Patriotism and Citizenship

Harry Neuwirth

Harry Neuwirth is a freelance writer living in Silverton, Oregon.

America, in the aftermath of the World Towers attack, is experiencing a wave of patriotism. Will the inspiration be permanent? We can already see that fervor diminishing.

How could it be otherwise?

We live in the greatest nation on earth, yet patriotism is not something we practice in our homes or promote in our communities. Citizenship, as evidenced by voting statistics and participation at city hall, doesn’t even have bleacher seats in our lives. The schools and colleges that still profess to teach citizenship provide an exotic mix of history thinned with diversity.

Representative democracy is easily the most difficult system of governance to sustain. Fascism is easy: a strongman seizes control of the military and the economic engines of the country, sinks his teeth in, hunkers down, and eventually hands or loses control to a successor who carries on with the same bulldog grip, shredding dissent as it appears. His constituents have only to follow orders: miserable to live under, simple to perpetuate.

But under democracy, every abdication of responsibility transfers sovereignty from constituency to authority, from us to them. If liberty is worth preserving, wisdom suggests that we seize this patriotic moment to heighten interest in citizenship, momentarily addicting ourselves to exaggerated displays of patriotism while we look to its foundations: our families, our schools, the media, the thrust of civic policy, our spiritual expectations, and most of all our level of participation-our informed, mature, enthusiastic participation in the affairs of our nation.

It can only happen if our schools begin to teach a vigorous brand of citizenship at the behest of constituents who demand that their children become informed, eager citizens who know the history of this nation, the legitimate issues confronting it, and the demands it puts upon them.

It can only happen if we insist that our media, from video games to national broadcast news, are inspired by us to compete with one another in offering a broad range of objective information about the world around us because we will have it no other way; because we are sufficiently informed to separate fact from frill and will reject their product if it turns fluffy.

It can only happen if we carry the demands of citizenship into our homes and neighborhoods, sharing our wisdom and insight with our children and neighbors, accepting the refreshment of theirs, then making citizenship and patriotism a fundamental part of our lives rather than something we rehearse at the start of ball games.

It can only happen when the representatives in our democracy realize that they can no longer pull the puppet strings.

If we don’t labor to keep democracy alive here in America, somebody will take it away from us! We’ve already lost much of it.

Incredible? Ask grandma and grandpa how much liberty we’ve lost since they were young. If we don’t pull in the slack now when foreign tyrants have provided us with the most powerful of incentives, we never will.