The hosts of Fox & Friends asserted over the weekend that the Confederate flag was being banned in schools because liberals “hate expressions of patriotism.”

Dickson County public schools in Tennessee last week announced that they had banned all flags because some students had been flying Confederate flags on their vehicles.

Dickson County Director of Student Services Steve Sorrells explained that the policy was not an attack on the American flag “because we have a number of ways in which students do learn how to be patriotic and express American pride.”

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But according to the hosts of Fox & Friends, Confederate flag bans across the country had always been an effort to squash patriotic displays.

“This is not about a school district in Tennessee,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson opined on Sunday. “This is a about a long-term trend where the people who run everything — the elites in Washington, New York and L.A. — despise rural America and its culture, suspect anybody that doesn’t live in their cities of being a bigot, and they’re trying to crush that culture by banning its symbols.”

“Not just the Confederate flag, but the American flag,” he continued. “They hate expressions of patriotism. It makes them uncomfortable. Let’s be honest.”

Co-host Anna Kooiman agreed: “Yeah. Americans are feeling guilty about being American for some reason. Or not having patriotism like we used to. Come on, America, let’s wake up before the American flag ends up in a museum!”

According the Carlson, the fact that school systems around the country weren’t banning the rainbow flag was evidence that elites were trying to “crush everyone else.”

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Watch the video below from Fox News’ Fox & Friends, broadcast Aug. 23, 2015.