -- Michael McConnell (U of Utah)
>


Marie A. Failinger
Hamline University School of Law
mfailing at piper.hamline.edu