The Russians are Coming! the Russians are Coming!: Pageantry and Patriotism in Cold War America - Tapa dura

At a time when Americans dedicate their national holidays to barbecues, sporting events, and driving on crowded interstate highways to vacation homes and theme parks, it may be difficult to remember an era when patriotic observance was a matter of high seriousness and legislated pageantry. After summarizing such patriotic developments as the sanctification of the American flag and the wide - and occasionally coercive - acceptance of the Pledge of Allegiance, this text describes how the Ad Council, the American Heritage Foundation, and other organizations created "campaigns to sell America to the Americans" through carefully constructed "rededication" celebrations like "Know Your America Weeks", "Freedom Weeks", and travelling exhibitions such as the "Freedom Train", which in the late 1940s brought original copies of seminal American documents directly to cities and towns across the country.