Dalrymple has a new piece in Standpoint magazine (thanks, Andrew S.) on why he hates the English flag. Not the flag itself, but what he says it has come to represent. The piece is interesting for another reason: he puts a number to the countries he has visited: 80!
The Skeptical Doctor
Dedicated to the work of Theodore Dalrymple
I agree. In Britain, US patriots are caricatured as vulgar jingoists, yet Americans’ deep reverence for (indeed near-idolatry of) the Stars & Stripes has no connotation of drunkenness, swearing, indecent exposure and street violence.
Were a group of young Americans to drape themselves in Old Glory and wander down the Rive Gauche singing The Star Spangled Banner, they might be spat at. Were a group of young Brits to do the same with the flag of St. George and God Save The Queen, they would more likely be feared.