Some Thoughts on Patriotism for July 4th

As I get older, it has become my general custom as each July 4th rolls around to spend some time reflecting on the nature of patriotism in America. Sometimes my reverie on the topic is rather technical and academic, but more typically it is commonsensical. Like most people here, I do consider myself a patriot in a broad sense. I mean I like it here, right? I could have moved elsewhere - with some great difficulty - but chose not to. Regular viewers of this publication are quite well aware that I have a great many criticisms of American public policy at the federal, state and local levels. But, for my part, I am also quite well aware that there is no country on Earth that doesn't have big problems. And since I have long thought it important that at a certain point in one's life one must "fight where one stands," I have decided to do my part to help make my hometown of Boston, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States of America as good as they can be - with the various limitations of human beings and the constraints of this earthy plane taken as given. And since I believe it is patriotic to try to make the place one lives better, then I'd have to say I'm a patriot.

Now what is "good" to me is a complicated question. One which I spend long hours mulling over - usually in the middle of the night after reading all kinds of stuff on the web or in books or print periodicals. But I guess I can narrow my thinking on the matter to the idea that a good place - and more to the point a good polity like a city, state, country, or whatever - is one that founds its public policy on a commitment to democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Naturally, all of these ideas are subject to constant and endless debate. But at base, as long as I feel like the place I live in runs its affairs based on these principles - understanding that all human systems are inherently flawed and always contested - then I am going to feel that it is a place that's worth defending. And that's the other sense in which I feel I'm a patriot - and the more common one. If Boston or Massachusetts or the United States should be invaded, then I would feel it was my civic, social and moral duty to defend this place and its people.

However, it would not due to neglect the planet within which all these polities sit. And I don't. I also feel I am a global patriot. A patriot for the planet Earth, if you will. If the planet is attacked by forces "foreign or domestic" then I also feel it's my duty to defend it. "Foreign" forces in this case would be something like a War of the Worlds scenario - and I don't feel any imminent danger of that happening. "Domestic" forces are another matter, though. In the global context, a domestic threat would be a multinational corporation that's despoiling our environment or destabilizing nations. It could also be a nation like the United States enabling such destruction, or actively committing it by invading other nations to expand its sphere of political and economic control.

And I'd have to say - like the Four Laws of Robotics in Isaac Asimov's corpus of science fiction works - the higher level of patriotism I feel towards the planet trumps all other levels of patriotism I feel. So perhaps that is what has pushed me towards the political left since my teenage years. Progressives have long been identified as standard bearers of the cause of internationalism and the need for democratic institutions on the global level where peoples and nations can work out our problems in ways other than slaughtering each other. I truly believe that such institutions are necessary, and that we could all stand to spend a lot more time agitating to improve global political institutions.

But turning back to my feelings about America, as a thinking person and a socialist, I am not willing to sell my commitment to defend the polities I inhabit cheaply. For example, while I would certainly defend the place I live from some kind of unjust invasion - of the type our nation has regularly visited upon other nations since our inception - I would absolutely not defend this place from a just invasion. Like let's say America stops respecting - even nominally - democracy, human rights and the rule of law - nukes a couple of countries, suspends civil rights, and becomes an outright dictatorship. In that case, I'd think the patriotic thing to do would be to organize a resistance movement and link up with other countries willing to help bring democracy back. No surprise there. Hell, that's actually what right-wing militias think they are doing now. And this kind of patriotic instinct is hardly just the provenance of a left-winger like myself.

So my patriotism is conditional. And if patriotism is to be considered a virtue in a democratic society, I think it cannot be otherwise. If a polity is really democratic, then its inhabitants must have a right to give or withdraw their support for their polity. Be it a city, state or country. I also think that people must always be engaged in a running debate about what is best and therefore most patriotic. If patriotism become simple dogma - as has been the tendency in this country of late - then it becomes reactionary and dangerous. Therefore, I strongly believe that I do not have to respond to cries for a patriotism that would involve committing wholesale injustices on other peoples or polities, and in fact, I have decided that the patriotic act in such situations is to fight to change the policies of the city, state or country committing such acts in whatever way seems proper.

My patriotism is also selective in that sense. I can feel patriotic about the many positive aspects of American democracy since 1776. I can feel patriotic about the fact that America has produced wonderful inventions and cultural innovations. I can feel patriotic about things like the existence of our public education system or our spearheading the global movement for women's equality or, I don't know, the fact that a bunch of descendants of poor peasants from all over the world have done pretty well for ourselves in the last couple of hundred years.

But by the same token, I feel that my patriotism is betrayed when the governments of my city, state and country do things that I feel harm the people that live in these polities. The fact that only landed white men were allowed to vote in most states in the early American Republic - or that half the nation's economy was built on slave labor until 1865, or that genocidal policies against Native Americans were the driving force behind the colonization of the United States and the continent it sits on, or that immigrants to this country continue to have their human rights violated on a daily basis - challenge my patriotism. Make me think. Make me come to the conclusion that probably the best thing about the United States is that I do have the freedom to think about important civic virtues like patriotism and debate about its nature with other Americans.

That freedom and all our freedoms are ever and always in jeopardy. And the eight years of right-wing neoconservative federal government that this nation has just weathered have thrown that most critical of all facts in this discussion into bold relief. Not that everything is all hunky and dory now that a center-left neoliberal government is in power.

But for all it's faults and bad karma, America is still a good place for people interested in building a better society to join together and do our thing. And the better we make it, the more patriotic I think we'll all feel. As to whether July 4th will remain the date we all might chose to celebrate such newfound 21st century patriotism, I figure we might as well dust it off and keep it going. No human creation as I've said is perfect, and as long as we spread the knowledge of the profound imperfection of this nation's founding as part of every American's civic education, then I think it's a fine choice, and one we might all look forward to with increasing anticipation if America's deeds match its words ever more closely in the years to come.

Jason Pramas is the Editor/Publisher of Open Media Boston