What does it mean to say you are a patriotic American? For me, patriotism is explained pretty well in Mark Twain’s famous quote: “Patriotism is being loyal to your country all the time and loyal to your government when it deserves it.”
When I think of what I’m most proud of as an American, I think of the ideals on which this great nation was founded. We really must appreciate the earth shaking idea that became this nation. When tyranny was the norm in the world, our nation’s founders conceptualized a nation in which people rule the government. Through the next 232 years, America has stood as a model of a new way of government, for all the world to envy.
A patriot must also be aware that America has not always lived up to the ideal on which it was founded. For years after it was founded, America kept tens of thousands in slavery. Less than 100 years ago, women in America and most black Americans could not vote. Less than 70 years ago, the American government rounded up citizens of Japanese descent and kept them in concentration camps.
As patriots, we must remember both America’s glorious past and its sometimes equally inglorious sins. We must be aware that today we are both the beneficiaries and the caretakers of our founding ideals, as well as the guardians of America’s future. For me, patriotism is not just about celebrating the past. It is about the future. It is seeing that the achievements for which the heroes of our past gave so much do not die in the future.
So I believe that patriotic Americans must keep faith not with a spot on the earth that lies between two oceans, but with an ideal expressed by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence that: “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights….” Our task is to stand up for that ideal through our lifetime and into the future, always remembering that a government is not necessarily dedicated to that ideal and that a government’s first goal is to maintain itself in power.
