St. Croix Review - American Patriotism

American Patriotism

John A. Howard

John A. Howard is a senior fellow at the Howard Center on Family, Religion and Society in Rockford, Illinois.

The date is September 20,1945. The setting is Chungking, China, where General A. C. Wedemeyer is hosting a dinner for eleven American soldiers just released from a Japanese prison camp. Years later, General Wedemeyer reported what happened that evening after he had offered a toast, to his honored guests.
General "Skinny" Wainwright, tall and gaunt, arose unsteadily to respond in behalf of his comrades. He pulled from his shirt pocket a wrinkled piece of paper. There was silence. Clearing his throat, the old general read slowly.

From an April 28, 1983 speech to the China, Burma India Veterans Association.

      This sense of patriotic duty, so powerfully phrased by the general, was shared by most of America's troops in World War II. That generation grew up in a time when the school day began with the pledge of allegiance and often a patriotic song, and all the children studied the history of the United States and learned about the lives and judgments of the remarkable men who forged the American government.
      James Russell Lowell, the American poet and diplomat, was once asked by the French historian Francois Guizot, how long the American Republic would endure? "As long," said Lowell, "as the ideas of the men who founded it remain dominant."
      During the half century since World War II, the ideas of the Founders have lost their prominence in the schooling process and receive scant attention by the nation's authors, poets and playwrights and political leaders. The Fourth of July, our country's patriotic holiday, offers the occasion to revisit some of the ideas of the Founders.
      In most other nations, the people's devotion to the homeland is inspired by a rich mix of cultural features uniquely their own-distinctive language, cuisine, beverages and clothing, folk-heroes, literary, artistic and musical giants from centuries past, and architectural wonders known to every child-a mosaic of national treasures. American patriotism is altogether different. Consider for instance, the admission to the Union of Hawaii and Alaska. These two territories, culturally, were remarkably different from each other and from the forty-eight states, and yet both were instantly accepted as full and equal partners. This welcoming embrace of peoples of a dissimilar heritage is an extraordinary occurrence, and reflects the particular nature of our national origin.
      The American Revolution was fought for a single purpose, to achieve freedom from British tyranny. The Declaration of Independence cited twenty-seven kinds of oppressive action and reported the prolonged and futile efforts the colonists had made to bring an end to these injustices. The anger and frustration reached the point that Patrick Henry burst out, "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?"
      The price Americans paid for their freedom was eight long years of war and hardship and sacrifice. When liberty was finally achieved, its protection was the primary concern in designing the constitution and in adding nine amendments that specified rights of the citizens that could not be diminished or negated by the government.
      The creation of the United States of America shattered existing concepts of political institutions. In a speech at Colonial Williamsburg, the British author, Barbara Ward, said

The men who legislated here nearly two centuries ago . . . with breath-taking audacity stood up in this little room and dared to legislate for mankind. For-make no mistake-that is what they were doing. They do not say, "we Virginians," they do not say, "we Americans," they say "all men." All men are free and independent, "all have certain rights," "government ought to be constituted for the common benefit, protection and security of the people."

Although she was referring to the Virginia Declaration of Rights adopted in June 1776, these concepts were principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence a month later.
      The Founding Fathers not only knew from their own experience how precious liberty is to the human being, but they also knew that it was at least as difficult to sustain liberty as it was to achieve it.
      In his Inaugural Address, George Washington dwelt primarily on what he believed to be of the greatest importance to the new government, the character of the people and of their elected officials. "Rectitude and patriotism" he saw as the surest guarantees that conflicting interests would not destroy the fledgling republic. "The foundation of national policy," he said must be "the pure and immutable principles of private morality."
      Washington stressed standards of the highest character throughout his career in the army and the government. In this emphasis, he was transmitting the wisdom of the French political philosopher, Charles de Montesquieu, whose major work, The Spirit of the Laws (1748), set forth a number of principles woven into the U.S. Constitution. Montesquieu explained that a republic could only survive as long as its people were virtuous.
      In every society there must be some means for bringing about the cooperation of the participants so that, together, they can accomplish the purposes of the group. Each individual faces the conflict between what he may want to do at a given moment and what the group may need to have him do. This push-pull occurs in all organized activities, a baseball team, a family, or a business enterprise. It is especially difficult to achieve the necessary degree of cooperation for a nation of free citizens.
      Most governments decide what they require of the people, and issue decrees to be enforced by police, and by punishments, which in some nations are brutal and inhumane. In a smoothly operating free society, the cooperation of the citizens is primarily achieved, not by laws, but by the willingness of the people to abide by innumerable, informal standards of conduct. These include lawfulness, truthfulness, civility, manners, morals, kindness, respect for the other person's rights and sensitivities, sportsmanship, loyalty, marital fidelity, integrity, earning one's own way, and many more (above all) a willingness to use social pressures to encourage other people to abide by the informal rules.
      As long as such civilized codes of behavior are generally observed, the people can live together amicably and productively. When the informal rules break down, trouble follows. When the numbers of citizens revert to the savage inclinations to cheat and lie and steal and vandalize and in other ways take advantage of their neighbors, then the government is called on to pass more and more laws, and hire more police, and build more prisons, and the free society, no longer virtuous, turns itself into a new tyranny as the laws and penalties keep multiplying.
      The Founding Fathers' recognition that the well-being of the free nation depends on the character of the people was still of the highest concern to American statesmen when the seventh president, Andrew Jackson, gave his Farewell Address in 1837.

. . . You have the highest of human trusts committed to your care. . . . Providence has showered on this favored land blessing without number and has chosen you as guardians of freedom, to preserve it for the human race.

The ideas of the Founders that James Russell Lowell believed to be the essential foundation of our free society have not been kept alive in the public consciousness over the last half-century. General Wainwright's troops clearly understood the obligations that free citizens must accept, and the sacrifices that free citizens must make. Somehow, in the years since that time, America has failed to introduce new generations to their cultural heritage. The task now is to help all Americans understand why honorable conduct in all aspects of life and sacrificing for the general well-being are the marks of a true American patriot, and are the best guarantees of their liberty.