On being a patriot

I wasn't sure what to say on this fourth of July. I am labeled unpatriotic because I don't think the United States can do no wrong. E. J. Dionne has some thoughts today in A Dissident's Holiday. Go read the entire piece but here are a few snips.

Most reformers guard their patriotic credentials by moving quickly to the next logical step: that the true genius of America has always been its capacity for self-correction. I'd assert that this is a better argument for patriotism than any effort to pretend that the Almighty has marked us as the world's first flawless nation.

[.....]

This telling of the Fourth of July story identifies the day as part of a long, progressive history and turns "agitators" and "plotters of mischief" into the holiday's true heroes. The Fourth is transformed from an affirmation of continuity into a celebration of change. The republic's founders are praised not because they inaugurated a system designed to stand forever, unaltered, but because they blazed a path toward what Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has called "active liberty." They set the nation on a course that would, as Breyer put it, expand "the scope of democratic self-government."

This is not a philosophy for the stand-patter nor a recipe for living in the past. And it emphatically rejects any definition of true patriotism that cedes to a current ruling group the right to declare what is or is not "Americanism."

When I look at this picture I wonder if the symbol of this great nation was shedding tears because of the attack on the United States by al-Qaeda or if he was anticipating the internal attack on everything this country stands for from those in power.