Patriot Dream

Still beautiful after all these years.

Old Glory

Let’s do the usual JG thing and get unnecessarily nerdy and analytical and hopefully ending up in unexpected, beautiful territory.  Specifically, let’s talk about what it is people point to to justify their love of their country.  True, no reason is necessary–it is your country, that is reason enough.  But the reasons are still valid and therefore interesting.

I recently read a great Spanish novel from the midcentury that has a lot of Spanish and Catalan patriots talking about their patriotism, so the subject has been on my mind.  Their way of talking about their countries is pretty different from ours.

The standard ways of being patriotic that Americans typically use are talking about your country’s principles (freedom, the Constitution, democracy, the American dream), its land (O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain), and the sanctifying blood of the patriot dead (some gave all).

Other standard ways of being patriotic that Americans refer to less are glory in your country’s achievements (for us, things like Apollo 13, WWII, full grocery stores), love of her history (Civil War buffs and American heritage friends take a bow), her culture (apple pie, Thanksgiving, jazz, rock’n’roll, hamburgers, cars, guns), her might (GDP, world’s largest military, fighter jets are “the sound of freedom”), or the uniqueness of her people (which is more evident if you spend time abroad.  Americans are customer-minded, unruly but spontaneously cooperative, litigious, entrepeneurial, restless, love their guns, confident, and so on).

Then there is the patriot dream.   Certain countries have a dream that is lovely and worth loving the country for even if the dream hasn’t been achieved, may never be achieved, and in fact may be impossible to achieve.  The patriot dream is a less understood aspect of patriotism.  In some sense it bears the same relationship to the physical country that the soul does to the body.

America’s patriot dream combines the city-on-a-hill vision of the final verse of America the Beautiful—

Oh, beautiful for patriot dream

That sees beyond the years

Thine alabaster cities gleam,

Undimmed by human tears!

America! America!

God shed his grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea.

–with the settler sense of new horizons to pioneered–

We Saints should understand that patriot dream better than anyone.  It is the Millennium and If You Could Hie to Kolob (“Brethren,  it is only a little handful of Priesthood you see here tonight, but this Church will fill North and South America—it will fill the earth.”)

Finally, there is something that I increasingly think is very important but is often ignored, which is the archetypes and iconic aspects of a country.  To the extent they are tied into something about the country, they matter and should matter a lot.

What archetypal iconic things has America done?

I believe there was a colonial one, something like “the Colonial Dream” that is lost to us now.

There is the American small town.   White picket fences shaded with tall trees, front porches, farms, homemade ice cream, the barbershop and the general store, flags on the 4th of July.

The cowboy

The California Dream — sun, sand, surf, middle class prosperity, happy healthy people

Coming to America — New  York, the Statue of Liberty, a babel of tongues, hustle, learning the pledge

The open road

Happy Fourth of July.