This weekend, Baltimore celebrates “Defenders’ Day” honoring the brave Americans who withstood a heavy barrage by British naval forces at Fort McHenry in 1814. Our soldiers’ patriotism gave us our national anthem and strengthened a young nation. Our struggle then was against a monarch from abroad, determined to humble the American republic. Today, our struggle is at home, between the patriotism that must inspire us still, and its dangerous twin: nationalism.
The allegiance of those 1,000 soldiers at Fort McHenry was rooted in the ideals of our Founding Fathers, drafters of our Declaration of Independence and framers of our Constitution. The Founders centered our new government on the principle that all were created equal, and thus, that each of us was endowed with certain unalienable rights. Those rights defined an American patriotism that requires our respect, protection and a care for one another, creating a culture of democracy that girds our institutions.
America has been blessed with a multitude of patriots who’ve defended and deepened our democracy. Military men and women serving across the globe. Civilians teaching in our schools and universities. Heroes working in our hospitals and clinics. Volunteer firemen protecting their communities. Local and state government officials serving at home, and diplomats serving overseas. All are committed to upholding America’s ideals and bound to pursuing “a more perfect union” — a phrase first found in the preamble to our Constitution.
America’s God–given natural beauty and immense resources are a unique blessing. They are the foundation of our strength. Together with the character of our people, they give us great potential for power. Without such power, we could neither have maintained our independence nor helped preserve our allies’ democracies through two world wars.
But we should always recall that our victories were inspired by our democratic ideals, exemplified by the “Four Freedoms” proclaimed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II: the freedom of speech and worship; the freedom from want and fear.
Power alone, untethered from our values, plunders our nation’s natural resources, distorts our patriotism and fuels an un-American nationalism. One man now working in the White House’s halls of power, seduced by a nationalist vision, has asserted that the world is governed only by force and power and believes that America must act as “the greatest, most unquestioned, unmatched power in the world.” He and those like him believe that power alone, and America, all alone, can determine this country’s and our world‘s future. They are dangerously wrong.
Abroad, this singular pursuit of power leads to blind miscalculation and arrogant isolation. It erodes trust in our leaders and in our nation. China is now viewed more positively than the United States in most global polls. We once fought under the United Nations banner in Korea and led the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Now, we are fighting alone in Iran, and are engaged in a mutually destructive trade war with our ally and closest neighbor, Canada, while threatening the territory of a NATO ally in Greenland.
America’s growing isolation is neither splendid nor in our interest. And our growing arrogance is a great source of embarrassment: Will placing the image of our president in the pages of our passports, as no other country does, make the lives of Americans abroad safer or more enjoyable? At home, reckless use of federal power terrorizes many who’ve sought legal refuge here, and has taken the lives of many citizens. And the constitutional power of our states to manage our elections is now under threat.
A prescient warning of what these events might portend can be found in the pages of George Orwell’s ”Animal Farm,” written in 1945, in which the journey of the animal tyrant Napoleon illustrates how easily democratic ideals can be dismantled. A more ambitious autumn read is offered in Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” In it, Arendt warns that when a nation-state erodes political equality in favor of racial or religious division, it can sow the seeds of fascism.
In the lead-up to World War II, German nationalism unfolded into “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer” — one people, one realm, one leader — and Adolf Hitler’s domestic National Socialism. Then too, it was all about strength, power and force. Raw nationalism, fueled by hatred and fear of enemies, corrupted German patriotism and was used to an evil end. Who now recalls Hitler as a “German patriot”?
American patriotism is grounded in both our strength and our values: Our military, which should be honored for its bravery, its apolitical history and representation of all our society; our diplomatic weight and expertise, when properly supported and used; and the universal power of our ideals.
Those ideals and interests are not alternatives. They are symbiotic. Beyond binding our diverse country together for 250 years, our principles have gained us extraordinary respect and emulation around the world. And our patriotism also recognizes one of our greatest strengths: a long and sometimes painful history of acknowledging our flaws and working to correct them.
That is the patriotic path we must follow, as we honor the flag, the independence and the democratic future we preserved so long ago in “the dawn’s early light” at Fort McHenry.
Anthony Lake and Steven Andreasen were colleagues on the National Security Council under President Clinton.
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