I was going to write a whole treatise on how and why the U.S. is the great country in the world and why I felt it was so. But then in my readings, I came across this piece and I felt it articulated exactly how I felt about my country. I admit that I’m not much of a writer (although I do have a published book, hahaha). Still, this article nails it down exactly:
(please note that I have highlighted certain points, but that is not an excuse to actually not read the whole thing).
Why I Am Patriotic: A Love Letter to America
Today is the Fourth of July.
Independence Day. I awoke this morning to a country in which I can, if I choose, leave my front door unlocked at night without serious fear that my family or property will be harmed. Not everyone in America is this lucky. Certainly we did not start out this way.
My husband and I worked hard to get where we are today, but the fruit of our labors is protected by the rule of law. Thirty years ago, we had next to nothing. We were two young people with low paying jobs living well below the federal poverty level. At tax time, we didn’t pay taxes. The government gave us money.
And we made good use of the opportunity we were given. Now, both we and our two grown sons and their families are prosperous and secure.
I awoke this morning to a country in which women have control over their bodies, their education, their careers, and their personal lives. We need not fear being held down and mutilated simply for the crime of possessing female genitalia. Our daughters attend school with boys. They go on to graduate from college and postgraduate schools at greater rates than do our sons. Women enter and leave marriage freely; childbirth and motherhood need not be the inescapable consequences of biology: science and law have made them voluntary decisions. In the workplace, laws give us redress if we face discrimination. Truly, we are liberated in every sense of the word.
I awoke to a country awash in information.
It comes to my door each morning in the form of two newspapers which land with a reassuring “plop” in my driveway by 5 a.m. If I turn on my TV, over 300 channels await my delectation. Information of every kind is there for the taking: history, investigative journalism, opinion, discussion and debate, perspective on the day’s events. There are 6 computers in my home, all of them Internet-capable. No government filters what I see and hear. New York Times reporters release classified documents and jeopardize legitimate anti-terrorism programs without fear of jail. Comedians and musicians bait and insult the President of the United States at social occasions. But instead of being punished or rebuked for their boorish behavior they are celebrated; treated as though they had said something of consequence.
I awoke to a country in which citizens may write whatever they please no matter how critical of the government, the military, or the State, without fear. They will not be arrested, beaten, and condemned to hard labor for six years for the crime of disparaging the military. They need never see the pain and confusion in a little girl’s eyes as she wonders whether she will ever see her father again?
I awoke to a country in which young men and women are still unashamedly idealistic, in which they are passionately interested in debate and the free exchange of ideas. But more importantly, I awoke to a country in which our children are not all cynical, spoiled, and apathetic. It is a country where young people possess the courage and integrity to stand up for their beliefs:
These grand, overarching questions cannot obscure, at least for me, the plain fact that Mark Daily felt himself to be morally committed. I discovered this in his life story and in his surviving writings. Again, not to romanticize him overmuch, but this is the boy who would not let others be bullied in school, who stuck up for his younger siblings, who was briefly a vegetarian and Green Party member because he couldn’t stand cruelty to animals or to the environment, a student who loudly defended Native American rights and who challenged a MySpace neo-Nazi in an online debate in which the swastika-displaying antagonist finally admitted that he needed to rethink things. If I give the impression of a slight nerd here I do an injustice. Everything that Mark wrote was imbued with a great spirit of humor and tough-mindedness. Here’s an excerpt from his “Why I Joined” statement:
Anyone who knew me before I joined knows that I am quite aware and at times sympathetic to the arguments against the war in Iraq. If you think the only way a person could bring themselves to volunteer for this war is through sheer desperation or blind obedience then consider me the exception (though there are countless like me).… Consider that there are 19 year old soldiers from the Midwest who have never touched a college campus or a protest who have done more to uphold the universal legitimacy of representative government and individual rights by placing themselves between Iraqi voting lines and homicidal religious fanatics.
And here’s something from one of his last letters home:
I was having a conversation with a Kurdish man in the city of Dahok (by myself and completely safe) discussing whether or not the insurgents could be viewed as “freedom fighters” or “misguided anti-capitalists.” Shaking his head as I attempted to articulate what can only be described as pathetic apologetics, he cut me off and said “the difference between insurgents and American soldiers is that they get paid to take life—to murder, and you get paid to save lives.” He looked at me in such a way that made me feel like he was looking through me, into all the moral insecurity that living in a free nation will instill in you. He “oversimplified” the issue, or at least that is what college professors would accuse him of doing.
I have a confession to make. I am truly, madly, deeply in love with America.
I love my country not because she is perfect, but because she wants so badly to be. I even love her faults, even the kind of obsessive navel gazing angst that mistakes fallible humans and imperfect realization of our ideals for evidence of pervasive moral rot and in so doing, makes conscience the scourge that would make moral cowards of us all:
… note how readily Beinart disposes of “liberty, justice, and equality.”
He has stripped patriotism to its vacuous essence: Love your country because it’s yours.
If we stopped that arm from reflexively saluting and concerned ourselves more with “universal ideals” than with parochial ones, we’d be a lot better off.
We wouldn’t be in Iraq, we wouldn’t have besmirched ourselves at Guantanamo, we wouldn’t be acting like some Argentinean junta that wages illegal wars and tortures people and disappears them into secret dungeons.
Love of country is a form of idolatry.
It is a dangerous moral equivalence which is so afraid of sinning that it would not kill a rabid wolf, lest it starve the flea on its back.
America is not a destination but a journey and in loving her, we must not become so firmly fixed upon the goal that we lose heart when we stumble a time or two upon the road. For stumble we will. After all, we are but human; all too imperfect clay with which to form the more perfect union our founding fathers envisioned.
I love this country because she was born in turmoil; baptized by fire and lighting; conceived from the highest aspirations of Enlightenment thinkers: words that ring as true today as they did over two hundred years ago:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
What are those words worth, today? Not much, apparently. Do we still believe them? Are they still engraved on our hearts? Do we still believe that ALL men are created equal? I keep hearing that the Arabs are “not ready for democracy”. I consider that an appallingly condescending statement.
I submit that in 1776, those words were not worth the parchment they were scribbled on. Utter and absolute rubbish.
They did not become real until long years of bloody, miserable warfare breathed life into them. They were purchased, truly, at the cost of incalculable human suffering.
Bloodshed. Starvation. Sickness. Injustice. Abuse. Ugliness. Imperfection of every sort imaginable. And as Ignatieff mentions at the beginning of his piece, they did not apply equally to every American for a long, long time. Not to the Irish, nor to women, nor to Jews, nor Catholics, nor blacks, nor non-landowners. But this experiment we call America truly did ‘light a fire in the minds of men’. And that fire was seen from a great distance.
It became a beacon to others, even with all its imperfections, because it was better than what had come before. This glorious dream: this democracy. It remains an imperfectly-realized ideal, because humans are still flawed and we bring all our sins and weaknesses with us on this journey. But we are vastly improved for having reached beyond our baser selves, for having dared to dream. We are still improving. And so will the rest of the world, if we can find the courage and the resolve to help them. We are on a road to the stars, but we progress one faltering step at a time.
Who are we to think that Freedom is ours to spread, Ignatieff asks?
We were the First. We are the guardians of the flame. Not perfect beings, but in all the world the only ones, it seems, still naive enough, still brave enough, still daring enough to put our money where our mouths are. We are the only ones who are still willing to defend the dream with our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor.
Not all the time. Not in every single instance, because that is impossible. And honest liberals will admit that: in a universe with limited resources, choices must be made. But where we can, where it aligns with our interests and with the interests of the rest of the world: yes.
Our own Revolution was not without blemish. Innocent men were tarred and feathered. Families torn asunder. People bled, and suffered and starved. There was even [shudder] terrorism. But it lit a flame that has burned brightly for over 200 years. There are signs that this is happening in the MiddleEast: Arabs are looking at election day in Iraq and Afghanistan and demanding democratic reforms in Egypt and Lebanon and Kuwait. The fire in men’s (and women’s) hearts is spreading.
We would like certainty. We would like painless progress. We would like closure. We will not get any of those things.
On July 4th we must ask ourselves, what do we believe? Our military – brand new immigrants who enlist before the ink is dry on their visas – believe in those words so strongly that they will lay down their lives to spread the fire of democracy. They also believe (as I do) that their purpose is to serve American foreign policy aims, no matter how abstract and long-term they may seem. No matter how difficult to explain to the American people. No matter how frustrating in the short term.
What kind of world will we bequeath to our grandchildren? It may be that long before we know. But our actions today will have an incalculable effect on that far-off tomorrow. And if our policy is not firmly grounded in the spread of those long-ago words:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…
…then I wonder if we shall not be the first Americans who fail to pass the blessings of liberty on to the next generation?
“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph. is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke.
Happy Birthday, America. May you always be great. May you remain a nation of thinkers, of dreamers, of believers, of doers; striving always towards our ideals without despising the imperfect means we use to achieve them.
But most importantly, may you never give in to cynicism and despair. In life as in sports, ninety nine percent of success lies in simply showing up.
me: GOD BLESS AMERICA. If that is a neocon position, feel free to call me a neocon.
