We don’t like everything our government does but we work to improve it rather than attack or undermine it. It recognizes that government is the means by which we come together to solve our common problems. It believes that America should welcome refugees and others fleeing from violence or seeking a better life, as memorialized in Emma Lazarus’ famous lines on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”Īmerica’s form of Zelenskyy patriotism doesn’t hate our government. It confirms and strengthens the “we” in “we the people of the United States.” It celebrates our diversity and fights to uplift the voices of America - Black people, women, gay and trans people, younger Americans. (We are, after all, the descendants of Nathan Hale - soldier and spy for the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, who famously declared just before being executed by the British in 1776 that his only regret was having “but one life to lose for my country.”Īmerica’s form of Zelenskyy patriotism does not pander to divisiveness. Sometimes it has required the supreme sacrifice.
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That includes volunteering for local school boards and city councils, blowing the whistle on abuses of power, and paying taxes in full rather than seeking loopholes or squirreling money abroad. We have understood the need for mutual sacrifice - of everyone taking on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going. It’s based on common sacrifice for the common good.Īt times in our history America has come close to Zelenskyy patriotism. It isn’t founded on zero-sum superiority or exclusion, or on symbolic gestures, or on exaggerated notions of personal ambition. They view the nation as a site for self-centered transactions with no deeper and more enduring meaning than immediate self-gratification - a zone of self-promotion and narcissistic extravagance, where individuals can extend their ambition through iPhones and selfies and other technologies of instant gratification. But they don’t ask for personal sacrifice because they reject any notion of the common good. Trump Republicans demand symbolic gestures of patriotism, such as standing for the national anthem and saluting the flag. And who or what is America for Trump Republicans? Essentially, white and Christian.
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Trump-Republican patriotism is zero-sum, just as is Putin’s when it comes to Ukraine (or any other nation that was once part of the Soviet “empire”) - either we win or they win. “The American People will come first once again,” he says. “A nation ‘without borders’ is not a nation at all,” he has said. Although America is a nation of immigrants, Trump’s goal is to keep immigrants out. Trump-Republican patriotism is about triumphing and dominating. His version of national patriotism is closer to Putin’s than to Zelenekyy’s. Donald Trump uses the same words too - as do his acolytes in the Republican Party.