Since September 11, 2001, many American have taken to wearing American flag lapel pins. I have never felt invited to wear a pin myself, because those who started this trend have been very clear that to wear the flag you must support certain policies. Today, I put a pin over my heart because I have come to see that there is a new American Patriotism that I can embrace as my own.
In June 2005, Karl Rove delivered a speech in which he said that "Perhaps the most important difference between conservatives and liberals can be found in the area of national security. Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of 9/11 and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding to our attackers."
Within hours, leading Democrats had taken to the Senate floor to call on President Bush to "thoroughly reject Karl Rove's purposeful attack on the patriotism of those who dare ask the tough questions" about the war in Iraq.
Denouncing the radical right wing's continued attack on the patriotism of those who disagree with them misses the critical, underlying question: What does it mean to be an American patriot? We need to respond by asking what it means to love this country and then to ask whether they truly love this country. We need to ask what it means to love this country and then ask how we can best love and care for this country.
Three decades of radical right wing redefinitions have perverted and shackled the concept of patriotism beyond all recognition. In their version, American patriotism is an unquestioned and unquestioning loyalty to the civilian managers of our volunteer army. In this version of patriotism, to question the military decisions of the state, especially and most particularly when that state is managed by a Republican administration, is to dishonor the men and women who fight and die for our country. There is no love of country in launching a war on false pretenses. There is no love of country in preventing (by disinformation) our American families, the parents and grandparents and brothers and sisters of our soldiers, from honestly deliberating, before they are sent to die, whether the cause is just and the means worthy of their blood. There is no love of country in prosecuting a war through the suspension of our most cherished rights and ideals, such that confused American soldiers somehow arrive at a dark and terrible moment when they do not know right from wrong, human decency from duty.
True American Patriotism, by contrast, emerges from a deeper and more profound source, what Abraham Lincoln described as a "covenanted" patriotism: "A sense of America as a nation formed by a covenant, by a dedication to a set of principles and by an exchange of promises to uphold and advance certain commitments among ourselves and the world." We on the left need to speak boldly of this covenant, based on caring for and loving our land, celebrating our unique American principles-our covenant to each other, love of America as a land of opportunity and finally, a pride in America's place in the world.