“I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
James Baldwin
“Patriotism” posits love for and devotion to one’s country as ideal manifestations of citizenship. For many, nationalistic reverence and ritual constitute necessary expressions of this fealty. But is patriotism more than that? Is it more than pledging allegiance, waving the flag, and singing the national anthem?
Reverence and ritual have their place. The recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance; the raising of the stars and stripes; the singing of The Star-Spangled Banner: These American-as-apple-pie demonstrations of patriotism evoke a congregational, collective consciousness about our nation, if only for the duration of the verse recited, the unfurling and display of the banner, and the lyrics sung. But what of the spirit and idealism that underlay these time-worn tributes?
Symbols matter, but even more so, substance. After all, we recite the pledge, salute the flag, and rise to sing the national anthem because of that for which they stand: freedom, liberty, justice, and other vaunted ideals. For example, we pledge, salute, and sing in tribute to the five freedoms our First Amendment protects: speech, religion, press, assembly, and the right to petition the government. Our symbolic acts honor the country that affords us extraordinary freedoms and remind us of the foundational elements that bind us together as a nation.
A citizen’s highest calling is safeguarding the precepts and principles embodied in the United States Constitution. How might we elevate citizenship in ways that inform what it means to be a patriotic American?
Rote aspects of patriotism come easily. The difficulty lies in moments when there is no song to sing, no flag to salute, and no crowd to follow, or when robotic acts of patriotism belie the very precepts and principles they are designed to bring to life. How do we behave in the often trying, unregulated moments of our ordinary lives?
A deeper level of patriotism and a higher order of citizenship require moving from saying to doing; offering up something of value like time, talent, treasure, or even our very lives, in service to our country. Many do just that.
Soldiers offer up their lives for our country. They serve and sacrifice not for the symbols we honor, but rather for the substance beneath those symbols.
Private citizens and public servants lay personal reputation, economic well-being, and, on occasion, their lives, on the line to hold our country true to its ideals. They question authority. They raise the eyebrows and ire of those who see themselves as arbiters of what passes as a “real American.” They sometimes behave in counterintuitive ways, declining surface patriotism as a form of protest highlighting systemic failures to live up to our aspirations as a nation.
Our civil rights era leaders, icons and acolytes alike, defined what it means to be American patriots. They gambled everything on the premise and promise that this country would, over time, move closer to its Constitutional ideals. They sometimes refused to engage in “show patriotism,” opting instead to live and move and have their being in ways that emphasized substantive patriotism. They loved their country so much as to intervene on its behalf as it repeatedly failed to live up to its own aspirations.
The struggle for civil rights moved to new frontiers. Modern-day LGBT advocates and allies engage in a similarly patriotic struggle for full and meaningful participation in American society, nudging us ever closer to the practice of what we profess.
Journalists exhibit this deep patriotism when they dig deep, uncovering and sharing sometimes inconvenient and uncomfortable truths with the American people. These truth-tellers, sometimes derided as muckrakers, cast both light and heat on individuals and institutions that suppress our nation’s promises and possibilities.
Superficial patriotism must not become the coin of the realm. We are best when we demonstrate patriotism by engaging civically—when we take the time to know about community issues, vote, engage productively with fellow citizens, and hold public officials accountable for their words and actions.
Patriotism in action requires seeing oneself as one of many stewards of a nation constantly moving toward a more ideal state. And it requires acting accordingly.
