When I was a young boy, we didn’t have much in the way of material possessions. But around 1940 or ’41, we got our first family car—a heavily used 1938 Oldsmobile that I can still see so clearly in my mind’s eye. Its previous owner had lived along the Gulf of Mexico, and it was thus considered a “coastal car,” which meant it was rusted, especially along the lower-left side. Its engine had also thrown a rod, blowing a big hole in the engine block, which had been patched. It was a bit of a rolling wreck, but I didn’t see it as anything but beautiful.
In my neighborhood, the notion of a family vacation was an unheard-of luxury, something you might see in the movies but never expected to experience yourself. Yet that year, as the Fourth of July approached, my mother had the idea of driving to the beach in Galveston to see the fireworks over the Gulf of Mexico. My father was a little unsure of trusting the new car to take his young family on the round trip of roughly 100 miles, but my mother was persuasive. When the morning of the Fourth arrived, I was giddy with anticipation.
A trip from Houston to Galveston these days is relatively easy. At that time it was a big deal. There were no freeways, so we took the two-lane coastal road, and I remember how hot the day was. The humidity must have been approaching 100 percent. All the car windows were down, and to help the time pass, my mother had us sing patriotic songs. First and foremost was “America the Beautiful.” She always thought it should have been made the national anthem, as it is less militaristic than “The Star-Spangled Banner” and easier to sing. I have inherited that opinion. We did sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” too, however, and there was a debate in the car about whether we should stop so that we could get out and stand while we were singing. We ultimately decided that we should probably keep going, our hands over our hearts as we sang. As proud Texans, we included several state songs in our repertoire (“Texas, Our Texas,” “Beautiful Texas,” and “The Yellow Rose of Texas”). I remember singing my heart out, and we repeated the songs over and over again, stopping to make sure my little brother and sister could learn the lyrics.
When we finally arrived in Galveston, it seemed magical. I can still taste the salt air and see the sun flickering on the rippling water of the Gulf. As we all sat on the seawall that had been built after the great hurricane of 1900, I thought this work of civil engineering was so marvelous it might as well have been the Great Wall of China. We played on the beach, and when the sun went down, we watched the fireworks. In retrospect, this was probably a modest show —low budget and low altitude—but I was transfixed. I had never seen anything like it. I oohed and aahed at the starlit night. I knew, after all, that “the stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas.”
We had no money for the extravagances of a hotel, so the five of us slept in the car, curling up every which way. As we drove back the next morning, we were all a little stiff, but for that moment life seemed perfect. I have often wished I could have bottled that day to taste its sweet innocence once more. I had no way of knowing then that the country would soon be engulfed in war, and that some of the happy families we saw strolling the beach would have fathers go off to battle and never return. I didn’t know that I soon would be stricken by rheumatic fever and confined to my bed. And I couldn’t have anticipated that my parents, whom I can still picture sitting contentedly in the front seat, would pass away relatively early in my life. All I knew then was that I liked the feel of the road and the sight of the scenery going past. I liked going places . . . and I still do.
The open road has rightly become a symbol of America, a country whose destiny and people always seem to be on the move. And this family vacation helped fix an image of the United States in my mind as a land of wonder, awe, and optimism. Who can say definitely when and how it begins, that first, faint sense of place, of belonging; that trickle that eventually becomes a wellspring of deep emotional ties to one’s homeland? Did it start when I entered grade school, with the every-morning ritual of saluting the flag, hand over heart? Did it begin by watching my father read the newspaper every day, worrying as the world moved toward war? Did it begin with the loving teachers who taught me about the special values of citizenship, values echoed by my parents at home? All I know is that every one of these experiences bound my developing world together in red-white-and-blue bunting.
Childhood is often sentimentalized, and I know now that the country I was growing to love had its flaws. I already knew the pain of the Great Depression and would soon live through the crisis of world war. I would then go on to a career that forced me to confront the often simmering and sometimes explosive injustices of the United States: its bigotry, exploitation, callousness, and corruption. It may seem counterintuitive, but these flaws made me love my country all the more.
For I have seen how a nation can pick itself up and make progress, even at divisive and dysfunctional political moments like the present when we seem to be spinning backward. I have found that the vast majority of men, women, and children I have met over the course of my life are kind and well intentioned. For all the stories of misdeeds on which I have reported, there have been many more of heroic actions and communal empathy, whether it is a public official resisting tremendous pressure and casting a vote of conscience or townspeople standing side by side to form a sandbag line against a raging river. It is true that the news headlines often paint a dark and dispiriting picture. But in every community, on every day, there are so many who choose to do the right thing.
Today we are a divided country. Too many decent and law-abiding men and especially women are being told that this nation is not for them, that their values make us weaker, that their voice is better left unspoken. We see elected officials pounding their chests, saying their vision of America represents the only real patriotism. To them I say that patriotism is not a cudgel. It is not an arms race. It also means confronting honestly what is wrong or sinful with our nation and government. I see my love of country imbued with a responsibility to bear witness to its faults.
Our nation was built on a foundation of ideals. To be sure, we are a country of natural wonder—a cross-continental expanse of fertile farmland, churning rivers, great resources, and some of the most beautiful places on Earth. But more than land, we are bound together by a grand experiment in government, the rule of law, and common bonds of citizenship. This is what it means to be an American. It’s tragic that those with the strongest ancestral tie to the land, the Native Americans, have so bitterly felt the chasm between the soaring words of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution and the harsh reality of governmental policy. When tribes gathered to protest the oil pipeline at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, the strength of the grievance was as much rooted in centuries of persecution as it was in the pipeline itself. Despite their inability to halt construction, those activists, facing at times violent suppression, reminded us that the right to peaceful protest, due process, and equal protection under the law should apply to all who live here.
Most Americans can trace their ancestors only as far as men and women who came to the United States well after its founding. But our creed has long been that all citizens can claim an equal legacy of this nation as their own, whether they just took the oath of citizenship or their family arrived on the Mayflower. We all are allowed to celebrate the Fourth of July as citizens, even though few of us have predecessors who were on this continent in 1776.
And we should neither forget nor be paralyzed by our prior national sins. We can all feel the swell of pride walking through our nation’s capital city, even though we must tell the story of how some of those buildings were built by slave labor. We can revel in the opportunities of democracy, even though bigoted laws were passed in the chambers of Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court. We must look clear-eyed at the problems of the past and present, but be encouraged that our electoral and legal systems provide a framework for improved justice in the future.
In his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. offered one of the most eloquent personal visions of American patriotism ever delivered. Using the logic of economics to make a moral point, King called for an incredible debt to be paid. “In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check,” he said. “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” The reckoning, King said, was long overdue: “We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”
In my mind, King wasn’t calling for a revolution, even though that is how many at the time perceived it. He wasn’t even arguing that there was something inherently rotten with the protections and provisions under which the United States was founded. Rather, he believed, and justly so, that the translation of those ideals into practice had been lacking. If our constitutional protections had been dispensed more equally and fairly, he asserted, then the dreams of which he spoke would be a lot closer to reality. King was not restrained in his criticism of the status quo, but he spoke freely and with the moral backing of our founding documents. In my years covering the civil rights movement, I was always struck by the fierce determination of these men and women to fight for their place in the future of a country that had mistreated them. They were infused with an unbreakable optimism that they would prevail. This spirit has been echoed time and again by those who have demanded their full constitutional rights as American citizens.
I have long been suspicious of those who would vociferously and publicly bestow the title of “patriot” upon themselves with an air of superiority. And I have generally taken a skeptical view of those who are quick to pass judgment on the depths of patriotism in others. George Washington, in his famous Farewell Address, warned future generations “to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.” I like to think of this as an admonition, not only to be wary of the patriotic posturing of others, but also to be alert to the stirrings of pretended patriotism within oneself.
It is important not to confuse “patriotism” with “nationalism.” As I define it, nationalism is a monologue in which you place your country in a position of moral and cultural supremacy over others. Patriotism, while deeply personal, is a dialogue with your fellow citizens, and a larger world, about not only what you love about your country but also how it can be improved. Unchecked nationalism leads to conflict and war. Unbridled patriotism can lead to the betterment of society. Patriotism is rooted in humility. Nationalism is rooted in arrogance.
The descent from patriotism to nationalism can be subtle and dangerous, and I am reminded of those weeks and months after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. We had been grievously harmed, and it was only natural that we reacted by rallying together as Americans. But instead of asking ourselves hard questions about how we should proceed and making sure we did not forsake our democratic traditions, we wavered amid a climate of panic and hubris. In the name of protecting ourselves, we limited our civil liberties (the Patriot Act), undermined our moral traditions (torture), and ultimately launched a bloody and costly foreign misadventure (Iraq). Dissent, the rule of law, and deliberations on acts of war are all hallmarks of the best ideals of American patriotism, but they were marginalized during a fervor of nationalism.
A potent symbol of that era could be found in small pieces of metal that suddenly became ubiquitous. It is perhaps hard to remember, but whether or not a politician wore a flag pin became a big deal after 9/11, and for years thereafter. I see no reason not to wear a flag pin, if one is so inclined. But as President George W. Bush and his aides prominently displayed flag pins on their lapels, the subtext was clear. They were implying that their approach to the terror attacks was the patriotic one, an echo of the first rush of flag pin popularity during the Nixon administration, when the pins were sported by Republican politicians as a response to the antiwar and social protests.
In 2007, the then presidential candidate Barack Obama created a stir when he declined to wear a flag pin. He explained, “Shortly after 9/11, [the flag pin] became a substitute for, I think, true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security.” In the end, however, the distraction became too great, and Obama returned to wearing a pin.
Patriotism—active, constructive patriotism—takes work. It takes knowledge, engagement with those who are different from you, and fairness in law and opportunity. It takes coming together for good causes. This is one of the things I cherish most about the United States: We are a nation not only of dreamers, but also of fixers. We have looked at our land and people, and said, time and time again, “This is not good enough; we can be better.”
I have traveled many, many miles since that first family vacation. I have been blessed with a long and eventful life, where I have been able to see and learn so much. I have gone far beyond what I could have dreamed as a young boy. I know that I am a reporter who got lucky. I know that none of what I have been able to accomplish would have been possible without the great fortune of being born in the United States. I was taught by passionate teachers and have borne witness to men and women of far greater courage than I. There are so many who have sacrificed greatly, often with little recognition, to make this country a better, more just, and safer place to live.
Like so many, I love my country and its people. I do so with a sentimentality that may seem anachronistic in today’s more jaded world. I have been known to get emotional when I talk about “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” But to me these words mean something very deep, a feeling I struggle to put into words. They aren’t just the lyrics before the umpire yells, “Play ball!” From battlefields to segregated lunch counters, I have seen the cost of freedom and bravery. It is high.
Our nation will not survive as we know it without an engaged and committed population. We cannot wait for others to fix what is broken, and I am inspired to see a new generation of grassroots activists rise up to insist that the cause of justice is expressed broadly across America. Our founding documents contain some of the most beautiful and noble words ever put on paper. I recite them often and love them with every fiber of my being. “We the people,” all of us, are living together in perhaps the greatest social and governmental experiment ever conceived. We are being tested. How can we prepare ourselves for this moment? Are we up to the challenge?