Everyday Loyalty

“So, what’s your new book about?” my friends have been asking. Sometimes I hesitate to answer. The book is called How to Raise an American. When I tell people about it, many of them look quizzical, as if the time-honored notion of encouraging children to be caring, responsible, and, yes, loyal citizens is hard to understand. Some appear enraged by the book’s premise – and by me. One friend in the publishing industry hissed at me, “That’s sound like something only a fascist would want to write.”

Maybe such an attitude isn’t all that new. Theodore Roosevelt complained a century ago about “a queer lack of Americanism” among our most highly educated classes. Just like in the past, those who benefit the most from America are sometimes the least respectful of its values and the most disparaging of its flaws.

My co-author Chriss Winston, once the head speechwriter for the first President Bush, has heard plenty of this criticism as well. Last December, she attended the National Conference on Citizenship in Washington, D.C., a nonpartisan organization that has been working to encourage an active, engaged citizenry. It was held, appropriately, in the ballroom of the Ronald Reagan Building, but that most unabashedly patriotic president might have been as surprised at what was said that day or, more precisely, what wasn’t.

Winston sat through thoughtful speeches on citizenship and civic engagement by historian David McCullough and Harvard’s Robert Putnam, heard distinguished leaders in the field of volunteerism discuss service, and listened to other national leaders in government, education, and Congress on the subject of creating an engaged citizenry. “But,” Winston told me, “by day’s end, I realized that had I not heard the word patriotism uttered by a single soul.”

She asked a professor attending the conference about the oversight. With a slightly horrified look, the woman announced, “Patriotism really isn’t a good word to use these days because it’s been co-opted by the Right.” Patriotism is out apparently, and discussing love of country is a little like having a crazy aunt in the attic. Everyone knows she’s there, but no one really wants to talk about her. Citizenship is still part of the conversation, but it is defined by many as community service – never military service.

At the same time, our children are exposed to media that concentrate on the country’s real, or sometimes perceived, missteps – a constant barrage of criticism from angry pundits, vile rap songs disguised as genuine protest, and television comedians who use our leaders and the actions of our country as the punch lines of countless cynical jokes. Most disturbingly, there isn’t much to counteract this tide of mean-spirited sarcasm and snide commentary. That’s because kids rarely learn much about our country’s history or the ideals on which it was founded. “Yes, it is hard to raise an American today,” one father, a Vietnam veteran, told us. “But it is something we just have to do.”

Of course, as Theodore Roosevelt noted, patriotism should “not blind us ... to our own shortcomings; we ought steadily to try to correct them,” he wrote. “But we have absolutely no grounds to work on if we don’t have a firm and ardent Americanism at the bottom of everything.” Finding ways to develop and sustain that “firm and ardent Americanism” is today one of our country’s greatest needs – and greatest challenges.

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Myrna Blyth is the former editor-in-chief of Ladies Home Journal and the author of Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness and Liberalism to the Women of America.