be the beginning of the sanctification of life – even in modern times.
It is true that many people are denied these blessings, while others practice childless marriage without regret. It is also true that legal definitions of marriage and social designations of “family” are undergoing major transformations. But these facts do not alter the truth of what I have suggested: that we can enunciate a deep understanding of love, marriage, and family – on universal anthropological rather than strictly religious grounds – that would both describe and explain the familial ideals to which many Americans aspire and that would make clear just why those practices embody a transcendent meaning and purpose for our lives. We all must acknowledge that there will be no going back to more traditional views and practices concerning sex and marriage. But it is still possible for us to articulate – and to celebrate – an account of human love and its generative fruit that can be affirmed under present and future family forms. At the center of such an account will be the insight that children are a gift of love, not a product of our will, and that we are most fulfilled in their rearing when we raise them to serve not our present ambitions but their future good, and, indeed, the goodness of life itself.
Love of Country: Fulfilling Public Service
Third, the objects of human loves and longings are not restricted to the private sphere of love and its progeny. Cooler than eros yet not for that reason less potent are the several forms of human philia: philopatria or patriotism, the love of country; philanthropy, the love of fellow human beings; and philosophy, the love of wisdom. Activities animated by these loves and longings still give meaning to the lives of many Americans, even if once again the prevailing common opinions do not do them justice. Patriotism is a good case in point.
Patriotism in the United States, like America itself, is exceptional – and not so easily cultivated. Ours is not an ethnic motherland or fatherland, rooted in soil with bonds of blood. We belong rather to a republic founded on ideas, but ideas that celebrate the individual rather than the collective, private rights rather than public glory. We are a nation of immigrants – today, a truly cosmopolitan nation – and anyone willing to swear allegiance to the United States can become an American, a transformation impossible for someone hoping, by change of residence, to become French or Chinese. But our liberal way of life also makes it possible for people to live among us, even as citizens enjoying our rights, without becoming patriots – that is, without being people who love and serve our country, and who are willing to defend her when necessary with their life, fortune, and sacred honor. Yet remarkably, and especially in critical times – from the American Revolution to our ongoing struggles against Islamist terror and brutality – Americans have risen to the occasion, putting the republic and its ideals before self, serving her nobly and well. Approximately four million men and women served in the active-duty military in the first ten years after 9/11, and thousands more have joined their ranks every month since. (More than twice as many served during the Vietnam War, and more than four times as many served in World War II.) Less dramatic but much more ubiquitous are the longstanding and still-vibrant American traditions of public and community service, practiced in local governments and through a plethora of voluntary religious, philanthropic, and civic associations. For many an American, the life of service to the nation still makes sense and gives meaning to our lives.
But our thinking about patriotism – as with work and family life – has fallen behind our practice. Compared with the cultural attitudes surrounding World War II, and especially since the 1960s, patriotism has come under suspicion, most regrettably among those who teach the young. Our national heroes are debunked, our national achievements belittled, our every sin magnified. Today, American patriotism faces more explicit challenges, both universalist and parochial. On the one hand, liberal intellectuals decry national distinctions, deny the need for patriotic sacrifice, and urge us to join the party of humanity and to see ourselves as “citizens of the world.” On the other hand, many people – including some of the same intellectuals – encourage divisive identity politics at home, accentuating ethnic and racial differences, eschewing assimilation and the melting pot, and celebrating only hyphenated-American identities – a matter of deep disappointment to those of us who once fought for civil rights and integration. Finally, in opposition to these tendencies, we are witnessing an upsurge of crude nationalism, an “America First” blood-and-soil nativism, with more than a touch of xenophobia and race-hatred of the sort we fought World War II to destroy. Given these universalist, tribalist, and nativist challenges, there is all the more reason to articulate a sensible patriotism, coupled with efforts to translate it into meaningful civic participation and service – and not primarily during national elections.
It is relatively easy to show that the universalist dream is contrary to possibility, and that the idea of “citizen of the world” is largely empty preening. Honest-to-goodness citizenship exists only for members of a specific polity, and for the foreseeable future the world will remain divided into disparate political communities, each with its own legal system and way of life. What is more necessary is to show why national identity and attachment are not only inevitable but also desirable, for individuals as well as for the American nation. Here, the plain truth of the matter is that real life, even for those critics of America who preach liberal universalism, cannot do without the nurturing benefits of strong particularistic attachment. For the vast majority of human beings, life as actually lived is lived parochially and locally, embedded in a web of human relations, institutions, culture, and mores that define us and – whether we know it or not – give shape, character, and meaning to our lives. One’s feeling for global humanity, however sincere, is based on an abstraction, hard to translate into the concrete and meaningful concern that leads neighbor to care and work actively for neighbor, Chicagoan for Chicagoan, Texan for Texan, American for American. Civic self-government – the pride of political achievement – is possible only in the communities in which we actually live, and there can be no robust civic life without patriotic attachment. I am not talking about the psychic boost we give ourselves by yelling “USA, USA” at the Olympics. I am talking, rather, about the genuine elevation of our lives made possible by belonging freely, feelingly, and actively to something larger and more worthy than our individual selves.
Other nations, of course, can and do lay claim to similar ties and loyalties. But for us Americans, there are special reasons for patriotic attachment, for we are a parochial nation with a universal calling and a most remarkable history in answering it. The principles of human equality, inalienable rights, and government by consent, newly enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, were given operative life in the polity established by the Constitution, under which the United States became and remains a shining example of stable self-government and a beacon of hope for oppressed peoples all over the world. We are the privileged heirs of a way of life that has offered the blessings of freedom and dignity to millions of people of all races, ethnicities, and religions, and that extols the possibility of individual achievement as far as individual talent and effort can take it. We are also a self-critical nation, whose history is replete with efforts to bring our practices more fully in line with our ideals. And our national history boasts hundreds of thousands of heroic men and women who gave their lives that the nation might live and flourish. To belong to such a nation is not only a special blessing but a special calling: to preserve freedom, dignity, and self-government at home and to encourage their spread abroad. As Abraham Lincoln put it, in a call to perpetuate our political institutions: “This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.”
It should now also be clear why American patriotism and national service can and do provide a life of transcendent meaning. We love our country not only because it is ours, but also because it is good – not perfect, but very good. We love her all the more when we undertake to serve and preserve her, for then she becomes also the embodiment of our efforts and our very being, as we extend our being-at-work onto a larger and more enduring canvas, and our own vitality is lifted to a higher plane. Service to our country, rightly understood, is not a form of self-sacrifice in the name of freedom, but a freely chosen form of self-fulfillment.
