If you were to walk into an English or philosophy classroom on campus you’d be likely to hear discourse like this: “I don’t understand people who get so worked up about their country. Patriotic people are just sheep, blindly following their leaders without questioning their motives or decisions.”
There are people who would say that the phrase “proud to be an American” is arrogant, offensive, excessive and divisive.
But as soon as these people have uttered their disdain for the United States, they have unintentionally done something quite amazing. In exercising their right to free speech, they have done exactly what a proud American would do: they have confidently declared their opinion out loud without worrying about repercussions. In some countries this is called “treason.” In the US, it is “free speech.”
As it turns out, committing treason against the US is pretty difficult (if you wanted to sell secrets to Iran, how would you even begin?) which means that most hate speech is really patriotism in disguise.
Having a fondness for one’s country isn’t something to be ridiculed for. And neither is healthy dissent.
America-bashing has always been a confusing thing to me. The kind of engagement that is required to think of and voice problems with a country takes an immense amount of patriotism — one has to be passionate about an issue, be willing to take a stand, and voice their opinion among dissent. So how about we call anti-American American citizens what they really are: unabashed patriots.
On the flip side, it is peculiar to listen to people categorize anything which deviates from the flag-waving variant of patriotism “offensive.” That seems like exactly the kind of stuff that a newspaper ought to print: things that make us riled up about our beliefs.
The point is that we ought to be proud Americans, and the best way to express that is to disagree, argue and step on each other’s ideological toes.
People spend their lives dedicated to different things. Some people dedicate their lives to academia, others to making cars and a large number to government through their services and expertise — which provides all sorts of opportunities for citizens to practice their trade. I really have a hard time believing that the latter is any worse of a calling than anything else.
We recognize that there are problems. American citizens might do well to take on less debt, eat less sugar, demand higher ethical standards from our corporate leaders and expect our congressmen to make clear-headed choices. As it turns out, our nation is made of people who are trying to wing it and do what seems right, just like the rest of us. We make mistakes too. But the fact that we “make mistakes” is a poor argument against the idea that American values are removed from reality.