My Liberal Patriotism

I’ve been thinking about patriotism. Star athletes are kneeling for the anthem and Trump is disinviting people to the White House and throwing Celebration of America events instead, and Portland is plastered with “In Our America” yard signs.

We’re talking about patriotism a lot these days. What it means. What it looks like.

“I don’t get liberal ‘patriotism’,” said a conservative man in a public forum I recently attended. “They say they’re patriotic, but they don’t respect the flag, don’t respect the national anthem. I don’t get how that’s patriotism. What does patriotism even mean to them?”

I didn’t have the chance to answer his question, but it stuck with me. It is a good question.

I’m one of those liberals who calls myself patriotic but doesn’t feel enthusiastic about the flag or the anthem. It’s worth thinking about why. If I truly love my country, why am I not proud to pay tribute to its symbols? Would I not feel proud of, say, a family crest, if my family had one? Even if I disliked some family members? Why does the American flag turn me off…and can I really call myself a patriot?

When I told Ron about the conservative’s question, he said maybe the man was right. “To me, patriotism looks a lot like nationalism,” he mused. “I actually don’t feel any more loyal to my country than to another. I feel loyal to all of humanity.”

Rather than an American flag, Ron would fly a flag with a picture of the whole Earth.

To an extent, I agree. I’ve never been a joiner. I take words seriously, and none more seriously than my own promises and pledges. In elementary school, I recall discomfort with reciting the Pledge of Allegiance—I didn’t see why I should be forced to choose this country over any other. By high school, I was quietly but stubbornly refusing to put my hand over my heart during the national anthem.

My ambivalence grew stronger in college. At Whitman, I learned about America’s sins during the Vietnam War and our imperialist stranglehold on much of the developing world, and I came to feel a deep sense of shame about my country. I emerged feeling less patriotic than when I’d arrived.

That shame continued as our leaders then stupidly followed George W. Bush into the Iraq War in 2003, which to me looked from the outset like a thinly disguised, racist power grab in the Middle East. My shame has continued into the present as I’ve awakened, along with so many others born into privilege, to the realities of ongoing racial and gender-based oppression, our country’s abhorrent legacies of Native American genocide and the enslavement of black people, and the countless other injustices America perpetuates every day.

But as I’ve gotten older, all this shame has been tempered—or more accurately, complicated. I’ve developed more complex feelings about my country. And when you get right down to it, those feelings amount to patriotism.

It was living abroad during Peace Corps that first made me recognize my own affinity for my country. I loved village life in Tanzania, but I knew my experience there was a world apart from that of the local people. Along with my vastly greater wealth—even my Peace Corps salary of $180 a month was more than most of their yearly earnings—I came to appreciate that as an American woman, I had far broader rights than those of my Tanzanian counterparts.

Although there’s a lot Americans could stand to learn from rural Tanzanians, in terms of human rights I realized that my country was a solid fifty years ahead of theirs, or more. To my surprise, that made me proud and very thankful to be American.

In Tanzania I also came to realize there was no escaping my own Americanness. Even after two years, I still remained hopelessly foreign in my village. If I’d lived there my whole life, that foreignness wouldn’t have changed.

Despite my love and appreciation for my village friends, every time I encountered another American I felt awash in relief. There was something almost manically joyful about being with other people who shared a culture with me.

I often fantasize about being European, perhaps hailing from the Riviera or even rainy Great Britain. If I lived in those countries, everyone I knew would have decent health care, I could easily speak several languages and travel by train, and trips back to Africa would be just a quick plane ride away! But as cool as Europe seems, traveling in Europe, too, has reinforced my recognition that I’m undeniably American.

Returning home from Spain a few years ago, I was elated to look around an American airport and see so many people dressed like me. We Americans tend to wear garishly unstylish, colorful, sporty clothing. We wear comfortable shoes and practical backpacks and broad, generous smiles. In Europe, I had felt constantly self-conscious among all the somber, black- and gray-clad people.

Americans tend to fret about being “ugly” travelers, but we’re actually known throughout most of the world as happy and friendly. Now that is a side of America I can get behind.

(For more on others’ views of American travelers: 1, 2, 3. Those articles are all from Europe and the UK, but I’ve heard the same sentiments in places as far-flung as Ghana and Guatemala.)

And aside from recognizing my own general Americanness, I do feel grudgingly proud of much that we’ve accomplished in this country. I’m proud of our civil, democratic society. It’s tempting to quip “or what’s left of it,” but the truth is, it is still more or less intact.

Relative to so many other countries, we’re still stable and free and a land of opportunity. There are gaping holes in that statement—huge swaths of our population that struggle day to day with poverty, hunger, homelessness, mass incarceration, racism, and other forms of oppression. My pride is a complicated, fraught, grudging pride.

But it is there. I can see that although we still have so very far to go, we have also created something worthy of pride.

I feel both shame and pride.

And I also feel very American, for better or worse. I am invested here. I have skin in the game. This is my country, and I want this country to succeed and to thrive. And that is patriotic.

William Sloan Coffin said, “There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good. The bad are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover’s quarrel with their country.” I am the good kind of patriot.

So now let’s get back to the original question. If I’m such a patriot, then why don’t I “respect” my country’s flag or its anthem?

First of all, perhaps the conservative man was right—perhaps I should pay more respect to these symbols. Perhaps progressives like me should fly more flags in our yards or put flag bumper stickers on our cars, so that the only people displaying flags aren’t conservatives.

That’s why it’s meaningful that those “In Our America” yard signs are printed on an American flag. The flag should stand for all of us, not just those who say “America, love it or leave it.” We liberals should probably fly more flags.

But in the meantime, we are not typically doing so. A symbol is only meaningful according to the meaning we assign it—the swastika was a symbol of prosperity and good luck until the Nazis turned it into something else. It feels as though in my lifetime, the American flag has shifted from a seemingly benign symbol of my country to a conservative litmus test for a certain narrow brand of patriotism. (The bad kind.)

I know not all flag-hoisters are conservative, but in many cases, when I see an American flag on someone’s car or in their yard, I wonder if they’re displaying it specifically for me, at me, or at other groups who are labeled “outsiders.”

Hey, liberal! the flag might be saying. (Or maybe, Hey, recent immigrant!) Are you as patriotic as me? I didn’t think so. Shame on you!

So this is my simplest answer to the conservative’s question. I don’t wholly support the American flag or the national anthem because these symbols have largely been co-opted by certain elements of the right and no longer represent all of America to me.

But what I also want conservatives to understand, above all, is that my patriotism doesn’t need a flag or an anthem. To me, a nation’s symbols are just icons, the least important aspect of patriotism. My patriotism is not about symbols. It is about my country’s substance, its values, and most of all, its people.

I don’t care whether someone wears a flag pin, and I actually think it’s silly if they do, or if they’re pressured to. I don’t need people to stand for the anthem and I wholeheartedly cheer them on if they kneel.

But I do care a great deal about whether or not a candidate, when running for president, tried to cheat our venerable democratic system. I do care whether he colluded or even attempted to collude with one of our enemies to get himself elected. I do care whether politicians try to fool voters, suppress voters, or undercut the education of voters in order to undermine the bedrock of our democracy. I do care whether our nation’s people get the health care they deserve, the protection from gun violence they deserve, the equal opportunity they deserve.

I care deeply about my country, if not about its symbols. Although the conservative man would take issue with some of my statements in the last paragraph, I hope he at least would see my passion in writing it. I do care, a great deal.

That is what patriotism means to me.