Sunshine Patriotism

I am ashamed to be an American.

How is that I can be ashamed to be an American?

“These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”

Thomas Paine The American Crisis (1776)

I can be ashamed to be an American, because I can also proud to be an American. That pride and shame come mixed together is right and correct. How could I lay some claim to a share of America’s glories and triumphs, our virtues and victories, if I do not also claim a share too of our defeats and failures, our vices and shames? I personally am not responsible for any of these things. Only a person of low and contemptible character would behave in such a way, a sunshine patriot who abandons any cause or loyalty the moment it becomes difficult, who spurns any love that might become complicated. It is easier, I suppose, for such a person to pretend there is no tension between the good and bad of American history, that ours is one of uncomplicated moral rightness and that the American state or the American people have never been in any way villainous, and to subscribe to a simple-minded version of events in which “We” are the “Good Guys” and “They” are the “Bad Guys”.

But I am not such a coward, and cannot turn away from uncomfortable truths. It is a fact apparent to all who care to know that American history is replete with the successes of American science, technology and industry, with triumphs of American arms, and a culture with as much reach and influence as any other in the history of humankind. We put a man on the moon! There is no place in this world far from American soldiery, no place where American music cannot be heard. (Whether this a good thing is another question entirely…). But history is a bottomless well of horrors, and our well might be shallower, but o! how horrible the horrors are. I’ll not trouble your stomachs by describing to them to you in any great detail, a simple list should suffice to remind you.

The violence and endless broken promises with which Americans have dealt to indigenous peoples, the brutal and savage institution of slavery, and the long train of racial injustices that spawned leading up to the present day, the oppression of women, the closing of our borders to people in need, the internment of Japanese-Americans, our involvement in foreign nations, first in Latin America and then throughout the world, which betrayed any humanitarian or democratic impulse to greed, hunger for power, and a pursuit of bloody-handed empire. I cannot ignore these things for the same reason I cannot ignore the sky.

In truth, I do not feel proud to be an American. I cannot make a ledger of virtue and vice, sum up the good and the bad, and hold that America is a thing to proud of on the net. I am not the sort that thinks one can erase an act of evil with an act of kindness – undo perhaps, but erase; never – and what has been done, the suffering that has been caused is to much for me, my heart is to weighed down by shame to feel much pride.

But there is hope. I think that there is some strain of virtue in America, a history too of good intentions and high ideals, and I hope that these things will in the end win out. I am not proud of America today, but it is my hope that I will live to see the America made by the victory of those ideals. An America I can be proud of.