happy fourth of july

I've never known quite how to feel about the Fourth. I've always had a hard time understanding patriotism in the context of a country as big as the United States. What does it mean to be patriotic to a country that's a conglomerate of hundreds of languages, ethnicities, and cultures? Patriotism means being loyal to a particular thing, and you can't be loyal to something you don't understand. What does it mean, in essence, to be American?

The cliche answer, of course, is freedom. But the longer I live, the more pessimistic I become about our American idea of freedom. It seems to me to be more rhetoric than reality. Don't get me wrong; I'm grateful for the Constitution and the freedoms we're guaranteed. I understand the difference between, say, freedom of speech--the freedom to write what I'm writing right now, for instance, and not be worried that I'll be arrested for it because it's viewed as a criticism of the government--and the lack of it. I've glimpsed the fear that comes from not knowing what accidental word might get you in trouble, or what neighbor might be spying on you to see if you let slip something that could be subversive. But a guarantee of basic human rights, which is pretty much what our freedoms amount to, does not a country make. Freedom alone does not inspire true patriotism.

It was G.K. Chesterton who made me realize this, because I don't think I ever heard real patriotism expressed by anyone in my own community. I don't think Americans understand what it means to be loyal to something without a reason. For the most part, I think we Americans are loyal for a reason. We are loyal because we like our freedoms and our independence; we like the ideals that our country was founded on. But countries with longer histories can be loyal without reason. Chesterton writes of love without reason, of being patriotic to England simply because she is England. Better yet, he writes of loyalty to a specific place, a place you can really understand because it's small enough to comprehend. He said that the man who lives in one neighborhood his whole life actually understand the stranger on the other side of the world better than the cosmopolitan who has traveled everywhere, because he is concerned with universal concerns that all men share. He is focused on his own home and family; he worries about the rain and the crops and the baby, just as the simple man on the other side of the planet does. He lives in a smaller town, but a larger world. We Americans are all cosmopolitans, and our own world is too big for us to believe in the largeness of the universe.

I feel like I'm dancing around what I'm trying to say here, but what I really mean is this. True patriotism, deep loyalty to place, can only be felt and expressed toward a place that's small enough to understand. America is too big for me to love. I can love Atlanta--though I don't, much, but I'm working on it--or Harrisonburg or maybe even Virginia. I can love a city, maybe a state: a place small enough to have its own character and its own culture. I can admire America, but she's too big for me to really love.

So while I can celebrate the fact that we're no longer a colony of Britain, I find it hard to celebrate America as such. The victories of smaller places will always be sweeter to me.