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The Year of Living Patriotically

PARIS -- I am an American!

For me at least, celebrating the Fourth of July abroad has always been a special thrill. Whatever your political views and opinions of our leaders of the moment, you feel a physical and vibrant tie to the land of your birth, to the ideas that shaped your own brand of patriotism, your inescapable, prideful Americanism, your bond to other Americans who find themselves in Paris or Stockholm or Peshawar, places I have been on my nation's birthday.

I am hardly alone in that thought. It was Mark Twain who said: "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it."

I was greatly impressed by an essay in the current edition of Time by Peter Beinart, a senior fellow (though only 37 years old) at the Council on Foreign Relations, that bastion of American elitism on Park Avenue in Manhattan. This is part of what he wrote:

"Conservatives know America isn't perfect, of course. But they grade on a curve. Partly that's because they generally take a dimmer view of human nature than do their counterparts on the left. When evaluating America, they're more likely to remember that for most of human history, tyranny has been the norm. By that standard, America looks pretty good. ...

"But if conservatives believe that America is, comparatively, a great country, they also believe that comparing America with other countries is beside the point. It's like your family: It doesn't matter whether it's objectively better than someone else's. You love it because it is yours."

I love America because it is mine. The ideas that made us a great nation, the words of Jefferson, Madison and Lincoln, are my words. The fact that Americans have officially decided we have the right to bomb anyone, anywhere, anytime, and have adopted Chinese torture and "brainwashing" manuals in our time of fear, is my responsibility -- and it is my responsibility to try to change that.

This is a year when we will be overwhelmed with different definitions of patriotism and try to find our own. The 2008 presidential campaign may turn on those definitions. In Beinart's words, "John McCain is a walking American flag, his heroic biography at the root of his entire campaign ..."

The symbolism of the flag in Barack Obama's case is quite different. His biography speaks of another America, of other reasons for patriotic pride. "If some conservatives worry that America's recent immigration wave is fracturing the nation," says Beinart, "Obama represents the liberal faith that assimilation is relatively easy and that newcomers don't divide America; they improve it."

The son of a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas is going to have to define and defend his patriotism again and again before November, because it is not the patriotism of the many people I saw flying flags in front of the their homes when I walked with canvassers working for Obama. Even though he now seems to be wearing a flag lapel pin, he is going to have to give more speeches on patriotism and national service before this thing is over.

He may be asked again about wearing the pin, as he was asked during the primary campaign by Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News. Watching that night, I wondered why the candidate did not ask his interrogators why they weren't wearing pins. "Who the hell are you to ask me?"

But that's the way we are, telling each other that we are different from other people, better than other people. A young man from this city, Alexis de Tocqueville, watched the parade celebrating the Fourth of July in Albany, N.Y., in 1831, and then wrote this in his book, "Democracy in America":

"Nothing is more annoying in the ordinary intercourse of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans. A foreigner will gladly agree to praise much in their country, but he would like to be allowed to criticize something and that he is absolutely refused."

Then the Frenchman went to the Methodist church in the center of town to hear a reading of the Declaration of Independence and wrote: "A fine spectacle. A profound silence reigned. ... When the Declaration appealed to the justice of its cause, it seemed that an electric current made the hearts vibrate."

America still makes hearts vibrate, even if it needs some work these days.

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