How Problematic Is Patriotism?
Key takeaways
- Six decades ago, my government was willing to risk my life on its behalf; the Administration didn’t mind sacrificing the lives of teen-agers in order to achieve peace with honor.
- Depending on where you hail from, America could be the evening sky above Northfield, Connecticut, or the fields of bluebonnets in Ennis, Texas.
- It was the winter of 1973, and the words were spoken by a sixty-eight-year-old Brooklyn native named William McKissack Chapman.
Six decades ago, my government was willing to risk my life on its behalf; the Administration didn’t mind sacrificing the lives of teen-agers in order to achieve peace with honor. The question I should have asked myself then is: Can someone be a patriot and not love his country but simply be glad that it exists?Illustration by David Plunkert Save this story Save this story Save this story Save this story I did not grow up loving America—not because I thought it didn’t deserve love but because I didn’t think about it. America was the Pledge of Allegiance and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It was “Maverick” and “Gunsmoke.” It was Ed Sullivan and high-school dances and big cars with big fins. It was soda fountains and Elvis and stickball. It was Valley Forge and George Washington. It was also white, mostly male, and invincibly middle class, and I hardly gave a thought to race or class or much else for that matter.
Depending on where you hail from, America could be the evening sky above Northfield, Connecticut, or the fields of bluebonnets in Ennis, Texas. To a teen-ager living in New York in the nineteen-sixties, America was pretty great. It had saved the world from fascism and now stood as a bulwark against communism. Mickey Mantle, good; Nikita Khrushchev, bad. My memory may be faulty, but I can’t recall anyone I knew declaring a love for America—not, anyway, until I was twenty-five and living in Charleston, South Carolina.
It was the winter of 1973, and the words were spoken by a sixty-eight-year-old Brooklyn native named William McKissack Chapman. Tall and narrow, with stiff gray hair and a thin gray mustache, Bill had been a reporter for the long-defunct Brooklyn Eagle, an editor at Time-Life, and a founder of Sports Illustrated. He’d been too young to fight in the First World War but reported from Europe during the Second. In Paris in 1945, he’d got drunk with Ernest Hemingway, whom he considered a blowhard. Now, nearly thirty years later, in his elegant, slightly shopworn home, at 30 King Street, he was ruminating about Vietnam and Watergate, both of which dominated the news at the time. After a minute or two, he put down his drink and said in a tone at once wistful and firm, “God, I love this country.”