In the July 5 episode of my Matters of Soul Importance podcast , I asked Mark Jorritsma of the nonpartisan North Dakota Family Alliance, “Is patriotism dead?” Responding to our growing reluctance to honor the flag, he said: “If we’re only going to salute the flag when we agree with everything our country has done…that’s myopic.”
I shared my own experience with patriotism; namely, my father’s love for our country. A serviceman of the U.S. Air Force, Dad had a fierce loyalty to the flag. Every fitting holiday, he’d proudly display the Stars and Stripes in front of our home in northeast Montana.
I didn’t fully understand his dedicated patronage, but Dad, who rarely cried, would well up with tears upon hearing any song nodding to the flag. I knew it was about more than a swatch of material; that strong sentiments and experiences had prompted his allegiance. If only I’d learned more about the stories behind those tears before his death in 2013.
As he’d have wished, Dad, along with his three brothers, also military, are all buried in the Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Mandan. His patriotic sendoff took place there shortly after his funeral at the Holy Spirit Cathedral in Bismarck. I still have a bullet case from the shots fired in honor of his time serving our country, including in the mountains of Japan.
Dad didn’t agree with everything our country came to represent, but he held fast to those aspects of our nation worth paying respect to, and I think people in my generation, and certainly our children’s generation, have lost sight of what saluting the flag is all about. We seem to have forgotten, or maybe never understood, what it means to live in a country based on principles meant to uplift every citizen.
Is it a perfect blueprint? No human framework will ever contain all that we need to live in a truly free world in which everyone can obtain what he or she desires. But America in principle has been one of the most exemplary models in history to offer the essentials for cultivating a just world in which the hope of fulfilling our potential is reachable.
I agree with Jorritsma. We don’t have to embrace everything our country has brought forth to honor the colors. I think we can have legitimate disagreement and still give it due regard. Lately, however, our patriotism has grown dim. Just like our tendency to cancel people with whom we disagree, rather than fostering respectful dialogue we’re too quick to cancel the Stars and Stripes, frustrating their unifying potential.
“United we stand; divided we fall.” Where are we at in 2024? Deep division marks our land at present. So, what can bring us back? Might the answer be engraved in our currency: “In God We Trust?”
Maybe it’s time we return to trusting in God so we can once again begin to trust, and love, one another; to say forthrightly, our voices blending in unison: “God bless America!”
[For the sake of having a repository for my newspaper columns and articles, I reprint them here, with permission, a week after their run date. The preceding ran in The Forum newspaper on July 7, 2024.]
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