Patriotism for All of Us
All people are created equal. We have unalienable rights. Just government is based on the consent of the governed.
Pretty good, huh?
These three ideas, declared by the founders 250 years ago today, changed our lives and the world for the better. It’s why we celebrate this day and why (if we do) we love our country.
But a specter is haunting American patriotism -- the specter of political polarization. Rather than celebrating our love of country in a way that draws us together, we have sadly devised two patriotisms -- one for each half of the country, with each patriotism repugnant to the other and with no shared foundations.
Revering our past
One of these patriotisms mainly looks back in gratitude. To comprehend it, consider these words from “America the Beautiful,” one of our most beloved national anthems, by Katharine Lee Bates:
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
In this patriotism, I love America for what she has been and stood for. I revere what the founders accomplished and what so many have fought and died for. My love draws strength from our lived experiences together and a shared past -- what Lincoln called our “mystic chords of memory” -- and from the ways in which America from the beginning has been a force for good and a beacon of freedom in the world.
Summoning our future
The other patriotism mainly looks forward in determination. To comprehend it, consider these words from “Let America Be America Again,” by the great African-American poet Langston Hughes:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
In this patriotism, I love America for what she might become. I believe, despite some evidence that I shouldn’t, in America’s possibility. Although America as I see her has never lived up to her principles -- as Frederick Douglass asked in 1852, “What to the slave in the Fourth of July?” -- my pledge to America is that one day she will. I believe with a patriot’s fervor in the future realization of what can now only dimly be seen.
Patriotism for all of us
The great temptation today, a danger on this Fourth of July, is to view these two sides of American patriotism as hostile to one another. Such a view is deeply misguided.
Why? Because each side, when viewed as alien from the other, is a cramped, distorted patriotism. And each side can rightly accuse the other of misunderstanding the land we love.
Surely we can do better than this.
Can’t we, in civic love, look forward, as many progressives do, and back, as many conservatives do?
Can’t we revere our achievements and recognize where we’ve fallen short?
Can’t we honor the profound work of America and face up to what Lincoln -- who said that he “never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence” -- called at Gettysburg America’s “unfinished work”?
We can. And surely this unification is the truest and most-needed form of American love of country.
The two chief qualities of American patriotism are thankfulness and aspiration, and they stand best when they stand together.
Happy Fourth of July!
A slightly adapted version of this essay appears in today’s Deseret News.