THE SEASONS OF A PATRIOT

A Steadfast Love of Country Undergoes Change

These days, patriotism has transformed from once being regarded as the “last refuge of scoundrels” into a preoccupation across all parts of the political spectrum. In that vein, I offer my thoughts about the ways in which love for my country has developed over different eras in my life.

The Early Years: An Unquestioned Love

Both my parents were immigrants. Indeed, my mother migrated to the U.S. not once, but twice; the first time illegally, and then again, after my father hired an immigration lawyer to assist her becoming a lawful entrant, and ultimately eligible for citizenship.

They both came from small, poor towns in Italy. The United States embodied their hope for greater economic security than they had known in their childhood. They endured the hardships of the Great Depression (they married in 1932) and deeply appreciated the opportunities that came their way and gradually led them to achieve a life of comfort which wildly surpassed any dreams they might have had in their youth.

In turn, they transmitted to their children a simple but profound patriotism, born of the gratitude for all that had come to them in a free country. My father was a fiscal conservative (he always voted Republican, at least in the time I knew of such matters), but cheerfully paid his taxes, saying, “We only pay taxes because we have earned income, and there’s enough left over after that.” My mother, a lifelong Democrat disagreed with Dad’s electoral politics but held common ground with his willingness to support the government.

My youthful patriotism conformed quite closely to that of my parents: a steadfast and wholehearted appreciation undergirded by a palpable gratitude for the many blessings of liberty.

Adolescent Angst

As I progressed through primary and secondary education, I began to see the outlines of how our country did not always live up to its ideals. I credit (others might say I should blame) one of my high school teachers, Paul Finot, for ushering in a new sensibility about how the differing visions of the people, the government, and those who run the economy sometimes meshed and sometimes clashed over the values which should guide us.

My patriotism also found challenge from a growing awareness of the plight of my black friends in high school, who had to avoid being found in certain cities after dark, thus deepening my questioning about the gap between professed ideals and lived reality. Like most teenage loves, my patriotism was a turbulent relationship, filled with misunderstandings.

The Vietnam War claimed the lives of high school and college classmates, as well as several of the acquaintances made during my four-month tour of active duty to prepare me for duty as a medic in the California National Guard. The revelation that some of the “evidence” supporting our escalating involvement was faked burned a hole in the flag of my patriotism.

Middle Age Misgivings

In early adulthood, the Watergate scandal erupted. I watched, along with much of the nation, transfixed by hearings conducted the the late Sam Ervin, hearings the likes of which we’ve not seen since. The courage displayed by Elliott Richardson and then William Ruckelshaus in refusing the President’s order to fire Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor who was seeking the tapes of Nixon’s conversations, stirred my pride in the legal profession, which I had just recently joined.

But the very need for a special prosecutor fed my concern that the apex of our political system was vulnerable to the kind of “group think” that led White House aides like H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlich into aiding and abetting a criminal conspiracy. And the performance by a young (but later regretful) John Dean as White House Counsel was a lamentable counterpoint to the demonstration of principle by the Attorneys General who resisted Nixon’s directive.

The electoral triumph of Ronald Reagan, who declared that government was the problem (a legacy which has evolved in the minds of some into government as the enemy), cast further doubt on my belief (maybe an illusion) that our government would always favor the “general welfare” spoken of in the Preamble to the Constitution.

Clarifying Loyalty to Country

In retrospect, I see that I succumbed to confusion about the meaning of patriotism. I conflated “the country” with “the current government.” I now know that the country is more, much more, than any administration can ever fully represent. True, the people, acting through our electoral processes, give overall shape and form to our government. But electoral victory confers only a conditional legitimacy. These days, our voting takes place in a highly constrained context: there are usually only two realistic options (although I have on occasion registered a futile protest by casting a ballot for a marginal party candidate).

And the choices we make as voters hardly sum us up as individuals, and much less as a “people.” And by “people,” I do not mean some mystical, unified organism that expresses its “will” by and through elected representatives. No, the ”people” is a more heterogenous concept, a mixture of personalities with biographies; communities with histories; regions with accents and traditions.

We are at once individuals and also part of something larger than our little selves. Accompanying this awareness is a deep recognition of the diversity of our people: families with long stretches of ancestry in the U.S.; immigrants, like my parents, who came just decades ago; and recent arrivals, also drawn by the twin promise of economic opportunity and political liberty.

And the “country” is more than just the current inhabitants. My love of country extends to the land, the great sweep of territory over which our flag flies. That love means a commitment to the well-being of the earth, a commitment to stewardship rather than exploiting its resources in unsustainable ways.

Our country has been blessed by a particularly rich endowment of natural resources: the Great Lakes, the largest fresh water system in the world; the rivers, creeks, estuaries and coastlines that provided nourishment for our bodies and fed the imagination of some of our greatest writers; the great expanse of the Plains, the majestic mountain peaks, and the archeological wonders of canyons and valleys, all shaped by geologic forces over stretches of time beyond our comprehension.

And along with these natural resources of the earth, we have been blessed with the astonishing variety of plants, birds, insects, and other creatures who creep, crawl, and and otherwise roam our little portion of the planet. Even the obscure and (until now) mostly feared or derided Gila monster is the primal source of the new wonder drugs to fight the obesity born of the abundance of food available to nearly all of us (except SNAP recipients, who will be increasingly underfed).

An Aspirational, but Nagging Love

As the catalog of my personal faults and failures has grown ever larger, I have come to see a parallel with the love I’ve received in my private life and my love for country. I’ve been forced to ask how someone could love me, in the light of all that I have done or or left undone. I could find no good reason to believe that anyone should.

On some level, love isn’t ruled by reason alone. Despite this wondering, I have had the blessing of being loved by those closest to me. That has proved a valuable lesson in coming to the realization that the love of those with deep knowledge of me arises not from “because” but “in spite.”

Love for my country has undergone a similar shift. More than ever, I see the many ways we have fallen short of the ideals declared in our Constitution, and failed to guard against the invasions of liberty outlined in the Declaration of Independence. But my love now flows out of a more generous place, one in which I see all the suffering we have imposed, either by neglect or intent, on our own people (as well as those in other countries).

Despite its evident imperfection, I still freely confess to loving my country. It is an aspirational love, born of the vision for what we yet could become and achieve.

But that love coexists with the freedom to be a bit of a nag, scolding our government and opposing actions that depart from that vision. It’s hard to be a nag, because it requires pleading even when the other party may not be listening. It’s not my preferred mode of operation, but sometimes it’s the only way of expressing my love for our country.

I find solace in asking the questions about how our country can yet manifest the hopes and dreams that drew my parents from afar. I try to see the horizon beyond the present political turmoil, a land in which we as a country grant the same blessings of economic security and liberty to all of us, as well as those who have yet to join us in the conversation that undergirds all forms of self-governance.

As Mark Twain more pithily put it: “Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”