The Patriot’s Asterisk

Last week I mentioned the peculiar form that patriotism can take in Germany . We Americans aren’t so different though, for we too have a peculiar relationship to the term “patriot.”

In America, to question someone’s patriotism is considered an insult, while to praise their patriotism is a compliment. Yet strangely, the only people who refer to themselves, completely without irony or qualification, as patriots are old veterans, old conservatives, and certain pro athletes in New England .

Of course, people who do not fit into those three categories sometimes self-identify with that label. But when they do it’s almost always accompanied by an asterisk, denoting—whether expressed or implied—that the use of the word comes with a qualifier:

*Sure, I love my country but I that doesn’t mean I support ________. (the President, the war, etc.)

*That doesn’t mean I think America is better than other countries.

*Of course I would never, ever serve (nor let my child enlist) in the military.

*But I’m nothing like those Bible-thumping, flag-fetishizing, NASCAR-loving, types of patriots.

However, some people are more straightforward their mixed feelings. A Japanese reporter once inquired of filmmaker Michael Moore, “You do not seem to like the U.S., do you?” Moore’s response sums up the sentiment behind the patriot’s asterisk: “I like America to some extent.”

Unfortunately, the asterisk isn’t completely without warrant. Just as the existence of NAMBLA has made it impossible to say one is a “lover of children” without the need to provide clarification, the co-opting of patriot by nativists, xenophobes, and domestic terrorists has caused some Americans to distance themselves from the label.

It is also true that the term patriot has to compete with other terms that we might rightfully believe take precedence. Christians, for example, not only owe allegiance to the state but also, and more importantly, to the Kingdom of God. Even when we consider ourselves loyal citizens of the U.S., we also embrace a form of universal cosmopolitanism in cleaving to the invisible, catholic Church.

Whatever unique and individual allegiances we might have, though, we corporately share a divided loyalty between America as our birthplace (or adopted home) and America as an ideal, a set of principles embodied in such documents as the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. While our bifurcated loyalty can make patriotic sentiments complex and dissonant, it can also prevent a love of America from devolving into blind nationalism.

This tension sets America—and our identity as a nation—apart in a peculiar way. As historian Walter Berns notes,

The late Martin Diamond had this in mind when, in an American government textbook, he points out that the terms “Americanism,” “Americanization,” and “un-American” have no counterparts in any other country or language. This is not by chance, or a matter of phonetics—Swissism? Englishization?—or mere habit. (What would a Frenchman have to do or believe in order to justify being labeled un-French?) The fact is, and it was first noted by the Englishman, G.K. Chesterton, the term “Americanism” reflects a unique phenomenon; as Diamond puts it, “It expresses the conviction that American life is uniquely founded on a set of political principles.”

Most Americans have so internalized this concept of America as both a geographic place and an abstract ideal that we sometime forget how radical it must appear to the rest of the world.

Consider, for example, the tiny minority of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans who support reconquista , the “reconquering” and return of California, New Mexico, and other parts of the United States to Mexico. If their dream were realized it would simply make Mexico a much larger, third-world nation. You can move the border northward but without the culture, ideals, laws, and principles of America, San Diego is just another Tijuana. Presumably, though, the re-conquistadors would still want to take the land even though it would mean having to immigrate further eastward to find work.

The beauty and genius of our principles, though, is that there is nothing that makes them exclusively American. They are ideals that are not only available to all people but also, as political philosophers from Thomas Jefferson to Francis Fukuyama have contentiously argued, likely to eventually be adopted by all nations. To be a patriot then it to align oneself with all generations of Americans—past, present, and future—who claim that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.

In his eulogy for the Kentucky politician Henry Clay , Abraham Lincoln gave expression to what should be an applicable description of all American patriots:

He loved his country partly because it was his own country, but mostly because it was a free country; and he burned with a zeal for its advancement, prosperity and glory, because he saw in such, the advancement, prosperity and glory, of human liberty, human right and human nature. He desired the prosperity of his countrymen partly because they were his countrymen, but chiefly to show to the world that freemen could be prosperous.

Berns says that for Clay (and Lincoln), “country and principle were one and the same.” Perhaps in Clay we can find a useful model for ourselves; a way to be a patriot without an asterisk.