Carole Levine September 17, 2024
After driving from Chicago to California (with some stops in between), I am puzzling about a question that kept coming back to me. That question – “Who is a patriot in this day and age, and why does this conjure up negative stereotypes?” – is on my mind. Driving through what are considered “red” states I noted a plethora of American flags and signs that noted a kind of in-your-face patriotic messaging. In the midst of all of this red, white and blue were Trump 2024 signs and flags. It seemed like the flag and its symbolic colors had been co-opted by one political party. The GOP seemed to own what I had considered to be patriotic. And they were not shy about displaying this.
The I do not question the devotion and love for our nation of those with whom I politically disagree. I do think we express that love differently. But that does not make me, or them less patriotic. It might even give us some common ground and a starting place to hash out our disagreements. It also makes me want to push us all to see ourselves as patriots.
I am an admitted “leftist liberal.” It has never been my style to flaunt my politics, but I have put political yard signs in my yard during elections and I still wear a small coat hanger on my necklace to symbolize what might be women’s fate if we lose reproductive choice. I work on what are for me, key issues like judicial integrity, women’s rights and more. I admit to being an issue activist. But I am not often involved in individual campaigns to elect people to office. I do, always, vote in every election (and my children know I expect the same from them!) and almost never skip anything that is on the ballot.
Why, then, am I so bothered by the sense that the Right claims that they are the true patriots, and I am not? As long as my rights are still there for me, why should I care so much about this? I have given this a lot of thought and here’s the conclusions I have come to:
- My rights are at risk. The tone and tenor of this particular election and the possibility that we could have a Congress and President that favor the rolling back of rights for many groups of people are alarming. the 920-page policy blueprint for a second Trump administration offered by the conservative Heritage Foundation, is very clear in its objectives. It states: Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State. The administrative state is a term used to describe the phenomenon of executive branch administrative agencies exercising the power to create, adjudicate, and enforce their own rules. This has worked well for our nation. If its deconstruction is at the core of conservative policy, I am rightfully concerned.
- The Courts, especially this Supreme Court, are not going to protect those who most need protecting. Don’t get me wrong – there are many great judges sitting on the bench these days. But there are also judges, many of them Trump appointees, who see their position as a means of advancing the 2025 agenda. Recent decisions in the appellate courts as well as the Supreme Court have changed the way we can access health and abortion care, how we treat the homeless, who and what is immune from legal responsibilities, and more.
- We are a litigious society. If we can bring a lawsuit that will change policies and even election outcomes… bring it on! More and more our courts are tied up in lawsuits on issues that could easily be settled outside of a courtroom.
- I am put off by those who use the flag and patriotism as their sword and shield, anointing themselves as the righteous, and everyone else as unworthy unbelievers.
None of this is necessarily new. Excess patriotism has been criticized going back to our founding. In 1774, Samuel Johnson published The Patriot, a critique of what he viewed as false patriotism. On the evening of 7 April 1775, he made the famous statement, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”. Johnson spoke about what he considered “true” patriotism. However, there is no direct evidence to contradict the widely held belief that Johnson’s famous remark was a criticism of patriotism itself. The line was not, as is widely believed, about patriotism in general but rather what Johnson saw as the false use of the term “patriotism”. is taken to refer to the ease with which group loyalty, under the guise of patriotism, can be used to distract people from the real motives of the scoundrel.
Today, linking patriotism to nationalism is common and not viewed as a positive by many on the “left.” Nationalism, while it refers to loyalty and devotion to a nation, tends to imply the placing of that nation above others, a tendency that is not necessarily implicit in patriotism. And these roots run deep as well. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Considerations on the Government of Poland can be seen as an early example of the link between nationalism and patriotism. While Rousseau advocated the love of the nation and the celebration of national culture, he believed that national culture is valuable because it helps foster loyalty to the political fatherland. Thus, Rousseau’s nationalism stemmed from and served his typically emphasis on securing citizens’ loyalty to their political institutions. Being patriotic was seen as being linked to the politics of the times.
Today’s politics are not kind, nor do they truly bring people together. Politics these days are more divisive than unifying. In an editorial on August 5, 2024, the : The constitutional checks on misconduct in high office — impeachment and removal, criminal prosecution and constitutional amendment — have lost their potency in an age when partisanship trumps patriotism. This is our great loss. It is a national problem when your loyalty to a political party is more valued than your loyalty to our nation.
I am looking for ways to make this nation better, kinder and more inclusive. I am not sure everyone shares that perspective, but I see my actions in pursuing this as acts of patriotism. I am always trying to make our government better. As Mark Twain said: The true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.
I hope and believe we are building a government that deserves all of our patriotism. There is much to be done to reach that goal.
