I'm an advocate for something I'll call "tough patriotism." Naturally I'd like to see this minted as a Democratic Party term as we head into 2008, but more importantly I think it is a summation of the national philosophy we really need now, of use beyond politics.
We have had many appeals to patriotism and for patriotism in recent years. But these are to a very low standard. They require only that the "patriot" accept the national power of the United States and call it good. It would apply equally if the entire country were converted into a burning landfill or sold in total to the People's Republic of China.
The common concept of patriotism as popularized of late is actually counter-productive, if not outright rotten. It is no different than the nationalism that any people on earth can be stirred to. American exceptionalism preaches that ours is a new history, unique in the world, but to realize that destiny we need to be free of garden-variety nationalism.
What we need is tough patriotism which is willing to take certain risks for its chief principle, freedom. And by certain, we do not mean specific, but we mean definite, provable, palpable. If you aren't willing to take risks you aren't terribly tough. (And if you aren't willing to use your strength and wits to defend against those risks in a principled manner, you are a coward.)
This is the thrust that won in 2006 and will win again in 2008. It is what will win the "war on terror" by first correctly identifying that the enemy is not only the one without, but the one that would burrow through the very heart of our nation to shelter itself in its hollowed-out and stopped recesses. Freedom itself was attacked and it is not defended by eating through it.
This, obviously, means the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It means understanding that freedom is not the sword, but the vulnerable body that wields it and the thing that makes the sword worth wielding. Let us not suffer any more false flattery of that national self. We, the lovers of liberty, are the parental voice, the drill sergeant, the training partner. The flatters who preach that the US is right whatever the US does, as long as its what they want the US to do, are like the wrong crowd in high school, (now, many are expelled) who just want to get the US stoned (and it isn't free).
Freedom, or liberty, as the heart of our nation is just as well known, is no shield at all. It is instead something to be shielded, but vigorously exercised, and it is what provides every measure of our strength to defend, and indeed the very blood our brains need to think clearly. All those big cars, big guns, and big... Oh I guess that's all they've got that's big, but on our side we can offer a bright future... Are nothing without real healthy people and good sense to employ them. The conservative thinks small, and thinks narrowly. Military and corporate metaphors dominate in that discourse.
And yet we must appeal to that level of discourse because it is a low common denominator. Yet we can do that. We are doing that. We must do even better. And by making clear that cheap, slatternly patriotism is no substitute for tough patriotism, like tough love... We can. And then we can improve education to raise the level of discourse nationally.