So it is the Fourth of July, and I suppose a lot of people, like me, have taken some time to consider how lucky we are to live in this great country of ours, especially when so many people around the world live in such great poverty, or under a despotic government. At the same time, since Patriotism has been talked about a lot in the media the past few days - by which I mean various commentators insinuating that Obama is not Patriotic - I have been thinking about how the Right has seemingly stolen the word. Part of the reason is that those on the right seem to regard the word Patriotic as synonymous with the word Conservative, but also I think that we progressives don't always do a good job with articulating our own patriotism, and with it, our vision of what America is and can be. There are various reasons for this, such as not wanting to validate conservative arguments that we are not patriotic, or not wanting to get into stupid jingoistic statements about how the USA is infallible or something.
So I hope to start a discussion about how we can best articulate our version of the word patriotic, and with it, our ideas about what's so great about this country of ours, and our vision for its future, as well as share some of my own ideas. So read on...
There is something inherently patriotic about the word "progressive"; it assumes that our country will always be moving forward, that things will continue to get better, that the lives of our children will be better than ours and that of our parents. And this meshes well with our nation's history; how far have we come since Thomas Jefferson said "we hold these truths to be self-evident..." Think about how you would explain the concept of YouTube to Jefferson, and you will see what I mean. It is no mistake, I think, that the great advances of the past 200+ years have come after the beginning of Liberal Democracy, of which exhibit 1A is the United States.
My vision of the United States is summed up in the nickname, "The Land of Opportunity." For two centuries people have come here from poverty, famine, and tyranny to find themselves in a place where even immigrants in poverty can rise to unthinkable heights. And as a young person born here, I feel like the possibilities for the future are endless; they say my generation is an entrepreneurial one, no surprise given the freedom our country affords and the revolutionary times we live in.
The Progressive America is one in which America is a force for good in the world, in which we break with so many other historical superpowers by working on behalf of the little guy around the world. It is one in which anybody with an Internet connection and a big idea could start the next YouTube, because the Internet is an even-footed forum for the free flow of ideas. It is a country in which problems like Climate Change are solved through innovation, technology, and leadership in the global community. It is a world in which the government helps those who can't help themselves, who makes it its job to ensure that all people have the opportunity to be something big - and lets the magic of this Democratic society of ours do the rest. It is the land of always looking forward, where it seems that we can always solve the next big problem through sheer force of awesomeness.
It is a world where you can live your life how you want, because that is what freedom is all about. Whether that life is to go to church every Sunday, raise a family with 11 kids, and make them into a football team, whether it is to sit on the beach and spend you weekends surfing, whether it is to live on a shoestring budget and make abstract art in a studio apartment in the hip part of Brooklyn, or whether it is to drive across the country with your friends, partying in every city along the way.
It is the land of the free and the land of Rock 'n Roll. The country that gave the world Bugs Bunny and put a man on the freakin Moon. The place that has the Grand Canyon and the Golden Gate Bridge, the volcanoes of Hawaii and the Empire State Building.
A common criticism of Liberals and Progressives is that we put too much faith in the character of people, that we think it is possible to achieve some utopian perfect future. To which I say, hell yeah! Think about how far the world has come in 232 years. What we have accomplished by now is unthinkable to people back then, between modern science and modern medicine, technology and equality. And the future of 232 years from today is unthinkable to us, but I believe it is one in which the world will be a substantially better place, where the United States of America is still the greatest force for good in the world, maybe not a utopia but closer to it than anything around today, and where me and my pals will still be able to sit on a riverside, drink some beers (in violation of several municipal and state laws) and watch the fireworks.