A Patriot—To Be or Not to Be?

Another July 4 has passed, as usual with impressive displays of fireworks filling the sky with color and our ears with the sounds of battles. They offer an interesting irony, as does the day itself in this present age. One of my refugee students asked me to explain this holiday, reminding me that many of us call it “The 4^th of July,” “July 4^th,” or just “The Fourth.” We have dropped the meaning from the day, just as many of us have dropped our appreciation for what the day should commemorate—freedom and the price in lives that it cost.

Unlike nations with many centuries of history, the heritage of the United States is in the vision that created it, not in venerable age or a long-established culture. How strange it is that some of our own people want to return to the very places from which our ancestors came. What is it about the Continent that so captivates the imaginations of elitists here? If Europe is so great, how did the United States manage not only to become the world's only remaining superpower and dominant economic power but also the one place on Planet Earth that attracts so many immigrants?

What is a patriot but someone who loves their country. While others have may have language, culture, and history, the United States has something unique. We have a heritage of freedom and faith. Here people found opportunity to make a life for themselves without tyrants restricting their choices, stealing their livelihood, or restricting their religious lives. For many years, we had no truly American culture. English came from Great Britain. Our music was an amalgam with roots in the many nations of our ancestors. Even now, we have a comparatively few American artists and composers that will stand the test of time, but American culture has begun to assert its influence. Television and movies, Nashville and Hollywood, broadcasting and advertising, and satellites and the Internet are spreading American ideas throughout the world. If I am a patriot, however, these are not the things I love about my country.

What I love is the Declaration of Independence, the U. S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, and Martin Luther King's “I Have a Dream” speech. I love John Smith, William Bradford, George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Calvin Coolidge, and Ronald Reagan. I love places like the White House, Mt. Vernon, Mt. Rushmore, and Arlington Cemetery. I love treasures like Plymouth Rock, the Liberty Bell, Mt. Rushmore, and our red, white, and blue flag, so rich in symbolism. I love places like the Smoky Mountains, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, and the Rockies. I love the men and women, both great and virtually forgotten who fought, some to the death, to win for us freedom and a history that I appreciate more and more as I grow older, a history that our schools are failing to pass on to successive generations.

As much as I love the vision that made America great, many hate these very same thing. They want a different kind of America. They have a vision that not only is vastly different from what our forefathers created, fought, and died for, but one that will ultimately fail. Theirs is not a vision of equal opportunity but of equal outcomes. They do not seek a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” but a elitist government, a patronizing “Just trust us and we'll take care of you” kind of government. That kind of system will rob us of the very dynamic vitality that has fueled America's greatness and achieved its amazing prosperity. To them, the best days of the United States are behind us; nothing is left but to divide and use up what our predecessors created.

I love what the Bill of Rights established—free speech, free press, and freedom to worship, among others. Those with an alternate vision are slowly taking those freedoms from us. Political correctness, empty secularism, and a extremely biased media, supported by judges with too much power for a constitutional democracy are “redefining” and, thereby, destroying our freedoms.

I don't see burning the flag as free speech, since no speech is involved. The flag doesn't represent a particular party or ideology; it represents the country itself and the ideas that define what the United States is and was meant to be. To me, burning the flag rejects that heritage, and people who burn the flag are rejecting the very idea of America. I don't love the flag, as such, but I love what it represents.

I'm a Christian. I don't worship the flag or any of the other things about my country that I love. Still, I am proud of this nation, my homeland, that made it possible for my faith to thrive and reach out to people all around the world. America has never been a fully Christian nation, but it has been a nation where truth and compassion, the life's blood of Christianity, have been able to exert a powerful influence. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the United States is home to a generous people who have given more to the rest of the world than any nation before it. We have stepped out of isolation to stand with our friends, and we dared what none have done before and rebuilt the communities of our enemies, making them our friends. Those who hate us, don't hate us for our failings, generally, but for our successes.

Progressive, non-traditional thinkers and leaders have found it fashionable to attack a caricature of Christian values, not its compassionate and generous influence. They imagine we want to run the country, create a theocracy, and force Biblical values down the throats of our neighbors. How little they understand our beliefs. Unlike those who threaten us today, we Christians believe that a person must make a free choice, accept salvation by faith, and choose to obey God's commands. While we might prefer not to have immorality flaunted everywhere about us, we see little value in forcing people to live by values they don't understand or accept. As it says in the oft-quoted 13^th chapter of I Corinthians, whatever we do without love is empty, pointless, and useless. We may slip on occasion, but we know that force and oppression are grossly contrary to our faith and to our God's commands.

The genius of the American idea is that our constitutionally protected freedoms allow free and open discussion, the practice of one's own beliefs, and opportunity to persuade people that our faith is worthy of their consideration. That's all wrapped up in the country that I love—freedom and faith, faith and freedom. To those values and that heritage, I am committed. Those define the heritage that I love. That is the ideal that I will fight for. Those are the values that make me a patriot.