There's a new party of patriotism
Republicans embrace nationalism while Democrats plant a star-spangled flag in the ground
The other day, for the first time in a very long time, I cleaned out my car. It was a harrowing experience, sorting through the detritus of many months’ worth of discarded bags, accumulated dog hair, and leftover compost that didn’t make it out of my trunk and into the wheelbarrow this summer. But among these worthless items was something possessing, for many, a great deal of worth, which had been tucked for years now into the front seat-back pocket of my Prius: a folded-up American flag.
It wasn’t always folded up — quite the opposite. In my younger days, the flag was a fixture of whatever room or home I lived in. It hung from my bedroom wall in high school, after a chance encounter with the Doris Kearns Goodwin masterpiece Team of Rivals showed me the definitive portrait of a patriot in Abraham Lincoln. It hung from my college dorm room as I became enamored with the American system of government thanks to early, well-taught polisci classes. It hung (rather dishonorably, I’m sure) around my neck like a cape when I dressed up as Captain America1 for a party my senior year. It’s safe to say that my teens and early 20s were marked by a genuine feeling of what we might call patriotism: a love of one’s country, expressed usually through national symbols like an American flag, or through acts of devotion like public service.
But these symbols, and my overt display of my of my own patriotism, receded during the later Obama years. This was certainly not due to some fading interest in politics. On the contrary: I got a polisci degree, went into political consulting, then joined a political science PhD program. The culprit instead was an increasing trend that, in reality, had been on the rise for quite a few years at that point: the claiming of the symbol of the American flag, and of American patriotism generally, by one political party. More and more with each passing year, the assumption grew unabated: flying an American flag must mean you’re a Republican.
Not wishing my patriotism to be construed as partisanship in one way or another, I put the flag away. There it sat, folded up, lonely, in the seatback pocket of my car for the better part of the last decade. But I’d like to confess here that my flag’s confinement has come with a simmering sense of loss and sadness. All these years, I’ve been waiting for a time when I could fly it again without assumptions being made about me, save one: that on the whole, I think our country is pretty great.
For awhile there, most Americans agreed with this very sentiment. Not so much lately. Take this chart from the Gallup Poll, which combines survey responses from the last 24 years to track Americans’ self-reported patriotism over that time. Specifically, the chart shows separately the percentage of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents who report feeling “extremely proud” to be an American.
This chart tells us a few things. The first is a trend over the past twenty years that can’t be ignored, and that we can see most clearly by looking at the figures for the comparatively less-biased Independent voters. Americans over the past few years have been less likely than ever to report feelings of extreme pride for their country. There are many interesting and complicated reasons for this that there’s not time to address in this space.
Second, we can see that partisans’ sense of national pride follows some maybe-obvious political trends. Both parties’ patriotism spikes after 9/11 (though Republicans spike higher); Democrats come back down to earth as the Bush years progress and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan spiral, along with America’s international reputation, into unpopularity; Republicans begin to recede during the years when Barack Obama was our chief international diplomat, before bouncing back after Donald Trump won the 2016 election. Democrats, meanwhile, plummet to new lows of patriotism after Trump’s election.
Third, that my growing sense in the early 2010s I discussed earlier — that patriotism was becoming a partisan exercise — was, in a way, both ahead of its time and behind the times. Modern Republicans have clearly always outstripped modern Democrats in their levels of expressed pride in their country; on the other hand, the differences were much less pronounced in the early-mid 2000s, when I first started to get all hot and bothered about separation of powers, checks and balances, and the like.
But like any interesting chart, the numbers we see above don’t tell the whole story. Yes, Republicans are more expressively patriotic than Democrats. But one thing these figures don’t tell us? Exactly what it is about this country that Republicans and Democrats are so proud of. We know these cross-party differences exist: we can usually see them manifest in the symbols folks use to signal their patriotism. Protest, multicultural immigration, and a robust and representative federal government for Democrats; the second amendment, military service, and, yes, the star-spangled banner itself for Republicans.
But today, it seems more apparent to me than ever that the differences in how the parties embody patriotism go even deeper than symbols; and that the Republicans’ lurch towards a different, darker brand of patriotism has changed the equation entirely.
Back in July, I was watching Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio give his address to the Republican National Convention, accepting his party’s nomination for Vice President. In it, he offered a rhetorical riff based on a set of remarks he’s given in the past entitled, defiantly, “America is a Nation.” He talks specifically about the (mostly white) folks who live where he grew up in rural Kentucky, emphasizing their many generations of ancestors who have inhabited the land (bolded emphasis is mine):
Our media calls them privileged and looks down on them. But they love this country, not only because it’s a good idea, but because in their bones they know that this is their home, and it will be their children’s home, and they would die fighting to protect it. That is the source of America’s greatness.
… Now that’s not just an idea, my friends. That’s not just a set of principles. Even though the ideas and the principles are great, that is a homeland. That is our homeland. People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home. And if this movement of ours is going to succeed, and if this country is going to thrive, our leaders have to remember that America is a nation, and its citizens deserve leaders who put its interests first.
America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation. Now, it is part of that tradition, of course, that we welcome newcomers. But when we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms.
Vance is basically pushing back against this oft-cited idea that America is the first “creedal nation”; that above all else, it’s a symbol, a set of ideas to be aimed towards more so than a static set of people to be preserved. Of course we have traditions and history and land, but we were were founded on the basis of enlightenment ideas (freedom from tyranny, self-determination, representative democracy and responsiveness to the people, whoever they are) as our entire reason for being. The ideals of this country are therefore a cause in and of itself, one greater than any of its temporary inhabitants.
But for Vance, the American idea as something to strive for does not cut it as a definition of a nation. Nor does it seem to for Donald Trump. Here are some remarks from late last year he gave at a rally in New Hampshire:
They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.
This, dear readers, is not patriotism — it is nationalism. What Trump is saying most viscerally and explicitly, and what Vance is saying dressed up in the language of the elite, is that America is not a set of ideals we continually strive for. America is instead, more than anything else, a homeland consisting of those who own that land. It is, by definition, the traditions and power of the (white) people who “discovered” it, and their unwillingness to bend or adjust in the face of a changing, multicultural world, that makes America great. The great project, then, is to make America great “again” — to go back to a time when our story was simpler, less diverse, and less plural. America is a land, a place that must be defended against from outsiders who know nothing of these traditions. After all, how could they?
It is a view of our country that is calcified, inflexible, scared, and defensive. To many, it is admittedly powerful.
It is also narrow, unrealistic, and not very popular to the average American. And, if the convention that showcased the Harris-Walz ticket to the world a couple of weeks ago is any indication, the Democrats have noticed.
The convention and the symbols used throughout made a major effort to invert the patriotism narrative, the same one that forced my own flag into the seatback pocket of my car a decade ago: that loving your country is an act of devotion reserved for Republicans. Instead, the Democrats waved (with great frequency) “USA”-emblazoned placards, chanting those same three letters on multiple occasions that have been largely absent from their party’s rallies and conventions for the past couple decades. Speaker after speaker was trotted out extolling the virtues of America, what we have accomplished together, and what we could accomplish in the future (if, as was implied, we elect Kamala Harris in November).
Interviews conducted by the Washington Post and others saw this reflected organically in the delegates on the floor, including Umi Grigsby, an Illinois delegate and Liberian immigrant: “It’s interesting how there’s one party that seems to feel like they own patriotism and own the U.S. flag,” said Grigsby, “when actually there’s another party that’s saying, like, ‘You can all come here and we can all, you know, succeed here and it’s for all of us.’” I can’t articulate a better definition of the American Dream. Umi’s is a point of view that vindicates my very patriotic teenage self and the American symbols he worshipped.
And yet, even the more traditional, Republican-coded symbols of patriotic sacrifice — most especially, those of veterans and the military — were leveraged by the Democrats to make the case against the kind of nationalism Trump and Vance espoused at their own convention. The running mate choice of Gov. Tim Walz — the white guy who served for more than two decades in the national guard and wears camo hats unironically — is just the most visible manifestation of this case.
Think, also, about the song Kamala Harris immediately chose as the theme for her entire campaign: Beyonce’s “Freedom.” How many times over the past two decades has that word been trained against the Democrats like a heat-seeking missile; and how many times was it repeated proudly at their convention a couple weeks ago?
Probably the most explicit example of the Democratic Party’s wholesale taking of the patriotism mantle came not from a Democrat, but from a Republican — former Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who made his name as a frequent Trump critic and member of the bipartisan congressional committee tasked with investigating the storming of the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Kinzinger, I should note, is an Air Force veteran who flew missions in South America, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In a short but stirring speech at the convention, Kinzinger endorsed Kamala Harris — his ideological opponent — as a defender of American patriotism, all while delegates waved hundreds of American flags in support:
I’ve learned something about the Democratic Party, and I want to let my fellow Republicans in on the secret: The Democrats are as patriotic as us. They love this country just as much as we do. And they are as eager to defend American values at home and abroad as we conservatives have ever been.
Having faith in this thing we call a country, this group project, which — like all group projects — is sometimes deeply frustrating and obviously imperfect.
Even the Democrats’ “new patriotism” is far from a perfect model for how to properly and substantially love our country. The line in Kamala Harris’s speech extolling the “greatest nation on Earth” stirred many hearts, and is probably the right message from a political perspective just over two months from the election. But absent from the convention was maybe the most difficult task of patriotism to live out: tough, constructive criticism. Real patriots recognize the flaws of their country, and support efforts to improve it, and to make it, as our Constitution prescribes, “more perfect.” If Americans want their country — and their relationship to it — to truly be “great”, then they need to be willing to call it out when it’s making a mess of things.
We know, of course, that criticism isn’t always constructive. Burning the flag in protest outside the Democratic Convention is something that one obviously has a right to do, but it’s hard for me — an actual expert on the subject — to see how it’s helpful. Talking about how much this country sucks all the time can careen into fatalism and dislocation, and as a result can be worse than unproductive. Apologies for a nation’s past sins are important; forgiveness is, too.
In the end, we need both ends of it. Any loving relationship — between a person and another person, or between a person and their homeland — must be based in honesty and good faith. That means speaking out when you or your fellow Americans are being discriminated against; or when your military is being sent pointlessly into battles it can’t win; or when your government fails, epically and historically, to respond to a worldwide pandemic. Patriotism, to me, is a set of values which — like the idea of America itself — are never fully achieved and completed, but sought after, zealously and ceaselessly, by this generation and the next and the next.
It is also a high-wire political act. The full embodiment of patriotism — one that includes full-throated honesty about America’s failures — is not one I would ever expect to see on full display at a political convention, the goal of which is to fire up a “big tent” coalition of voters, including those who fall into that “extremely patriotic” category I talked about earlier. Kamala Harris is trying to win an election here, after all.
We are still in the early stages of the patriotic renaissance of the Democratic Party, and it’s not clear to me that it will last one moment past Election Day. It may not even last until then. A pro-democracy coalition that includes Adam Kinzinger on one end and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the other is one that has in common only a precious few principles and values. But they are, in my view, the most important values we have; and I appreciate that one of our two major parties is taking a stab at defending them.
Who, of course, does not wear an American flag as part of his outfit.
Great article, Charlie. I like how you point out the burgeoning difference between nationalism and patriotism. During the last decade or so almost every Fourth of July Mass I attended included a hymn by Sibelius. It is called “This is my Song”. The music is pretty uninspired but the lyrics are excellent food for thought. The lines show the composers great love for Finland yet acknowledges that all countries are part of this world. “ My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean, and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine. But other lands have sunlight too and clover and skies are everywhere as. BLue as mine. O hear my song, thou God of all the nations, a song of peace for their land and mine.”
I guess it's a pretty good gig if you can convince the American public that your country's flag is a symbol of your political party? I mean most school kids throughout the country pledge allegiance to it each day, the Star Spangled Banner is played at basically every sporting event in the country, and its displayed throughout American government buildings everywhere. As you pointed out, most would argue that's what the GOP did successfully for a while (and why your flag sat in your Prius for years), but as an independent American, I'm glad to see Dems making a solid effort to return it to the mainstream - although they probably wouldn't shy away if somehow they could actually shift the pendulum all the way to American = Democrat.