Trump is far removed from patriotism ideals
vote and ensuring more Americans are heard, not claiming without evidence that millions voted fraudulently and pushing for laws that make it harder for blacks and Latinos to vote.
True patriots don’t inundate government with industry lobbyists, attack the freedom of the press, criticize judges who disagree with them, or fill the airwaves with lies. They don’t direct employers to fire employees who exercise their freedom of speech. True patriots don’t court foreign dictators, and don’t excuse tyranny by denigrating America.
When asked whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is a killer, Trump responded, “You think our country’s so innocent?”
True patriots don’t fuel racist, religious or ethnic divisions. They aren’t homophobic or sexist. True patriots seek to confirm and strengthen and celebrate the “we” in “we the people of the United States.”
Trump is the first U.S. president to use the term “we” to refer only to his supporters. “My supporters are the smartest, strongest, most hard working and most loyal that we have seen in our countries (sic) history,” he tweeted recently. “As we get stronger, so does our country.”
A majority of today’s Americans do worry that the nation is losing its national identity. But that identity has never been centered on our support for a particular president or his policies.
Nor, more fundamentally, has our identity depended on the whiteness of our skin or the uniformity of our ethnicity.
Our national identity has been our shared ideals.
If we are losing our national identity, it is because we are losing those ideals: a commitment to the rule of law, to our democratic institutions, to truth, to tolerance of our differences, to equal political rights and equal opportunity, to participating in our civic life and making sacrifices for these ideals we hold in common.
We must share these ideals if we are to have a functioning society. Without them, there is no America.
Trump is doing everything he can to destroy these ideals. We must do everything we can to strengthen them.
This is the true test of our patriotism.