Patriotism in the United States, like America itself, is exceptional – and not so easily cultivated. Ours is not an ethnic motherland or fatherland, rooted in soil with bonds of blood. We belong rather to a republic founded on ideas, but ideas that celebrate the individual rather than the collective, private rights rather than public glory. We are a nation of immigrants – today, a truly cosmopolitan nation – and anyone willing to swear allegiance to the United States can become an American, a transformation impossible for someone hoping, by change of residence, to become French or Chinese. But our liberal way of life also makes it possible for people to live among us, even as citizens enjoying our rights, without becoming patriots – that is, without being people who love and serve our country, and who are willing to defend her when necessary with their life, fortune, and sacred honor. Yet remarkably, and especially in critical times – from the American Revolution to our ongoing struggles against Islamist terror and brutality – Americans have risen to the occasion, putting the republic and its ideals before self, serving her nobly and well. Approximately four million men and women served in the active-duty military in the first ten years after 9/11, and thousands more have joined their ranks every month since. (More than twice as many served during the Vietnam War, and more than four times as many served in World War II.) Less dramatic but much more ubiquitous are the longstanding and still-vibrant American traditions of public and community service, practiced in local governments and through a plethora of voluntary religious, philanthropic, and civic associations. For many an American, the life of service to the nation still makes sense and gives meaning to our lives.
But our thinking about patriotism – as with work and family life – has fallen behind our practice. Compared with the cultural attitudes surrounding World War II, and especially since the 1960s, patriotism has come under suspicion, most regrettably among those who teach the young. Our national heroes are debunked, our national achievements belittled, our every sin magnified. Today, American patriotism faces more explicit challenges, both universalist and parochial. On the one hand, liberal intellectuals decry national distinctions, deny the need for patriotic sacrifice, and urge us to join the party of humanity and to see ourselves as “citizens of the world.” On the other hand, many people – including some of the same intellectuals – encourage divisive identity politics at home, accentuating ethnic and racial differences, eschewing assimilation and the melting pot, and celebrating only hyphenated-American identities – a matter of deep disappointment to those of us who once fought for civil rights and integration. Finally, in opposition to these tendencies, we are witnessing an upsurge of crude nationalism, an “America First” blood-and-soil nativism, with more than a touch of xenophobia and race-hatred of the sort we fought World War II to destroy. Given these universalist, tribalist, and nativist challenges, there is all the more reason to articulate a sensible patriotism, coupled with efforts to translate it into meaningful civic participation and service – and not primarily during national elections.
It is relatively easy to show that the universalist dream is contrary to possibility, and that the idea of “citizen of the world” is largely empty preening. Honest-to-goodness citizenship exists only for members of a specific polity, and for the foreseeable future the world will remain divided into disparate political communities, each with its own legal system and way of life. What is more necessary is to show why national identity and attachment are not only inevitable but also desirable, for individuals as well as for the American nation. Here, the plain truth of the matter is that real life, even for those critics of America who preach liberal universalism, cannot do without the nurturing benefits of strong particularistic attachment. For the vast majority of human beings, life as actually lived is lived parochially and locally, embedded in a web of human relations, institutions, culture, and mores that define us and – whether we know it or not – give shape, character, and meaning to our lives. One’s feeling for global humanity, however sincere, is based on an abstraction, hard to translate into the concrete and meaningful concern that leads neighbor to care and work actively for neighbor, Chicagoan for Chicagoan, Texan for Texan, American for American. Civic self-government – the pride of political achievement – is possible only in the communities in which we actually live, and there can be no robust civic life without patriotic attachment. I am not talking about the psychic boost we give ourselves by yelling “USA, USA” at the Olympics. I am talking, rather, about the genuine elevation of our lives made possible by belonging freely, feelingly, and actively to something larger and more worthy than our individual selves.
Other nations, of course, can and do lay claim to similar ties and loyalties. But for us Americans, there are special reasons for patriotic attachment, for we are a parochial nation with a universal calling and a most remarkable history in answering it. The principles of human equality, inalienable rights, and government by consent, newly enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, were given operative life in the polity established by the Constitution, under which the United States became and remains a shining example of stable self-government and a beacon of hope for oppressed peoples all over the world. We are the privileged heirs of a way of life that has offered the blessings of freedom and dignity to millions of people of all races, ethnicities, and religions, and that extols the possibility of individual achievement as far as individual talent and effort can take it. We are also a self-critical nation, whose history is replete with efforts to bring our practices more fully in line with our ideals. And our national history boasts hundreds of thousands of heroic men and women who gave their lives that the nation might live and flourish. To belong to such a nation is not only a special blessing but a special calling: to preserve freedom, dignity, and self-government at home and to encourage their spread abroad. As Abraham Lincoln put it, in a call to perpetuate our political institutions: “This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.”
It should now also be clear why American patriotism and national service can and do provide a life of transcendent meaning. We love our country not only because it is ours, but also because it is good – not perfect, but very good. We love her all the more when we undertake to serve and preserve her, for then she becomes also the embodiment of our efforts and our very being, as we extend our being-at-work onto a larger and more enduring canvas, and our own vitality is lifted to a higher plane. Service to our country, rightly understood, is not a form of self-sacrifice in the name of freedom, but a freely chosen form of self-fulfillment. For this reason, those who spend their lives in America’s cause are never victims or martyrs. They are heroes, and we honor them rightly when we gratefully esteem the blessings they have safeguarded and when we emulate their example. The Army motto has it right: Patriotic service, in peace as well as war, enables each of us to “Be all that you can be.”
Seeking Truth: Minding Self and World
Being all that we can be includes a concern with truth. A full life encompasses the life of the mind, exercised not only in solving practical problems but also in an active quest for understanding, desired for its own sake. Across the nation, esteemed institutions of higher learning, charged with seeking knowledge and educating the young, operate under mottos such as “Veritas” or “The Truth Shall Make You Free.” Thus it is beyond sad that for several decades these would-be homes of truth seeking have been betraying their own mission.
The natural scientists, who show us how things work, for the most part still adhere to a disinterested pursuit of knowledge. But many humanists and social scientists, who should be showing us what things mean, have largely abandoned the standard of truth. In place of an appropriate truth-loving skepticism, which insists on seeing evidence and assessing arguments before accepting an opinion as true, they peddle the mind-deadening and self-indulgent poison that truth, like beauty, lies only in the eye of the beholder, with each person freely “constructing” reality according to his own tastes. Thus they turn what should be shared inquiry in search of understanding into mere fighting in pursuit of victory. Their trendy and shallow scholarship is bad enough, but they deserve the hemlock for corrupting the hearts and minds of the young. The best of our youth, who still come to college hungering for guidance in how to live, and who would be greatly helped by an introduction to the best of what has been thought and said, are promptly urged to give up such naive views and “childish dreams.” They are encouraged instead to busy themselves with a careerist