What Is Patriotism?

It's the 4th of July, and as usual we have the patriotic displays, from the reading of the Declaration of Independence to the fireworks to the races complete with military men and women in attendance and flyovers from the local Air Force wing. It's enough to inspire you to think that the US is the greatest nation on Earth and its people are its backbone. That may very well be true, but it still leads me to wonder about it.

It used to be easy for me. Patriotism to me was love for my country and a willingness to do anything for it. I never thought to question its leaders. Why would I? After all, they were elected, thus representative of the will of the people, a perfectly logical conclusion to come to. I did my duty over the course of 12 years, was a constant volunteer, and answered the call every time I was asked to. I thought we were doing the right thing when we invaded Afghanistan, and I believed it when we were told that there were weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. When they failed to materialize I started to have my doubts, and they have not left me since.

That was the catalyst for my questioning of what patriotism really is. Is it unthinking deference to our government and its policies? I simply cannot do that anymore, not with the revelations regarding the NSA, not with the continued existence of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, not with the economic recession, and certainly not with the polarized state of our legislatures and an understanding of how it came to be that way. It's not so much my education that caused me to change my mind as it is my ability to think. It is an uncritical mind indeed that looks at the state of our country and thinks that everything is OK. I'm not blaming anybody for this, there's enough blame to go around, but in the end we still have people who wave the flag, talk about supporting the troops, and hurl jingoistic epithets while claiming that the United States is the best country in the world, a spurious claim in 2014.

None of that really answers the question, though. I now consider it my duty to question my government and its actions, which brings us full circle on this Independence Day as that is precisely what the Declaration of Independence was, a statement of reasons defining the political separation from England. I suppose that makes me as patriotic as the America: Love It Or Leave It crowd, but somehow it doesn't feel that way.

I suspect I'll never really get a satisfactory answer, but until I do I will always have trouble understanding what it means to be a patriot even as I do my best to fulfill the oath I took when I enlisted (even as I am no longer legally bound by it), to defend the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. While I may not do that in a military capacity anymore, I can advocate for causes, I can vote, and I can work for change. In the end that will have to be good enough.