Democrats Should Reclaim Patriotism
There’s much to be proud of—just don’t ask the MAGAs.
AT THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION in Dallas in August 1984, a lifelong Democrat stood up to denounce her former party. The Democrats had convened in San Francisco in July to nominate Walter Mondale. Jeane Kirkpatrick, who had switched parties to serve as America’s U.N. ambassador under Reagan, lambasted her former party for always “blaming America first.” It brought the house down. “San Francisco Democrat” became a catchphrase that haunted Democrats for years to come.
Kirkpatrick was pitching a message to middle-of-the-road voters who, though they might not be as conservative as the typical Republican, were put off by what they perceived as the Democratic party’s drift toward anti-Americanism.
Today, it is the Republican party that—despite its MAGA slogan—is trafficking in dark, anti-American ideas and imagery. The party that claims to put “America first” is led by a man who describes the nation as “failing” or “corrupt” a hundred times for every one mention of an American virtue. He shrieks that “Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION!”
Our cities, according to Trump, are crippled by “bloodshed, chaos and violent crime.” Our courts are corrupt. Our press is the “enemy of the people.” Immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our nation” while committing countless murders and rapes. Our military is “woke.” Meanwhile, those who gave the last full measure of devotion are “suckers” and “losers.” We are a “failing nation” whose free elections are actually rigged by a stealthy and unaccountable “deep state.” Far from a global leader, America is a “laughingstock” around the world.
Trump’s factotums in the GOP sound the same themes. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson condemns the nation he serves as “dark and depraved.” Rep. Jim Banks describes the country as beset by “creeping tyranny.”
The Republican party has traded patriotism and uplift for an apocalyptic cult. This presents Democrats with an opportunity—if they can seize it.
MOST PEOPLE AROUND THE GLOBE are patriots. It’s a natural human tendency to love your country. Among American adults, patriotism has been declining since 2004, when 91 percent said they were very or extremely proud to be Americans, according to Gallup. That figure dipped down to 63 percent in the spring of 2020, but has trended up since then. By June 2023, 67 percent were extremely or very proud of their country.
Though patriotic feelings have declined (particularly among the young), if you add the Gallup data for those who say they are “moderately” proud to be American to those who are extremely or very proud, you arrive at 89 percent of the adult population. So it would seem to be an obvious political winner.
For Democrats to scoop up the banner of patriotism will require rejecting the approach of progressives. I’m a devoted listener to NPR, and they do excellent work. But their progressive bias results in a seemingly endless litany of American sins and shortcomings past and present. Every other story seems to feature a “marginalized community,” discrimination, bias, and hardship. It’s such a pervasive aspect of the brand that I was taken aback, a few months ago, when they aired a segment on the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party that told the tale with amusement and without implied censure of America’s past sins.
Of course the country has committed its share of wrongs. What country hasn’t? As Immanuel Kant put it, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” But progressives have not figured out a way to balance the bad with the good. Arguably, our capacity to face our failures and crimes is one of the traits that sets us apart from nations that whitewash the past. Some self-criticism is a sign of maturity. Too much can be demoralizing.
Progressives are hypersensitive to the dangers of excessive patriotism (also known as nationalism). They’re not wrong to shun jingoism and a “my country right or wrong” chauvinism, but they guard against it so forcefully that they wind up sneering at patriotism itself. I recall a progressive friend who arrived at our house one Fourth of July and curled her lip at the sight of our flag.
Most Democrats are not progressives though, and they have a golden opportunity to uphold true patriotism in contrast to the nativist nationalism now proclaimed by the Republicans. Admittedly, summoning love of country at a moment when tens of millions of Americans seem prepared to return the keys of the kingdom to a sociopathic crook is not as easy as it once was.
But once you’re in the spirit, it’s actually not hard at all.
WHAT IS THERE TO LOVE ABOUT AMERICA? Let’s begin with the Declaration of Independence. Though written by a slave owner, its stirring words inspired not just colonists along the Atlantic coast of the New World, but all of humanity. As Thomas Jefferson’s great rival Alexander Hamilton put it in another context, the rights of man “are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.”
The Constitution enshrined a republican form of government, checks and balances, and rights like freedom of speech and worship, the right to trial by jury, and the right to be secure in your home from government intrusion that were practically unheard of in the eighteenth century and remain too rare today. And where those rights are honored, it is often due to the example and influence of the United States.
Seventy-four percent of Americans believe that, on the whole, America has been a force for good in the world. I’m with them.
There are countless examples of American benevolence to those in need, but one that has disappeared from our national consciousness is the story of American relief of Europe after World War I. Had he never had the misfortune to be president when the Great Depression hit, Herbert Hoover would be remembered as one of the most consequential humanitarians in history. When tens of millions in Europe faced starvation, Hoover was tapped to lead the American Relief Administration.
The nation most in need was Russia, still racked by civil war long after the guns fell silent across the rest of Europe. When the Americans arrived, they found a desperate famine that was killing 100,000 people a week. Guards were posted at cemeteries to prevent cannibalism. Under Hoover’s guidance, 300 relief workers penetrated to the furthest reaches of Russia, bringing corn and wheat to starving people. Within a few months, the ARA had hired 120,000 Russian citizens and was feeding 11 million people a day at 19,000 kitchens. Maxim Gorky wrote to Hoover in 1922: “Your help will enter history as a unique, gigantic achievement, worthy of the greatest glory, which will long remain in the memory of millions of Russians whom you have saved from death.”
The United States offered similar humanitarian relief after World War II. The Marshall Plan rescued Europe from privation and jumpstarted the continent’s economic recovery (the free part of the continent, anyway). After bitter warfare, the United States administered Japan without vengeance or plunder and put that nation on the road to democracy and prosperity.
In recent years, the United States has underwritten peace between Egypt and Israel, provided the lion’s share of funding for the U.N.’s humanitarian missions, and undertaken to save Africans from the scourge of AIDS with the PEPFAR program. PEPFAR is estimated to have saved 25 million lives . . . and counting. As Bono said in tribute to President George W. Bush, who spearheaded the effort, “This Irishman is very humbled today by the most eloquent expression of American values anyone can think of in recent times.”
American global leadership in the post-World War II era ushered in a period of unprecedented growth and prosperity for the entire world. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade began the process of reducing tariffs that raised living standards all over the world. It is now under severe threat. The NATO alliance kept the peace in Europe. It too is under threat.
On the home front, with all of our flaws, the United States has provided a haven for generations of immigrants from war-torn, despotic, or impoverished nations. Among them were my grandparents.
This nation has been guilty of slavery, ethnic cleansing (of Native Americans), discrimination, religious bigotry, and always and everywhere racism. But this is also the nation that passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Housing Act, and many more. It is the nation that, imperfectly but steadily, implemented Brown v. Board of Education.
In 1836, the world’s first women’s college, Wesleyan College, was chartered in Georgia. The following year, the first black college, Cheyney University, was founded in Pennsylvania.
The American genius for innovation gave the world many of the most significant inventions of the past two centuries. Americans invented the telephone (Alexander Graham Bell was an immigrant to the United States), the light bulb, anesthesia, the airplane, the elevator, the skyscraper, the polio vaccine, air conditioning, the cell phone, the internet, nuclear power, GPS (with key work by an African American woman from rural Virginia), and mRNA vaccines. Americans landed on the moon and established the first national parks.
America’s capacity to absorb and blend cultures from around the world led to the flourishing of music and art. Tap dancing originated here, along with jazz, the blues, movies, hip hop, and of course, blue jeans.
Our openness to immigrants, commitment to the rule of law, investment in education, and spirit of freedom have yielded one of the highest standards of living in the world, along with our towering dominance of science and other disciplines. Adil Najam, dean emeritus of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, explains American intellectual preeminence:
Since its inception in 1901, the Nobel Prizes and the Prize in Economic Sciences have been awarded 579 times to 911 people and organizations. The U.S. alone has had more than 350 Nobel winners. More than 100 of these have been immigrants and individuals born outside of the United States.
No other country comes close. The two countries apart from the U.S. that can claim more than 100 laureates are the United Kingdom and Germany. What is noteworthy is that a number of winners of both these countries were living and working in the U.S. when they were awarded their Nobel.
In fact, if it were to be a category of its own, immigrants to the U.S. who won the Nobel, would come second only to the U.S.-born laureates group. Their number exceeds that of laureates born in any single country.
That was written in 2016. The number of American laureates is now 413. The U.K. is second with 138. Germany earned 115, and it tails off after that.
There is much to make the heart swell with pride about this country. Democrats should sing it proudly. The MAGA vision of a woke, corrupt, crime-infested hellscape is not patriotism but its opposite. Speaking up for the goodness of America is just—and may also be politically potent.