Carson Burch ’27 is a government major from Chesapeake, Virginia. He is a member of the History Club, Public Policy Club, Lutheran Students’ Association and Theodore Roosevelt Society. Outside of his studies and social life, he enjoys reading about historical and current events in addition to dinosaurs.
The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.
As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our country’s founding, I would like to make a call for the return of something which is possibly on the verge of becoming old-fashioned: patriotism.
Polls show that the number of Americans who express pride in their nationality is on the decline, a trend driven in large part by members of Generation Z. I believe we all know the reasons this has occurred: The current structure of the economy locks our generation out of the prosperity our ancestors once enjoyed, our institutions are decaying and our society in general seems headed in the wrong direction. These reasons for the current atmosphere of cynicism toward America are all valid, and I share them. I feel pessimistic about the state of our country and the world, and I think that’s exactly the right outlook to have.
Despite that, I still believe the decay in national pride to be a shame. I think healthy societies need some degree of pride in their accomplishments to function properly, and that the abandonment of such pride will have only negative consequences for our country.
The flaws of our country, both in the past and in the present, are in many ways self-evident. I will not spend too much time reiterating the canon of American crimes, both because I am confident many readers are familiar with many of them and because Thelma Kestner ’29 already wrote an excellent article meditating on those issues in a previous edition of this paper. America’s history of racism, classism, sexism, imperialism, homophobia and all the rest should not be forgotten, as learning from our mistakes is critical for our society to grow and evolve.
Just because these things happened does not negate the positive achievements of American society: we built the world’s first liberal democracy, creating an experiment in representative government that stands to this very day. We built the world’s most prosperous economy, the benefits of which accrued to a vast middle class with a lifestyle that became the envy of the globe. We became a haven for technological, social and cultural innovation, moving the world forward into new eras. We helped to defeat both fascism and communism, building an international order which helped secure and spread liberal democracy, open markets and free society to the rest of the world. In time, we came to overcome some of the bigotry and oppression that formed a black mark on our society, with the sacrifices of entire generations toward the goal of a better society eventually bearing some fruit. These things are as much part of our legacy as the stains of slavery or nativist exclusion, if not more so, and we should celebrate these accomplishments even as we condemn the atrocities which occurred alongside them.
These accomplishments, as well as the ideals of human equality and individual liberty which undergirded many of them, should be combined with self-criticism and used to create a sense of love for our nation that seeks to improve it and make an even better America than the one we inherited for our descendants. But why is cultivating this pride important?
For starters, patriotism and the sense of belonging in a greater community that it fosters can serve as an antidote to the division in our society today. Our society has been growing increasingly polarized over the last few decades, and many Americans on either side of the divide view each other as wicked individuals. Patriotic sentiments can help unite Americans. Instead of viewing people who disagree with us as a hostile faction, we should instead see them as fellow Americans, people who are just as proud of our country and who simply have differing opinions on how to make it even better. For that to happen, we need to first have a society where Americans are generally proud to be so.
More importantly, I think patriotism is necessary to defend the core values that undergird the American experiment. Almost a third of younger Americans are skeptical of liberal democracy. Young Americans are disproportionately likely to say that democracy should be replaced. Some of the nation’s most followed pundits help other men deny the obscenely well-documented crimes of our historic enemies, with narratives similar to those they espouse running rampant online. I believe these phenomena to be linked with declining patriotism: What good are the values of human liberty and representative government if the United States, a nation founded on those ideals, is simply a sinister place with little of redeeming value?
If we regard our society’s ideals of individual freedom, representative government and equal rights under the law as worth defending (as I do), we should embrace our country as one we’re proud to have, while never ignoring its flaws or failing to aspire toward a more perfect union. We can balance a recognition of our mistakes with a celebration of our achievements, and I believe we should do both for the 250th July Fourth. Both our country and we deserve nothing less.
