Politics & Power Quote by Dennis Farina

Patriotism, in Dennis Farina's hands, gets yanked out of the flag-waving pageant and dropped into the break room. "Carrying the American banner" is the lofty role Hollywood loves to cast: the actor as national symbol, the celebrity as morale officer, the public figure as walking civics lesson. Farina undercuts that with a shrugging pivot: forget the banner; do what's right for the kids. It's a deflationary move that feels true to his screen persona and to his real-life biography as a former Chicago cop turned late-blooming actor - a guy whose authority reads as earned, not performed.

The specific intent is almost anti-rhetorical: to reject the pressure of representing America as an abstract idea and replace it with a concrete moral task. That substitution is the whole trick. "The kids" is a disarming phrase because it dodges ideology; it's hard to argue with, and Farina knows it. The subtext is a critique of performative patriotism: being seen "carrying the banner" is optics, while doing right by children is outcome. It also quietly reframes citizenship as caretaking rather than chest-thumping, a civic ethic that doesn't require a podium.

Contextually, it lands in a culture that loves to conscript actors into national narratives - especially around crime dramas, war stories, and post-9/11 rhetoric - then punish them when they misstep. Farina's line offers a way out: measure the country by how it treats its most vulnerable, not by how loudly it declares itself.