Patriotism by Friend & Guest Writer, Michele McFadden

I have often half-jokingly said that my two ways of being patriotic are baseball and the National Parks System. I’m not one to put my hand over my heart and say the Pledge of Allegiance or because we’re directed to sing the national anthem. How can I pledge allegiance to one country and its people without wanting to stand up for all people everywhere?

As a human being I’d rather pledge allegiance to God as I know God to be. As a Christian, I don’t pledge my allegiance to a flag, I pledge my allegiance to Jesus the Christ. (And yeah, I fail a lot!) As for the “indivisible” part, I have no problem with that—it’s just that I feel indivisible with all the Earth’s people, along with all the Earth’s animals, its landforms, waterways, “and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life,” so to speak.

In any case, the range of the national anthem makes it far too difficult for any normal person to sing (what were they thinking?), and if it is sung, then it should definitely be followed by “Play ball!”

The thing is, I’ve recently discovered that I am more patriotic than I had presumed. I do like the appellation for the National Parks System,“America’s Best Idea.” And, unlike when the national anthem is sung, I do still get chills and tear-up when “America the Beautiful” is sung—and it’s even singable. As for baseball, something about it evokes images of immigrants making their way in this new country, of immigrant kids playing it on the streets of the Lower East Side, and of my first-generation dad watching it on TV. Maybe it’s like meatloaf and mashed potatoes. It’s comfort food.

But as the recent administration has increasingly been spending time in the White House, I’ve discovered that there are other things I’m patriotic about—like the Constitution and the rule of law, 

and the system of checks and balances. I’m patriotic about presidents who understand those things—maybe even because he or she studied them in twelfth grade or even eighth grade and paid attention—you know at least took it for pass/fail and passed. Even so, expecting a future leader to get an A in American History or American Government kind of seems like a good idea.

I’m patriotic about our country’s ideals—because they are ideals and many of us keep striving to meet them the way I strive to be a little more like Christ, even though people keep telling me that Jesus didn’t really mean give all your goods to the poor and that he only meant to welcome the stranger if that stranger wasn’t Muslim or possibly black.

I’m patriotic about those ideals. I believe in what the Statue of Liberty stands for. Recently, I got to see her in all her green glory up close from the river, and with how we’ve been treating “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” my heart was tearing at me. Then, then, I wanted to put my hand over my heart. 

A few weeks ago, at the suggestion of my son, I took the sky tram to Roosevelt Island. Walking under the cherry blossoms to the southern tip, I stood silently reading beneath the words carved in granite at Four Freedom’s Park. Then, then I wanted to put my hand over my heart. I’d arrived a bit late in the day, just as the island’s Cherry Blossom Festival was ending. I guess I’m patriotic about cherry blossoms too.

When my daughter was in eighth grade, with the full support of her public, not charter, middle-school principal, I took her on a three-week tour of Connecticut and Massachusetts—an American history tour. We visited what seemed like everything—from Mystic Seaport, CT, where we helped out on a schooner, to John Adams’ house in Quincy. We walked the Freedom Trail in Boston, read gravestones, and ate at an oyster house frequented by Ben Franklin. At Mystic Seaport we saw where they built the replica of the slave ship, the Amistad; and in Boston, we went onboard that replica and descended to where enslaved people would have been chained.

We followed the path of Paul Revere, Samuel Prescott, and Billy Dawes, and I sat for an hour in a pew in the Old North Church, imagining lanterns and considering that night. We walked the 5.5-mile Battle Road Trail from the North Bridge in Concord to Lexington, the path of the opening battle of the American Revolution.

We toured Plymouth Plantation and carried tin lanterns into a dark graveyard one night as a tour guide searched for ghosts. We learned that it was the Wampanoag who made it possible for the pilgrims to make it through that first long winter and that it was they who shared their food with the new immigrants that first Thanksgiving, not the other way around.

We drank fresh-pressed cider at a mill, watched a blacksmith, and played early children’s games at Old Sturbridge Village. We toured a fabric mill where docents turned on the sound so we could hear how deafening it was for the children and immigrants who worked there, and we visited the houses where the girls lived. 

We learned about Louisa May Alcott’s father and his experiment with socialism at Fruitlands, where we also sipped the best pumpkin soup ever. We stood in the room where we imagined Louisa writing Little Women. We visited the homes of Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, saw that they lived just across a lawn from each other, and learned of the salons in Mark Twain’s parlor where intellectuals shared ideas. We walked around Walden Pond. We rode bikes on Cape Cod and, after a waiter explained how, we ate lobster in Rockport, Maine. And we did more.

Each night, I had my daughter—who has the lovely Irish-immigrant name Molly—write in her journal to which she added picture postcards and later photographs once we’d returned. I wanted Molly to understand our country, its history, what it stands for, or until recently stood for.

Did I mention that I’m also patriotic about Bob Hope and Bing Crosby movies and that I tear up at the end of both White Christmas and It’s a Wonderful Life? I simply don’t believe for a minute that that’s corny. I repudiate the concentration of income or power or making of decisions in the hands of a few rich oligarchs. I repudiate the erosion of the EPA and women’s rights. I repudiate the undermining of truth and the respect for a free press. I repudiate domination by any one cultural group—be that of white men, the banks, the oil magnates, the military, or the 1%. I repudiate the undermining of freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. I repudiate the undermining of our system of justice and the separation of government service and private gain.

I repudiate the sale of more military weapons to other countries, and applaud the selling of democratic ideals to other countries—something we can only do if we return to a form of government that represents those ideas here at home. An oligarchy is not a democracy.

Dignity. I believe I understand the unmet goals and noblest ideals of this country. I try to pass these on to others. And right now, I resist this administration because I refuse to normalize the shredding of our Constitution, our rule of law, our goals, ideals, our history, our aspirations, our experiment in democracy, our welcome to the immigrant and refugee, our respect for people of all faiths and all cultural and ethnic backgrounds. I refuse to say that these things for which this country stands are not worth remembering and consistently, against all odds, working for. 

I study, I remember, and therefore I resist.

Images added by Gail Mangham