Patriotism and Community Spirit

Americans consider themselves very patriotic.  Indeed, flag-waving and claims of American exceptionalism are everywhere.  Many people have the stars and stripes flying over their homes.  We celebrate rapturously on Independence Day, sending glorious fireworks high into the sky to express our patriotic fervor.

We are proud to be American.  We believe that our country is the best place in the world to live, that we have more freedom, more opportunity, more of everything!  Most of us have never been outside of the United States, but we feel this anyway.  We believe that our economy and way of life are unique and that the rest of the world would love to be Americans.

We also complain bitterly about any Americans who criticize our country or perform protests in sporting events or through music or the arts.  We heap contempt on historians and journalists who interpret our current state or history in any manner that doesn’t depict it as a uniquely virtuous example for the world to study and follow.

It is human nature to take pride in certain aspects of one’s life.  Normally, being proud of something is a result of having accomplished some feat or having worked hard to reach some goal.   But the fact that our being American is purely an accident of birth and not any sort of achievement doesn’t seem to deter us from flaunting our American pride and patriotism.  The ironic nature of this type of pride doesn’t seem to occur to us.

Interestingly, this rabid patriotism doesn’t seem to extend far beyond lip service or superficial expressions of community, especially if it impinges on any so-called ‘freedoms’.  One would think that such fervent patriotism would imply a willingness to sacrifice for the good of the community, to place a higher value on the common good than in indulging all of one’s individual desires. 

But this is not the case in America.  Indeed, we have less allegiance to the ‘social compact’ – the obligation to support the entire community - than any other developed nation.  The examples of this are numerous:

• COVID – The resistance to mask-wearing, shutdowns and social distancing because of their curtailment of ‘freedom’.  The refusal to be vaccinated when it would clearly help end the pandemic.
• Healthcare – the reluctance to provide universal, free healthcare to all citizens in the wealthiest nation on earth
• Recycling – the paltry efforts to recycle waste and reuse materials to support the environment because it isn’t convenient to do so
• Transportation – the unwillingness to invest in public transportation that would help lower income citizens immeasurably
• Energy – the arms race of larger and larger gas-guzzling vehicles in the face of climate change and environmental destruction
• Education – the huge disparity in education, exacerbated by the growth of private schools and wealth disparities
• Guns – we are more concerned with our individual ‘freedom’ to own guns than in finding a way to reduce shootings, suicides and gun-associated crime in our society.

Our patriotism and love of country is a rather strange, contradictory attribute.  We are in love with a certain idea of America, not in the community itself.  We love America abstractly, not concretely.  We love America as long as it gives us a maximum of freedom and a minimum of social obligation.  We love a mythical America of the past, an America that was never as ideal as we made it out to be, and one that is untenable in the finite world that we now inhabit.

There is a big difference between patriotism and true community spirit.  The former is an empty shell of communal vanity, the latter an action-oriented pursuit of a better world.  We need less flag-waving and more spirited actions to make our community, and ultimately all communities, thrive.