What it Means to Love America
George Orwell described nationalism as “the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests” (emphasis added). [1] January 6, 2021 was obviously an expression of extreme nationalism. But what bothered me most is that a symbol that I love, the American flag, was brandished as if the people who stormed the capitol were storming the beaches of Normandy. What a shameful use of the symbol that has covered the caskets of America’s fallen.
Both nationalists and patriots may fly the American flag, support our troops, and likewise “love” America, but only patriots understand that America is great nation not because we are powerful or have a specific cultural identity. America is a great nation because we put forth the notion in 1776 that this country is an ideal, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, an ideal that countless Americans have protested, fought, and died for so that our founding principles could coincide with our lived reality.
We are a still a great experiment in the concept of equality and the conception of liberty.
Thus, this July Fourth, I want to recover true patriotism, a patriotism that contrives love of country out of a respect and admiration of American values, but more importantly, a patriotism that expects, no demands, that we indeed live up to the American creed. Love of country is recognizing our founding ideals did not coincide with our founding reality. And thus, love of country means correcting our national sins. But love of country also rejects the attitude of extreme pessimism that fails to recognize the progress that Americans before us have made on social and racial reconciliation. Love of country expresses an optimism for the future and works towards America’s best days. And love of country is simply an affection for home. Happy Fourth.
[1] Orwell, George. Notes on Nationalism. Orwell Foundation. 1945