Much as I may think it best for the nation for the Democrats to take Congress, I don’t think I could vote for New York Democratic congressional candidate socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier. But that doesn’t mean she won’t win her seat, no matter what I think of her. And if she does, despite what I think of her, she will become a representative because that’s how democracy works. Republican Tennessee representative Tim Burchett doesn’t agree.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) plans to try to block Democratic nominee and New York socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier from taking her seat in Congress if she wins the Nov. 3 election — over her saying she used the American flag as a napkin.

Burchett told The Post he intends to make the unusual parliamentary move when the new Congress convenes in January — using a simple majority to prevent newly elected lawmakers from being seated before they take the oath of office.

“You take an oath to uphold the Constitution, and and you’re pretty much disavowing it right there. I just think we’ve lost our compass,” he said in an interview.

Every federal elected official takes an oath to uphold the Constitution, including the president who swears “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” How’s that working out?

But Burchett;s “pretty much disavowing” the Constitution takes things to a very different place. Like Burchett, I find it offensive that Chevalier used the American flag as a napkin. Then again, I find it offensive that Pete Hegseth uses the American flag as a pocket square, and others use it as articles of clothing from bikini to underwear. I will defend their right to do so as a means of expressing their views.

I’m not nearly as inclined to do so when it’s merely a fashion statement, or worse, a farce to pretend their patriotic when they don the flag and then behave in a manner that flies in the face of the Constitution. No, you are not a patriot because you stuff a flag in your pocket while engaging in unAmerican activity. The flag is merely a symbol, while the Constitution is substance. IF forced to choose, I choose substance over symbolism.

But Burchett’s argument is that when someone who gets elected to be member of the House of Representatives doesn’t behave in the way he wants them to, he’s not only entitled to feel that they’re not acting like his kind of Americans, but that they’ve crossed a line that empowers him to be far more unAmerican than they are.

“I’m looking at a 48-star flag that hung on my uncle’s casket and [he] died fighting the Nazis, and then see somebody going to get elected to Congress in New York who said they use that flag for a napkin,” he said.

“I thought, man, that same dadgum flag hung on my uncle’s casket. It’s the same flag that that men and women fought and died for to free the slaves, and that’s what they’re using as a napkin.

“If we vote to seat them, is one Democrat going to say no? I’m not going to vote to seat those people. Are they gonna say anything? Democrats died for this country as well as Republicans did.”

I keep folded flag in my home that was once laid over my father’s casket. My father, too, fought the Nazis in World War II. So did my grandfather in World War I. They fought against Nazism and for democracy. One of the most important, and valued, aspects of a democracy is that we elect people to office, and they take office without having to shed blood.

The peaceful transfer of power may be the most significant piece the United States of America experiment. Until January 6, 2021, this was what made America great. Even if you hated the incoming elected official, the People make their choice, vote for whomever they want, whether great person or blithering idiot, and we accept their vote. That’s America.

Small-minded people confuse the trappings with the substance of democracy. We see it in people who wear American flag pins on their lapels as they ignore the Constitution, violate the law, or abuse their authority to prevent democracy from continuing. Burchett has his vision of what patriotism means, which he confuses with abiding the Constitution, and believes that confers authority to elevate form over substance.

The threat by Burchett, who flew with President Trump on Air Force One last week to Tennessee, is an early sign of the intense partisan clashes set to flare at the start of a new Congress, where Democrats are poised to make gains and a cadre of left-wing lawmakers including Chevalier are set to yank the party to the left after winning safe-seat primaries.

Burchett said he would make the motion whether Republicans retain control of the House or become the minority party. “I think the Democrat Party needs to . . . get some guts, and get their rudder back for the working people,” he fumed.

He has a point about the left wing of the Democratic Party, whose rudder appears stuck so far to the left that it veers far from the Constitution that sustained us for 250 years. That said, it doesn’t change the fact that the mechanism by which we choose officials is elections, for better or worse. If Chevalier, or anyone else who gets elected as a Democrat even though they have positioned themselves as a socialist, then the voters have made their choice, as is the American way.

The problem is that the parliamentary procedure of refusing to seat newly elected representatives by a majority vote of the old House is a possibility, and excuses like Burchett, flimsy and self-serving as they may be, may be good enough for the radical right to pretend they are patriots protecting the trappings of America as they deliberately violate the core of the Constitution. They’re not patriots. They don’t love America. They are no better, and perhaps worse, than Chevalier, because they wrap themselves in the flag while they burn the Constitution.