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With All the Racism in America, Why Should We Be Patriotic at All?
Despite all our political warts and boils, there is something truly unique and special about our nation
Yeah, we complain about America. We do it on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. We complain about America standing in line at Safeway, at Starbucks, and at the barbershop. We especially complain about America online where most of us enjoy the safety of anonymity. Our right to publicly complain about our country and our politicians is surely the most precious of our Constitutional rights as Americans.
But there’s almost always a point where we draw the line, a point where we willingly, even passionately defend our nation, warts and all. That’s not an American thing, but a human thing — go to any nation on the planet and you will find the local citizenry will just as passionately defend their own nation, no matter how tyrannical their government may be.
For example, a few weeks ago I received a response to an article I wrote concerning the inevitable failure of what I termed the white supremacists’ race war against nonwhites. The response implied that immigrants do not truly assimilate but build enclaves of their own and do not interact well with immigrants from other nations. His point was (in so many words) that…
