Patriotism: In the eye of the beholder?
When I was a kid, my father taught me what it was to be a patriot: You “fight like hell” for the causes you believe in—but absolutely without violence. Write letters to editors, representatives, and senators. Attend public meetings. Maybe give speeches. Spread awareness with leaflets, bumper stickers, and buttons. Donate what you can to organizations that work for change you approve of. Attend protest marches, and if the police attack get down on your knees, and put your hands over your head. And, of course, you vote—at every legal opportunity.
Many of my friends had different instruction. They saluted soldiers marching in the Fourth of July parade. Displayed American flags on their front porches on Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Refrained from “blasphemous” remarks about our government. And they, too, learned to vote.
Many times I wished we’d had a flag on the front of our house. My dad was a veteran. He had a military style cap that said, “Vets for Peace.” It wasn’t until my father died that I got my flag—a remembrance of his service. It stays formally folded up on my closet shelf.
When I was young, I did the patriotic things my father prescribed. Marches, letters, bumper stickers, voting. Then I got married. Had children. Had a full-time career. Protesting fell by the wayside. Letters to public officials dwindled. My husband and I did play music at the annual gatherings for Martin Luther King Day, singing songs I learned from my father who marched from Selma to Montgomery with Dr. King in 1965. “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round, Woke Up This Morning With My Mind on Freedom…”
My husband and I were working for the federal government—living and teaching at a Native American boarding school— when the Pentagon and World Trade Center were attacked in 2001. On the spot, co-workers called military offices to sign up. It was all quite frightening. After retrieving my kids from school, I returned to my office and removed a political poster from the wall—afraid for my job. My 14-year-old son told me he was disappointed in me. I was disappointed in me, too. The poster said, “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.”
When our kids were out of the nest, we moved to the Ozarks. We came incognito—bare bumpers. We sang at two MLK Day events, then quit. Donations to good causes generated more junk mail, so a handful of organizations receive monthly access to my bank account and I ignore all the rest. Letters to my elected officials have seemed pointless in recent years. I’m not a member of the party deemed worthy of their attention. I occasionally get riled up enough to send a letter to the Democrat-Gazette, but even those times are rare. I do still vote.
So, am I still a patriot? I suspect those who stormed the Capitol on January 6 felt patriotic. But my eyes see it differently. I got my first Covid vaccination the other day—surely that is a patriotic act! All the masked warriors working at the ECHO Clinic drive-through vaccination site made the process smooth as glass. Surely they showed love of community and country. Patriotism might be relative, but I know it when I see it.