Patriotism: love of
one’s country.
— Dictionary definition
This seemed like a good
week to think about patriotism, though I have to admit I’ve lived
through many Independence Days without feeling a need to think about
it.
Maybe it was last
month’s vacation in western Pennsylvania, where my own patriotism
grew with the prevailing attitudes: the patriotic holidays, with
flags flying from most (it seems in memory) front porches or stoops,
bicycle spokes decorated with red, white and blue crepe paper, and
the understanding that one places one’s hand over one’s heart when
the flag passes by during the parade.
We said the Pledge of
Allegiance every school morning before classes began, were told
stories about George Washington and the cherry tree, Honest Abe
walking miles to return change to a customer who overpaid at his
store. We learned to sing not just the national anthem, but “America
the Beautiful” and “God Bless America.”
So if someone asked me
if I consider myself patriotic, I’d have said yes, at any time in my
life. Is this true of most Americans today? I started with my
grandchildren, who often help me with columns: “Do you consider
yourself patriotic?”
They were packing for a
camping trip, so the conversation was necessarily short, but I
learned something interesting: my grandson said he didn’t really
consider himself patriotic because he isn’t into politics. Not
surprising that at age 13 he isn’t into politics, but it did startle
me to learn that he sees the word “patriotic” as one that is used in
political debate, an attack on someone whose politics are different.
He’s right, isn’t he:
and this is something new. In some American circles, being
considered “patriotic” would be politically incorrect, in the
category of “Tea Party”, always going on about the Constitution and
the national debt. As a Tea Partier myself, I think some of us might
consider those not concerned about these things unpatriotic: why
would anyone who loved America not support the U.S. Constitution and
fiscal responsibility?
So I rephrased the
question for my grandson, asking if he loves his country. He said
sure, it’s better than most of the countries in the world. I didn’t
ask, but I suspect his love may be contingent on the presence of
national mountains on which he can be free to ski; he looks forward
to a chance to love Switzerland too.
So I moved on to my
granddaughter, who responded that yes, she’s patriotic, because she
reads National Geographic and sees those countries that aren’t as
good as ours, even with its flaws.
If we don’t overthink
the question, they’re right: it was comparisons that drove the early
American settlers, and many generations of immigrants, to leave
other nations to come here. Perhaps the stories, songs and symbolism
aren’t necessary, but just a collection of nostalgia that sustains a
preferable image of America without answering the real question, why
do we love it?
The phrase “American
exceptionalism” is a relatively new one to me: I first noticed it
used by Mitt Romney during his presidential campaign. It takes us
from simple comparison with other countries, many lovely in their
own ways, to imagining a world that without the existence of the
United States would have been overrun by Nazi Germans or Japanese
imperialists in the middle of the last century. This seems so
obvious that it seems odd that anyone objects to the phrase, as
President Obama has with a casually irrelevant observance that other
countries think they are exceptional too.
I asked my questions of
other people I ran into over the weekend. One senior Republican
leader traced his own patriotism to watching the film “Yankee Doodle
Dandy” as a child, and declares himself still patriotic. He didn’t
agree with another friend who said he loves the country but not the
government; my Republican friend says they are the same thing.
Another opinion I heard: “I believe in what our country was, not
what it is.”
I thought about all
this and wonder: unless we really do just love the real estate,
America the Beautiful with its mountains for skiing as well as other
natural resources that feed our independent economy, the country is
the people who choose its leaders, who drive its destiny.
Barack Obama didn’t
seem to grow up with the stories, songs and symbolism I grew up
with. He’s doing everything he’s decided is in his power to change
America for the worse. If I don’t like his vision of America, does
that make me unpatriotic?
As I was writing this,
trying to figure out if I’m still patriotic, I heard about “America”
a new film by Dinesh D’Sousa, opening this week, which imagines a
world in which America never existed. My first thought is that our
continent would be just a larger Canada, with Mexico extended into
the southwest and west. Have the Germans and Japanese divided it
between them? The land itself is still there, the “beautiful for
spacious skies, the amber waves of grain, the purple mountain
majesties”: do we love it even without its freedom?
Time out now to
remember America as it was just seven years ago, and hang the flag
on the porch. Wishing you a Happy Independence Day.
