Brenda Hafera
Has patriotism become unfashionable? Last year, a Wall Street Journal poll reported that just 38% of Americans view patriotism as very important. That’s down from the 70% who said the same in 1998. The question is, why?
De Tocqueville, the famous French author who loved America, offers some insights. In his essay, “On Public Spirit in the United States,” he describes two kinds of patriotism, warns of the moments when patriotism fades, and offers a solution for patriotic renewal.
The first kind of patriotism is instinctive. People love their home, and that “love intermingles with the taste for old customs, with respect for ancestors and memory of the past.” This patriotism, more monarchical in character, rests on old orders and traditions. It ebbs and flows, reigniting and then subsiding in times of war and peace.
In contrast, republican patriotism is steady, and the citizen “interests himself in the prosperity of his country at first as a thing that is useful to him, and afterwards as his own work.” He connects his character and destiny with that of his country. Republican patriotism is based in reflection, practice, and self-interest. It “is born of enlightenment; it develops with the aid of laws, it grows with the exercise of rights, and in the end it intermingles in a way with personal interest.”
The Story of the Declaration of Independence
De Tocqueville was astonished and admired that such patriotism reigned in America, despite its citizens not having resided long on the land. He even quipped that a traveler could not criticize anything about America to an American, except perhaps the climate and the soil, “and still, one finds Americans ready to defend both as if they had helped to form them.”
But “sometimes a moment arrives in the lives of peoples when old customs are changed, » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/commentary/how-re-ignite-patriotism-america
