"Only when we meet as democratic citizens do we become equals who can change the world together."
Progressive patriotism justifies risks and sacrifices to try to create a country that deserves them. |
 | | Matt Chase |
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By Jedediah Britton-Purdy |
The only time I've gone to jail in handcuffs, it was for civil disobedience at the North Carolina State Legislative Building. The state legislature had passed a law restricting ballot access — a law federal courts later struck down for targeting Black voters "with almost surgical precision" — and members of the Moral Mondays movement, led by the state N.A.A.C.P. and the Rev. William Barber, had gathered to register our dissent. I keep a photo of myself being led off by two police officers in my office at Duke Law School because I want my constitutional law students to know that I consider breaking the law the most patriotic thing I've ever done. There was nothing especially brave about my arrest, which was no doubt softened by my race and professional status, but it did show me something. I think all of us at the protest felt a bit of what Lerone Bennett Jr., the former Ebony executive editor, writing about the crowd at the 1963 March on Washington, called "a certain surprise, as though the people had discovered suddenly what they were and what they had." |
I wrote a guest essay for Times Opinion this week about this feeling, what I call progressive patriotism: a political mood in which we can criticize the country in the most severe way and also with affection, pride and a real feeling that we — all of us — are in this messy politics together. In these fraught times, patriotism can seem too similar to the right-wing nationalism that loves to wear the flag or to an insipid centrism that doesn't understand why we can't all just get along. Instead of turning away from patriotism, we should recover a patriotic spirit that can see every one of America's flaws but also recognizes that the country is a chance to build a real democracy. Patriotism means not giving up on one another or on what we can do together — and can only do together. |
Where to find this kind of patriotism? I look back to Frederick Douglass's great speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" because, in addition to unleashing devastating attacks on American racial tyranny and the hypocrisy of celebrating freedom in a country built on slavery, he found "saving principles" in the Declaration of Independence and its promise of freedom and equality. A country is a struggle and a project, and deep attachment to its best potential can drive progress. |
| READ JEDEDIAH'S FULL ESSAY HERE | | |
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