Inexpressible pride

In a speech in Ohio last week, Sarah Palin had much to say about patriotism.
As New York Times reporter Patrick Healy described, she talked about how much she loves America, and – no lie – fresh cut grass. She added, “Man, I love small-town USA, and I don’t care what anyone else says about small-town USA. You guys, you just get it.”

The funny thing is that I am from a smallish town in Ohio that isn’t so different from the one where Palin was speaking, but I’m not sure that I “get” what cut grass has to do with loving one’s country.

This campaign has been marked, as most are, by intense patriotic rhetoric, and it is not just coming from America’s favorite Alaskan.

Biden claimed in the vice-presidential debate that paying taxes is patriotic, and people are up in arms whenever a candidate neglects to don a flag pin.

It seems we have collectively decided that patriotism is as important a quality in a would-be president as is sound economic policy or experience. But what exactly do we mean?

For all the talk about being patriotic, I have yet to hear anyone say just what it is about America they love and how they will return that to the White House. What do we really mean when we say that someone is patriotic? Does it mean they love the small towns, or they have three sons who died fighting in Iraq?

The thing that is scary about all this talk of patriotism is how vague and unspecific it is.

All of the candidates make sweeping appeals to emotion when they talk about patriotic main-street USA or hard-working Joe the plumber, but they are never quite able to pin down which qualities we all should espouse.

To me, such vague emotional claims are slightly scary. Intense, indefinable patriotism looks a lot to me like blind nationalism – the sort of thing that often accompanies totalitarian regimes and the loss of freedom.

If we truly believe in the ideals of America, we must be specific and critical in our thinking so as not to fall victim to blanket appeals to our emotions.

The patriotism I admire is the kind that is rooted in a deep belief in the ideals and history of America. It is neither fleeting nor unthinking, but rather a reasoned understanding of what is good in our system, and it sometimes involves challenging the institutions we all love.

Patriotism should not be, as Palin suggests, a vague fuzzy feeling remotely connected with grass. It should not be something that politicians call on when they need a boost in the polls, or something that leaders use to justify unpopular positions.

As a country, we need to refine our understanding of what it is about America that makes us warm and fuzzy, or we are asking to be misled.