What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism

by Dan Rather

The true foundations for those buildings are not brick and stone, but our Constitution, our rule of law, our traditions, our work ethic, our empathy, our pragmatism, and our basic decency. As I have seen over the years, when we cultivate these instincts, we soar. When we sow seeds of division, hatred, and small-mindedness, we falter.

The United States does not belong to any one of us. Its strengths and riches give its citizens tremendous advantages, but we must not deplete them for the future. That wisdom and compassion can also extend beyond our borders.

I see my love of country imbued with a responsibility to bear witness to its faults.

the right to peaceful protest, due process, and equal protection under the law should apply to all who live here.

We all are allowed to celebrate the Fourth of July as citizens, even though few of us have predecessors who were on this continent in 1776.

And we should neither forget nor be paralyzed by our prior national sins. We can all feel the swell of pride walking through our nation’s capital city, even though we must tell the story of how some of those buildings were built by slave labor. We can revel in the opportunities of democracy, even though bigoted laws were passed in the chambers of Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court.

George Washington, in his famous Farewell Address, warned future generations “to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.”

It is important not to confuse “patriotism” with “nationalism.” As I define it, nationalism is a monologue in which you place your country in a position of moral and cultural supremacy over others. Patriotism, while deeply personal, is a dialogue with your fellow citizens, and a larger world, about not only what you love about your country but also how it can be improved. Unchecked nationalism leads to conflict and war. Unbridled patriotism can lead to the betterment of society. Patriotism is rooted in humility. Nationalism is rooted in arrogance.

Dissent, the rule of law, and deliberations on acts of war are all hallmarks of the best ideals of American patriotism, but they were marginalized during a fervor of nationalism.

Patriotism—active, constructive patriotism—takes work. It takes knowledge, engagement with those who are different from you, and fairness in law and opportunity. It takes coming together for good causes. This is one of the things I cherish most about the United States: We are a nation not only of dreamers, but also of fixers. We have looked at our land and people, and said, time and time again, “This is not good enough; we can be better.”

Patriotism would require standing up to what I had seen, not standing alongside it in silence.

To suppress the vote is to make a mockery of democracy. And those who do so are essentially acknowledging that their policies are unpopular. If you can’t convince a majority of voters that your ideas are worthy, you try to limit the pool of voters.

Dissent is most controversial during wartime because it is cast as unpatriotic and dangerous to the national cause. But that is precisely the time when a democracy should be asking itself difficult and uncomfortable questions.

The role of dissent is to force all of us to question our dogmas and biases. It is to stretch the spectrum of discourse.

“I figure I was politically unwise but morally wise. I think I have a role to play which may be unpopular.”

To stand up and say something isn’t right takes guts, no matter who you are, but it is especially true for those who have traditionally been more vulnerable members of society.

Orwell understood that a government that is beyond the reach of accountability has little incentive to tell the truth. Indeed, its power may arise from the obliteration of objective facts. In the world of 1984, contradictory statements lose all sense of context and we are left with preposterous slogans: “War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.” And yet Orwell asks us, if there is no one with the power to call out a lie as a lie, does it end up ceasing to be a lie?

But inclusion, not assimilation, should be the key concept in seeking, ever seeking, a more perfect national union.

And if this impulse of forgoing our individual responsibilities is left unchecked, it absolves us from our own responsibility as citizens to form a more empathetic union with others.

Empathy is not only a personal feeling; it can be a potent force for political and social change.

Patriotism and sacrifice know no ethnicity, race, or religion.

According to the Pew Research Center, in 1965, 84 percent of Americans were non-Hispanic white. By 2015, that number had dropped to 62 percent. And they estimate that “by 2055, the U.S. will not have a single racial or ethnic majority.”

America will no longer be America. They have always been wrong. We have attracted some of the best scientists and inventors and entrepreneurs and artists and athletes and every other category you can think of because we are a place where people of all kinds can be Americans.

We must find a way to defeat the forces of intolerance.

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts.”

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’

It is what the comedian Stephen Colbert dubbed “truthiness,” a feeling that an erroneous opinion that “sounds” true is just as valid as the actual truth.

Science is much more than the accumulation of facts; it is about the willingness to reevaluate our assumptions in the face of data to better see, understand, and improve our world.

It only has to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with those things. It has nothing to do with the military. I am sorry.

“There is in fact no subject to which a member of Congress may not have occasion to refer.”

“If you can read, you can educate yourself. That was my main point.”

“The harm of a censorship system is not just that it impoverishes intellectual life,” Ai wrote in a column for the New York Times in 2017. “It also fundamentally distorts the rational order in which the natural and spiritual worlds are understood. The censorship system relies on robbing a person of the self-perception that one needs in order to maintain an independent existence. It cuts off one’s access to independence and happiness.”

Art is an attempt to capture the truths of the world as you see it in a medium you can share with others.

Nature was not there for us to exploit or toy with.

(It should be noted that the phrase “under God” was not added to the Pledge of Allegiance until the Cold War, after I had graduated from college.)

But there should be no dispute that if American schools don’t improve, America will lose its world leadership.

And I believe that whatever system emerges in the future, it must hew to our ideals of public education: It must be open to all, free of charge, and of the highest quality.

Instead, what we are seeing is a persistent (and in some cases increasing) de facto segregation of schools along fissures of race and economic class, between urban and suburban districts, as well as within cities themselves. We see rising tuitions at public universities and the under-resourcing of community colleges, one of the unheralded backbones of our educational community. We see educational standards based more on politics than on pedagogy. And when it comes to training future generations, there are ...

a truly free populace could not remain ignorant,

But the fight for the soul of American public education is one from which none of us can afford to shrink. It is in essence a battle for the heart, soul, and future of the United States.

It would behoove us to remember that America was conceived and built by risk-takers and explorers. We have been a land of movement, new thoughts, and unbridled audacity.

We cannot be afraid to act big, but we also cannot be afraid to reassess and address problems that may arise.

It is true that we are a unique nation with a unique history. However, that does not bestow on us a birthright of superiority.

A life path that you expected to stretch into the future can suddenly take you off a cliff.

Courage, I know, means going forward.

The order of the past, of how governments were meant to run and how presidents were supposed to behave, has cracked.

It takes work to clean things up, to provide order. And these days, it feels as if our world is coming apart.

“The work may be hard, the personal rewards uncertain, but we refuse to accept that the world cannot be made a better place.”

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

As we seek common ground with our fellow citizens, we cannot forsake our core values. Compromise cannot be confused with capitulation.