Cancel the parade; hide the flags

Hide the flags, cancel the parade, stop the fireworks -- unless you want your kids to grow up to be Republicans.

Harvard Kennedy School of Government has reported a study by academic researchers Adreas Madestam (Milan, Italy) and David Yanagizama-Drott (Harvard Kennedy School), whose title is: "Shaping the Nation: Estimating the Impact of Fourth of July Using a Natural Experiment."

Great credentials, but hard-to-believe conclusions:

• Fourth of July celebrations have a significant impact upon people’s political preferences;

• Attending one Fourth of July before age 18 increases the likelihood of identifying as a Republican by at least 2 percent and voting for the Republican candidate by 4 percent. It also increases voter turnout by 0.9 percent and boosts political campaign contributions by 3 percent.

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/dyanagi/Research/FourthOfJuly.pdf

This sounds like a really dumb conclusion to me -- there are so many other factors to consider in what shapes political sensibilities.

But these are serious academic researchers who think they've found a unique and easily measurable variable -- how often it rained on July 4th where you lived as a child. Just check the weather reports archives for the data.

Unlike all other holiday celebrations, July 4th festivities are always outdoors. Ergo, the more times it rained on July 4th where you lived, the fewer parades, etc. you would have attended. And since it rains on the Dem families as well as the Repubs, it cancels out the family factor in the equation.

But does it? They think it does. I vehemently don't. If it rains and the parade is cancelled, both Dem and Repub families stay home, so kids from both homes are affected equally as to number of parades attended.

But you're still left with who attends more, or is influenced more, when the sun shines and the parade goes on. Or am I missing something? Maybe it's a larger scale thing: areas of the country where it rains a lot might be more Dem, while arid regions more Repub? Think Seattle vs Tucson. But then you have the larger Hispanic populations in the Southwest, and they tend to vote Dem. See, it's still more complex than rain days, IMHO.

It seems to me that it comes down to whether there is any differential between Dem families and Repub families in choosing to participate in patriotic activities, as well as all kinds of factors that influence whether you genuinely whoop it up at the parade, or sit there disdaining the whole thing as hokey. Both are attending; one builds it up, the other tears it down. The kids notice.

I'd be willing to predict that having attended Woodstock correlates with being a Democrat (or an anarchist, non-voter) later in life. Not because of anything that happened at Woodstock but because of the self-selection in who chose to go. If Woodstock had been rained out, those who would have gone would still become Dems or non-voters; those who would not have gone would still become Republicans (by a statistical margin, of course, which is what they're saying, too).

My father's family had a big family reunion and barbecue every 4th of July at my uncle's farm. A pit would be dug in the ground and filled with coals for the all-night, slow cooking of the pig and goat, and the men and older boys stayed up all night to supervise. It was a time of male bonding. The next day it was the women's turn to show off their cooking skills and burnish reputations for the best this or that dish. I still drool at the memory of Aunt Easter's angel food cake (super-moist, super-sweet; the closest thing I've ever tasted was the Spanish tres leches cake).

The reunion was an all-day affair, with much talk of our country and the sacrifice of the uncles were away fighting in World War II, one severely wounded in battle. Before we could eat, even before the blessing, we all stood and recited the Pledge of Allegiance, hands over hearts and facing the American flag flying from the flagpole in the yard. In the evening, we had fireworks: sparklers and Roman candles, and hand-held "firecrackers" that you had to light and throw fast so as not to have them explode in your hand.

As a child, I saved aluminum foil from chewing gum wrappers and from cigarette packages I found discarded on the sidewalk; peeled them off the paper backing and crushed them into my ever-growing ball of aluminum foil, to be contributed to the war effort; and I bought a 25 cent savings stamp every week with my allowance, pasted them into a booklet to exchange for a $25 war bond when it got full.

There was no shortage of patriotism in my family. "The Fourth" was second only to Christmas as a highlight of the year. And it unquestionably was all about patriotism and how great our country was, and fighting to save the world for democracy -- with God on our side, of course.

The Roughton Family was about as patriotic and as Democratic as you can get. Uncle Harvey was a state legislator, and my father was mayor of the town during World War II. Democrats, of course. The South was solidly Democratic during my growing up years -- for a long time, I puzzled over what the "general election" was. I thought we had already had "the election" when the Democratic primary was over. There was no Republican primary.

And yet I can't recall that it ever rained on the 4th. At most, a passing shower that didn't dampen the patriotic spirit in the least. That was then. Now I have a few cousins and nephews who have turned Republican. But that has nothing to do with rain and everything to do with changing social mores in the South.

The civil rights struggled flipped the Solid South to the Republican camp. But that was all about the Dems' support for racial equality, so people switched parties in droves, local politicians leading the run. Rain had nothing to do with it.

I admit that my mind glazes over when I read such research reports, and I get lost in the statistics. So I could be missing something. But, for now, anyway, my common sense about this study, even if it is from Harvard, permits only one comment:

"Bah, humbug !!!" And, for good measure, I'll add: "Balderdash !!!"

Ralph