Reclaiming patriot
Last week we were privileged to visit Mt. Rushmore. I expected
this to be a little bit hokey; I was very, very wrong. Just the scope of the
work itself is stunning. But what was
even more stunning was the speech given that evening at the lighting ceremony
by a park ranger. She spoke of the
Constitution and the tapestry it wove throughout American history. A tapestry
that first included only white male land owners, and then white men, and then
black men, and then all male citizens, and then women and Asians and
Hispanics and Africans and Native Americans and so on until today, when our
American tapestry is richer and more textured than the founding fathers could ever
have imagined.
I listened to that wonderfully subversive speech and thought
about the beautiful country I had been touring and about the special area
designated at Mt. Rushmore for the exercise of free speech, and realized that I
was a raging patriot. Me, a liberal.
And that brings me to the point I want to make today.
When did “patriot” somehow become the property of the
militant right? Don’t believe me? Google “patriot”. Once you get past New
England football and various films and TV shows, you wind up at the Southern
Poverty Law Center and their list of active patriot groups. These ultra-right wing
conservatives are mostly militias or believers in wacko conspiracy theories and
are virulently anti-government.
They are definitely not me.
Yet I’m a patriot, too. I love my country. Always have, even when its actions
disappointed me or angered me or shamed me.
I always felt we could do better because we were aiming so high.
So I’m reclaiming patriot. The wingnuts can’t have it. It’s mine.
You’ll find my house by the big American flag I’m going to hang from the
front porch. And the red, white and blue
I’ll wear whenever I can. And by the
bitching and moaning and sweating I’ll be doing while working to make us all achieve the
dreams of America.
These words by Teddy Roosevelt hang on the wall at Mt. Rushmore
and say it all for me:
