Not there yet, nor anywhere close
Greeting voters at the polls, sharing sample ballots and stories about candidates, thanking voters for participating regardless of affiliation, is joyful work. Planning and assembing the mechanisms behind that and seeing them set in motion is highly satisfying. The 5 a.m. dark and chill on Election Day is envigorating. Knowing regular poll workers will only give up their jobs effecting democracy when carried out feet first is truly inspirational.
When a candidate chalks up a big win, others cheer, hug, and high-five. I grow quiet. I want to savor the moment and take pride in a job well done.
Is that patriotism?
Jedediah Britton-Purdy believes Democrats need more of it. Polls suggest Democrats and Republicans view patriotism differently (New York Times):
But progressives need patriotism, more than ever in a time of understandable anger and despair. We want to make the world better by our lights, and to do that we need a stronger democracy. Patriotism in the right spirit fosters the civic trust and solidarity that democracy needs.
Patriotism shouldn’t be an excuse for glossing over failures and crimes — just the opposite. It adds responsibilities, even sorrows, to our lives. But it also fosters affection and, yes, pride.
A certain kind of progressive activist sees mostly failure. Every victory is incomplete, every bill flawed, every politician a betrayer, every glass half empty. It’s exhausting.
Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King saw the country’s shortcomings as opportunities for America to “rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.”
This version of patriotism links criticism of our country’s failings with a commitment to changing them. It cleaves to principles of freedom and equality because they are right, and also because they are ours, they are us. It addresses America’s worst aspects, not as enemies to be eliminated (as in our many domestic “wars” on this or that) but as we would approach a friend or family member who had lost their way. In this spirit, even the harshest reproach, the most relentless list of wrongs, comes with a commitment to repair and heal, to build a more just and decent country. It also entails a practical faith: As long as change might be possible, we owe it to one another to try.
For Johnson and King, Britton-Purdy writes, “Patriotism was a practical task: to appreciate and preserve what is good, work to change what is bad, and remember that part of what is good in a country is that citizens can change it.”
But some among us would rather paint over the flaws than, in evangelical terms (and many are evangelicals), repent and commit to doing and being better. Power for power’s sake is seductive. Always has been. Because “democracy is power, and power is scary and dangerous,” Britton-Purdy explains, “peaceful political change is much harder among people who fear and mistrust one another, and who feel it intolerable for the other side to hold power.”
This is our dilemma. We need basic change, but cannot tolerate making it alongside fellow citizens who are also our partisan enemies. Yet we also cannot make it without them. We need one another’s support, maybe, and one another’s consent and cooperation, absolutely.
Patriotism softens the dilemma. It gives assurance that anger and criticism have affection and loyalty behind them. It conveys what Walt Whitman presented as the democratic promise: “I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.”
There is more to the essay. Read it here.
Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming holds views on many issues that are wrong-headed, in my view. But give her credit for taking a stand and, potentially, sacrificing her political career to preserve the principle that we are a nation of freee people, a nation of laws and not of men. And certainly not of men driven by insatiable hunger for power, and of those of weak character who would follow them blindly and deny citizenship “on the same terms” to those with whom they disagree.
In a speech this week at the Reagan Library, Cheney acknowledged, “We stand at the edge of an abyss and we must pull back. We must pull back.”
“One of my Democratic colleagues said to me recently that he looked forward to the day when he and I can disagree again,” she continued. “Believe me, I share that sentiment.”
As do I.
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