Let us suppose, as so many do, that our politicians are all corrupt and that the wars being fought overseas are not done to defend our freedoms but to line our pockets. Let’s suppose for a moment that the worst is true – that the brave men and women who die for our country are doing so at the behest of evil men.
Does that mean you ought to hate America and what it stands for? To scorn the people who die for it?
No, I don’t think that’s right.
America isn’t a placeholder for some ideas. It’s not a vehicle for a social vision of the world. It’s not just a name. It’s our people, our culture, our community, and our home. These things are valuable in the fact that they exist and are ours. If abandoning your parents, siblings, or friends just because they weren’t the best parents, siblings or friends out there is wrong, then abandoning our country is too. After all, what kind of madman would abandon his mother for a “better” one that came along?
The nation, like the family, is necessary to our well-being. This means that we have the same moral obligations toward it that we do a family – ones owed to it out of gratitude for the good that it’s done for us. Americans who hate America do so even though they live on the land, use its language, and have inherited its traditions and history.
Those who focus on America’s shameful history, such as a history of slavery and segregation, often do so to their detriment. While they are right to repudiate the evils their fellow Americans did, they at the same time insist on seeing their nation and its culture and history as nothing but evil. This hatred is as damaging to the soul as the hatred of one’s mother and father in two ways. First, it makes one ungrateful for the good things their country has given them, as stated above. Second, it can make one incredibly bitter. Where we come from will inevitably affect our self-identity. Thus, having an evil father will reflect on you since you came from your father and share his blood. The son of such a father, when he fully repudiates his father, repudiates a part of himself. This either leads to low self-esteem (“I am so lowly because my father is evil.”) or pride (“I am so great, so I owe nothing to my father.”). Either way, it corrupts the soul of a person.
Recently, I’ve met some people who disagree with America and how it’s waged its wars. They disapprove of what America’s Founding Fathers believed and how they acted towards certain populations. To be fair, I certainly share these sentiments. However, rather than stating their objections clearly and with respect, they express them with scorn and mockery, as if this wasn’t the country they were attacking. They don’t see how an insult to their country is like an insult to their family!
To start this month of November, I want to give thanks to my country, in both word and deed. I still think there is something good about America that is worth talking about. I hope others can see that too.