Posted on 01/21/2022 6:30:51 AM PST by Heartlander
As a high school and university civics teacher for 24 years, I am rarely at a loss for words. But today, some of the things my students utter leave me more than a little intrigued.
“I just don’t want to live in a country with a health care system like this one.”
“I’m not sure the compromises in Philadelphia two hundred years ago were worth it.”
“I don’t think patriotism makes any sense. I didn’t choose to be born here. Why be proud of it?”
Ten or twenty years ago—when classrooms functioned more as arenas for intellectual engagement than citadels of emotional support—I would have pushed back a bit against such youthful drivel. These days I just nod and gently ask why they feel that way.
The lack of patriotism in young Americans has been well documented. Surveys and polls consistently reveal the same trends: for many young people America is just meh. Last year, a youth survey by Harvard Public Opinion Project revealed that only 33 percent of respondents viewed themselves as “patriots.” The results were worse among those who identify as Democrats. When asked what they associated with the word “patriot,” they listed words like “racism, xenophobia, nationalism, and ignorance.”
Which brings us to the drama from last summer.
Virtually every pundit and member of the commentariat felt compelled to say something substantive about the 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory. Predictably, most people fell into their partisan camps, with progressives making the case that modern inequality is intimately tied to transgressions from the past and conservatives responding that blanket condemnations of the men and women who built the nation are not only bad history but, as Helen Andrews of The American Conservative has noted, “nothing could be more toxic to our ongoing effort to build a multiracial democracy than to cast any race as perennial hero or villain.”
The modern American left often argues that social progress is impeded because too many Americans don’t want to “face our history” or give a “full account” of “white supremacy.” They believe the horrors of deep prejudice and discrimination are still omnipresent, albeit camouflaged in the trappings of clandestine persecution—racism is not legal, it’s “systematic.” Bias is not overt, it’s “implicit.”
Talk like this worries those of us who believe in our founding principles. And yet, for all the bombast and hysteria, what occurred last summer was actually a healthy national debate because it highlighted a fundamental tension in the American regime: how does a pluralistic society teach a deeply flawed national history that is not so riven with self-loathing that it undermines the renewal of the American Experiment itself?
A nation based on “a proposition,” to use Lincoln’s formulation, is uniquely vulnerable to being corrupted from within. If American citizenship is a matter of broad acquiescence to the liberal principles of natural law, inalienable rights, equality of opportunity, and limited government, then teaching a particular narrative of American history that indicts these same principles—suggesting racism is deeply imbedded in the national “DNA”—will result in a deep and lasting indictment of the nation for young people taking these falsehoods to heart.
This is the real danger of declining patriotism.
As we are embroiled in a debate over 1776 and 1619 over how we should educate our youth about America, my contention is that this is not the most important debate about the health of the American polity. My worry about the death of patriotism is more relational than epistemological or educational.
I worry less about young people hating America and more about their inability to understand and appreciate a basic tenet of American patriotism: how ought the citizens of a nation defined by geographic, economic, and racial diversity engage one another? We keep asking the question, “what should young Americans know about their country” when the more pressing question is “how do citizens treat those with whom they disagree?”
As to the debate about history, let’s agree everyone should know that George Washington led the Continental Army, defeated the British, chaired the Constitutional Convention, became the first president—and that he had slaves. We should embrace nuance and complexity about all of our extraordinary but flawed leaders.
The more troublesome trend in our national soul, what truly imperils our future, is ignorance about what healthy patriotism looks like for today’s multiracial nation. Much of being an American is wedded to an understanding of how to treat one another, how to hold discussions and reach accords of agreement, what it means to engage and renew our public and civic institutions from generation to generation.
On this score our nation is in real danger.
If we don’t learn how to leave our political bubbles and social media silos and meaningfully engage those with whom we disagree, then a post-patriotic America will be exclusively populated by what I am witnessing in my classroom: cool kids and contrarians. Cool kids who parrot the ephemeral zig and zag of social media algorithms rife with snark and anti-American outrage, and contrarians who respond by bolting to the rabbit holes of conspiracy theories, ethno-nationalism, and paranoia without end.
But neither self-loathing nor mindless tautologies are any way to govern a great nation. Cool kids and contrarians do not co-exist peacefully. In fact, they don’t even really want to talk to one another. Denizens of a post-patriotic nation are quick to see “the other,” reflexively clinging to both regionalism and a proud parochialism that is more one-upmanship than it is genuine pride in one’s home and hearth. This is why robust civic education that highlights patriotic values and behaviors rocks the cradle of a healthy democratic society.
Being an American and exercising genuine patriotism requires not just knowledge of the mind (knowing about our national history and constitution), but habits of the heart. This is not where we are headed. Many worry that a post-patriotic America will be a place where citizens won’t stand for the national anthem and children unapologetically don Che Guevara t-shirts in public. But the broader, more long-term, implication of civic ignorance is how such a nation will view political power. A representative democracy is only as wise and just as the leaders it elects. Once leadership descends into a form of balkanized rage, accountable only to one’s supporters or donors, then political discourse becomes gladiatorial in nature, rewarding the sharpest elbows and most vituperative tongues. Our public institutions will bear more resemblance to the Roman Coliseum than the Roman Rostrum.
When cool kids and contrarians decide to elect their representatives who will we get? Not Cicero, but Caesar. Not parliamentarians, but preening partisans. Not statesmen, but clowns. The aim will no longer be the writing and passage of just laws aiming to solve problems in a wise and prudent manner, but “representation” of each aggrieved fault line present in the body politic of today. Instead of electing sensible legislators we will select provocateurs whose function will be to annoy and disrupt instead of facilitate deliberation on the common good. Candidates who win will become functionaries of payback and retribution rather than legislative agents entrusted with the public good.
Statecraft will prove to be impossible when power is used in such a reactionary and reductive manner. True patriots don’t just “love America.” They love the republic and the republican traditions that renew it.
A problem easily solved.
Bring back the draft, and make sure that both men and women are included.
When cool kids and contrarians decide to elect their representatives who will we get?
In the words of FJB and another famous commie.....It’s who COUNTS the votes.
Did you get that? IT’S WHO COUNTS THE VOTES!
“Bring back the draft, and make sure that both men and women are included.”
Enlarge the stockade along with it.
Mandatory health/safety/PT throughout the K-12 experience.
You’re thinking rationally. The military is being lost to leftist loons. PC matters more than competence.
Just think of leftism as a religion. It is above everything to these looks. Reality or experience mean nothing to them if it contradicts their doctrine. They never learn. They just move on to destroy the next city, state, or country.
And the writer isn’t even including the millions who have already invaded this nation or are on their way here by the ten of thousands who have no allegiance to this nation but are here to sponge off her. I have a question though..what is going to happen when our government runs out of money to breastfeed those uneducated illegal aliens + others? If y’all think the homeless crap is bad you haven’t seen nothing yet! Think of the movie ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. conditions.....as we stand .America is looking more and more dire. The demonRATS are sinister!
What is obvious is every generation should have to suffer mightily to appreciate what they have.
The present DC regime is in the process of making these ungrateful young people suffer more in their daily lives than they can possibly imagine.
It will lift their mental fog.
When they have to dig through garbage trucks for food as in Venezuela, they will experience an epiphany.
“There was no single cause or event which led to the downfall of the Roman Republic. Social and political instability, rapid expansion, and corruption among the rich and powerful all played a role.”
Hmmmm! Sounds familiar.
The Marxists have long chafed under the inherent stability of the US system, with its huge middle class.
This is what unrestricted illegal immigration is intended to “correct”.
The left is intentionally destroying our system in favor of chaos, death and destruction. If that isn’t raw evil I don’t know what would be.
Why? So our white racist daughters can die forcing Transgenderism and LGBTQI rights to other countries? Have you ever actually served?>>>>>>>>>
I see you have spent too much time around the base showers.LOL
We still have Chesty Puller command types who would manage just fine.
Agree, and mandatory National Service at High School Graduation BEFORE COLLEGE.
I was immediately aware of the traditional descriptive for youth of this demeanor:
Cannon Fodder.
THIS is what bipartisanship has bought us. I never want to hear about a Republican reaching “Across the Aisle”. This is code for SURRENDER. NO MORE SURRENDER, ON ANYTHING.
Cannon Fodder applies ponly to those who would not support and defend the Cnmstitution, likje ANTIFA and BLM anarchists.
The youth who do so to support and efend the Constitution are patriots, and they always will be.They are not cannon fodder unless you have a lefty Marxist idiot commanding them.
Post-Patriotic America = No more America.
Half of the country believes men can be better women.
That is not law.
I am not very patriotic myself. I do not trust .gov in any way to have my best interests at heart.
Bookmark
“Candidates who win will become functionaries of payback and retribution rather than legislative agents entrusted with the public good. “
We are in the’ Big Get Even’for whatever the transgression of the day is.
We lost this nation when the Ten Commandmenrs were removed from the town square. We have no Guideposts no moral compass. Our form of government was not suitable for any other citizenry.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.