What Does Patriotism Mean to Me?
Patriotism: love for or devotion to one’s country (Merriam-Webster)
Patriotism has become such a loaded and complicated word that it bears at least a modicum of introspection into the American experiment versus the American experience.
Our stated ideals of being a people devoted to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are truly aspirational and indeed laudable. They rightfully are the ideals we as a folk should pursue. I feel strongly that aspiring to be a nation of peoples brought together under one banner to pursue these three fundamental ideas is inspiring. We often state that we are a melting pot, and a melting pot we should be. That would mean anytime another ingredient was added, the added portion became part of the whole, and in good turn the whole adopts into its corpus, indeed into its very identity the added portion. We come together from disparate pasts to pursue a shared future and identity in pursuit of a common set of values and ideals. This is the nation for which my Patriotism is absolute and infinite. It is this nation I’d gladly sacrifice for. It is the nation I want to leave to my kids, grandkids, and future generations into perpetuity.
If only that nation had ever dared to exist.
I don’t need to belabor all the ways in which we have fallen short over the now 250 years, and yet a partial listing seems reasonable by way of context. Genocide against Native Americans. Slavery of African Americans and the people of the Pribilof Islands. Japanese and Alutiiq Internment. The overthrow of Hawai’i. Allowing the deliberate defrauding and blatant violent treatment of workers on Navassa Island. The Military Governments of Cuba and the Philippines. Jim Crow. The Aerial Bombardment of Philadelphia in 1985 that destroyed 61 homes while also killing six adults and five children.
If we haven’t lived up to our ideals, we should be honest about where we’ve fallen short. Big milestones are a great time to celebrate successes but they are just as good a time to recognize shortcomings.
To me, Patriotism is having the courage to look at the bridges that brought us here, appreciate them, then recognize they were built on inherently faulty piers, and burn them down to the riverbed so we never pass that way again. We must, as a nation, burn the bridges behind us in order to light the way forward. Patriotism means peering back through the flames and instead of pinning for some fictional better time when we were “great”, looking back without regret and smile knowing that we will never again this way trod.
Moving forward, boldly and unapologetically together, toward our nation’s ideals, toward a true WE the people…That, to me, is Patriotism.
Advocacy Committee Member, JN