Sixth House on the Right - On Patriotism

Dear reader,

There is a wall in my house upon which are hung the photographs of a line of unsmiling men. Staring down with dour, black-and-white eyes from their framed perches, they silently watch the comings and goings, the game-playing, the piano-pounding, violin-plucking, song-singing, and, on dark winter nights, the gathering of the Windsor family around the fire. They are my ancestors: Horace Simeon and John Horace, Horace George and Wilbur Cunningham, Wilbur Jr. and my own father are on that wall. It is perhaps a strange thing to do, this memorializing. I haven’t seen it in many other homes; indeed, many are mystified by this odd devotion to men dead and buried long since. But they are my ancestors, and, having grown up under their gaze, it seems not at all odd to me that my conception of patriotism should be so entangled with those patriarchal stares and the love of place, of country, that those stares enshield.

My ancestors were deeply concerned with service to their country and to their local communities. Although they never held prestigious positions or wielded great power, they exemplified the idea of true patriotism as inseparable from dutiful service. When war came, they joined the armed services to defend the freedoms they loved so dearly. When peace returned, they came home determined to cherish and sustain in peacetime what they had defended during time of war. They built roads, farmed, lead local churches, and served on local and regional committees. All of this they did not in anticipation of big parades and ticker tape, but because, in the end, they loved their country in a deep and substantive manner, with the conviction that true freedom breeds responsibility.

This sense of responsibility has been instilled in me, in large part by the example of those ancestors. Their vigor in the defense of their country has been touted, has been held up as a model, by my family. Along with long reading in the history of the United States, it was, and is, through their encouragement and direction that I have come to care so deeply about patriotism and the need to serve and strengthen my country and the ideals upon which it is built.

So often, patriotism is viewed as some sort of disembodied spirit that moves us, with the help of patriotic music and grand and pompous ceremony, to a state of nationalistic fervor that, given rest and a glass of water, will quickly subside. The raising of the flag in the crisp and bright morning, the singing of the anthem at sporting events, the pop and boom of fireworks on Independence Day: these elicit a swelling pride and a thrusting forward of the jaw. But once the flag is raised, the anthem is over, and the last sad embers have fallen from the sky, the excitement and the wonder and the bombastic pride sink back into an ignored dormancy. If this is the form of patriotism we accept as real and substantive, then we are left with a twisted and confused conception of what it is to truly love one’s country. True patriotism is about service. Those unwilling to serve, those who, once the party is over, do nothing to better and advance the interests of their country suffer from a strange illusion, an illusion that, if general among the populace, can only lead to disgrace and a deep-seated apathy.

Yours,
Mr. Windsor

P.S. What's more American than peppermint tea?