We’re in a patriotic season, with the D-Day anniversary on June 6, sandwiched between Memorial Day in late May, and Independence Day in early July. We commemorate great sacrifices, celebrate vital triumphs and acclaim the ideals and fortitude of our founders. These observances, though different, share common elements, not least of which is our forebears’ willingness to undertake great challenges at enormous personal risk and national cost.
Independence Day celebrates the ideal of government founded by the consent of the governed, on the principle of equality and for the purpose of securing for each individual her/his inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Memorial Day has its roots in local commemorations of lives lost in the terrible Civil War that re-created our nation, ended the horror of chattel slavery in our land, and initiated a slow, ongoing struggle to extend the founders’ ideals to peoples the founders themselves excluded. The D-Day Anniversary recalls the great battle and individuals that decisively turned the tide against the march of fascism and totalitarianism across the 20th century.
Previous generations undertook these and many other great and lesser struggles in order to preserve and extend what they understood to be good. Members of those generations knew their sacrifices would resolve only finite human miseries. They realized they could not bequeath to future generations an ideal world, and that their highest labor was to leave a slightly more stable foundation to encourage succeeding generations to likewise accept enormous risk and cost to advance the human condition. That perspective of sacrifice and progress fueled their sense of patriotism, and is a valuable prism through which to assess declarations of patriotism in our own age.
Samuel Johnson famously said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Most scholars believe Johnson meant to condemn “false” patriotism that is based on petty appeals to chauvinism or the scapegoating or persecution of vulnerable populations. Such “false” patriotism is in stark contrast to the patriotism of sacrifice.
In this season we rightly celebrate the true patriotism of our founders, of the Greatest Generation and of those who gave their lives in military service. But we should be mindful that those generations’ patriotism paved the way for the sacrifices and equally true patriotism of the “Suffrage” generation, the Civil Rights generation, the Stonewall generation, and so many others who have sacrificed or continue to sacrifice and to accept great personal risk in order to expand and realize the promise of America’s founding ideals far more completely than the founders themselves could conceive.
Furthermore, we must steel ourselves with the same willingness as the military and domestic patriots referenced above, in order to combat the dangerous contemporary challenge of Global Warming. In meeting that challenge, we must avoid self-righteous, self-justifying “false” patriotism, and instead embrace the courage and spirit of sacrifice by which prior generations have approached the challenges of their eras.
Alex Harris is Vice Chair of the Ridgefield Democratic Town Committee, which supplies this column.