The Case for Patriotism
And why it’s needed at the Democratic National Convention this week.
The presidential race has changed, and the new ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz has the momentum. But the race is still a tossup, and Democrats have an opportunity at the convention in Chicago this week to persuade more Americans to come their way.
“This needs to be framed as a celebration of America,” says Maryland Governor Wes Moore, who encourages the new Democratic ticket “to be unapologetic in speaking about their love of country.” It could really make a difference.
As Americans, we don’t just vote on issues. We’re more tribal than that. We vote for the candidates who best represent us, and their affinity for the country and its core values plays into that. We tend to support charismatic, optimistic leaders who adopt patriotic themes such as Barack Obama’s 2004 DNC speech, Ronald Reagan’s “Shining city on a hill,” and John F. Kennedy’s “New Frontier.”
Genuine patriotism is lacking on both the right and the left today. But particularly on the left.
According to recent polling, 65 percent of Democrats describe themselves as “very or somewhat patriotic” compared to 92 percent of Republicans; 34 percent of Democrats say they are “extremely proud to be American” compared to 59 percent of Republicans; and only 19 percent of adults describe Democrats as being patriotic.
That’s a problem politically.
In 2016, and nearly again in 2020, enough voters bought Donald Trump’s message of “American carnage” because at least his promise to “Make America Great Again” implied that America was great before. Too many Democrats today have a hard time saying it ever was.
The country is going through a period of reckoning. That’s a good thing. Democrats and young people are leading the way on that, confronting the darkest periods of our past and reminding America that it can do more to live up to its stated values.
But we still need heroes as a nation, and we should still find reasons to be proud of the United States.
There is much to be proud of in our story. There’s the history that we know and love: the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Gettysburg Address. And then there’s the history that we ought to know more about: the Greensboro Four, the Little Rock Nine, the 20th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, the suffragists, and the Native American code talkers in World War II.
We should learn that history, the whole history of America, including the parts we often leave out like the Dred Scott decision, the Dixiecrats, and the Chinese Exclusion Act. That history exists and we shouldn’t whitewash it. As Governor Moore says, “Loving your country doesn’t mean lying about it.”
America’s story is complicated. Full of grave sins and great misdeeds. We should know and understand those chapters. But that’s not the whole story. Throughout America’s story are also powerful examples of right making might and prevailing: Union victories at Shiloh and Antietam, D-Day and the liberation of Europe, the Army-McCarthy hearings, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the movements in Birmingham and Selma that led to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
To be a patriot doesn’t mean overlooking Japanese internment or Jim Crow. It means finding the thread of self-correction in our story, from the "shot heard round the world” to Ellis Island to the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
The United States of America is an idea. But it’s more than that. It’s an experiment in self-government. Our record isn’t perfect, and our system may be flawed, but it is preferable to any others and remains the longest-standing democratic republic in world history.
Think of what this country has produced in terms of talent, achievement, and creativity outside of politics: Miles Davis, B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, and Johnny Cash in music; Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Michael Jordan, Serena Williams, and Jack Nicklaus in sports; Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, and Sam Walton in business; Mark Twain, Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway, and Emily Dickinson in literature and poetry. That list is endless. It’s why we should think of ourselves as an exceptional nation. We’re also an indispensable nation. Consider what the world was like before America and what the world would be like without us. We should reflect on what it means to lead the free world at a time when that world is shrinking.
Whether we see it or not, this country is still seen as a land of opportunity, and is still the top destination for migrants, for higher-learning, and for entrepreneurship. We shouldn’t take those facts for granted.
We get to choose what this country represents. The flags, the songs, the symbols—they belong to all of us. They can symbolize A. Philip Randolph, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and the Moon Landing, or Father Coughlin, Charles Lindbergh, the Know-Nothing Party, and Joe McCarthy.
If we abandon our sense of patriotism out of shame, we leave it to those who love America for the wrong reasons, for blood and soil instead of liberty and justice for all. And that’s an issue in this election.
Democrats are more likely to believe that America’s best days are still ahead of us. That’s good. But they often have a hard time connecting a vision for the future with the best ideals of our past. That’s an incomplete message. That’s not a full narrative. That’s why the Democrats need to tell a story about the country that speaks to where we’ve been, where we are, and where we can go. A message that includes Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, Thurgood Marshall, and the Civilian Conservation Corps. A message about what Americans can accomplish together.
It’s good that we are finally coming to terms with our past as a nation. But criticism will only get you so far as a nation. The American people need to believe in who we are and what we’re doing here.
We are closer than ever before to being a multiracial, multiethnic democracy and making it work for everyone regardless of race, gender, class, or creed. And that should be inspiring. To meet the challenges of our time and to move the country forward we need to hear hopeful, patriotic messages from our leaders. Democrats have that chance this week in Chicago.
When Vice Present Harris announced her running mate she touched on that theme:
We love our country, and I believe it is the highest form of patriotism to fight for the ideals of our country…[T]he promise of America is what makes it possible for two middle-class kids—one a daughter of Oakland, California who was raised by a working mother; the other a son of the Nebraska plains who grew up working on a farm…[O]nly in America is it possible for them together to make it all the way to the White House.
In response the crowd chanted: U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
Patriotism is a winning message. An uplifting, aspirational politics will beat an angry vengeful one. And Democrats have an opportunity to build on that message by showing their love of country at the convention.
Michael Cooper is a journalist and attorney from North Carolina. He has contributed to The New Republic, The Week, and National Affairs.
I was born in 1958, and our next door neighbors were immigrants from Poland who came to the U.S. in 1946. They were blue-collar Democrats who never even considered voting for a Republican candidate for anything. But they were the most patriotic people I've ever known, deeply grateful for being allowed to come to America after barely surviving several years in a German labor camp during World War II, surviving only because they were not Jews.
The dominant faction in the modern Democratic party is just the opposite: they are the party of Omar, they loathe the U.S., and they don't much believe in the First Amendment. To them American history is the Howard Zinn version, just one long story of oppression with little recognition of how much the country has improved.
Ruy, it's less about pride in America as it is a pride in where America came from, which is Inseparable from God. A few years ago the DNC banned all US flags on stage. God is not mentioned one time in the DNC platform, but abortion is mentioned 13 times. Americans take notice of this stuff. The US remains strongly Christian in identification, if not practice. Even if people are "believers" personally, they want a country that, in essence, is.