My Kind of Patriotism
As we celebrate the 4th of July and the United States’ 250th birthday, I’m trying to remember if I was raised to be patriotic as a child. My recollection is like Arthur Krystal’s in a recent New Yorker magazine: “I did not grow up loving America — not because I thought it didn’t deserve love but because I didn’t think about it.”
Patriotism is defined as “devotion to and vigorous support” of one’s country. My earliest memories recall that my first-grade teacher in 1953 must have intended to nurture some patriotic thoughts in us when she made us stand at attention each day to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
In second grade, we had to relearn the Pledge, adding “under God” — “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” At the time, I thought God was in our Lutheran church down the street, not in our old brick schoolhouse. My question, then and now, is, “Do you have to believe in God to be patriotic?”
Later, I learned that during the Cold War, supporters who wanted “under God” added to the Pledge were “patriotically” trying to distinguish the United States from state atheism promoted in communist countries.
I soon developed my own “devotion to and vigorous support” for the 4th of July and patriotic fireworks. I loved lighting the tiny Lady Finger firecrackers you could hold in your fingers until they exploded. Later, my older brothers introduced me to more powerful firecrackers, which made LOUD noises and, when placed under an empty can on the ground, could blow it high into the air.
My first real understanding of what patriotism actually meant to me came when I turned 18 in 1965. In theory, by registering for the mandatory draft, I showed patriotic “devotion to and vigorous support” for my country. In reality, after my four years of college draft deferment, the Vietnam war was still raging and I had to decide whether to be drafted or enlist, or to register as a conscientious objector or flee to Canada.
By then, news photos, film and reporting by Walter Cronkite and others had changed my understanding of what my country was fighting for in Vietnam. Prompted by a letter from my draft board, I joined the U.S. Army Reserves.
Recently, my thoughts have returned to the meaning of “patriotism” and what has happened in American since the era when children were compelled to swear the Pledge of Allegiance.
In 1943, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, writing for the 6 to 3 majority in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, ruled that public school students cannot be required to say the Pledge, asserting that such ideological dogmata are antithetical to American principles.
“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation,” Jackson wrote, “it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”
Those are patriotic words I can defend.
Mark Larson of Arcata is an emeritus professor of journalism.
