No, I Am Not a Patriot

 No, I Am Not a Patriot

July 5, 2026

I’m supposed to love the United States of America, and I have lived in a place that was much worse than the United States of America, namely the Soviet Union, where I did one year of dissertation research in the mid-1970s. I was glad to get out of there. In fact, as I was leaving Moscow for the first time, with a group of students from Indiana University in August, 1968, shortly after the USSR had invaded Czechoslovakia, we sang the hit song of the time with the lyric: “We’ve got to get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do.” I remember driving home to Eugene from the Portland airport a short time later and seeing a business flying a truly enormous American flag near the freeway. I thought: Well, that’s not my style, but at least someone’s doing that because they want to not because they have to. So yes, this country does have certain virtues.

But. And the buts control here. We are and essentially always have been the most imperialistic nation on earth. Every square inch of the United States is land we stole from other people. And not only that. We did everything we could to wipe those people off the face of the earth. Hitler thought we couldn’t object to his planned genocide of the Jews because he had committed genocide against the American Indians, as indeed we had. We took much of what is now the United States from Mexico through imperialistic war, the War of 1848. We expanded our empire militaristically in 1898 too. We are and always have been an imperialistic country, and I reject all imperialism outright.

We maintain what is by far the world’s largest military. We lie and say that we have it to defend our freedom. We call all its members heroes whether they’ve ever done anything heroic or not. We glorify military service as noble and honorable when in fact the true purpose of any military, ours included, is to kill and be killed. In fact, we have our massive military only for imperialistic purposes. We have it to project and protect American economic and political power around the world, and that is a purely illegitimate reason for having it. There is nothing noble or honorable about it at all. Yet we tie patriotism to the military. The military participates in all sorts of American activities solely for the purpose of making people feel good about the military and the country that creates, maintains, and glorifies it. Why else to fighter jets fly over football stadiums? Why else to the Blue Angels perform (yes, perform brilliantly) at hydroplane races like they do every year in Seattle? I see people online being impressed by military hardware, but every piece of military hardware is nothing but part of a massive killing machine. I will not celebrate the American military, and I will not be patriotic with regard to a country that maintains and celebrates the American military.

Our most recent use of our military is particularly unjustifiable and shameful. Donald Trump ordered it to attack Iran though there was absolutely no reason for us to attack Iran. Trump couldn’t even give a coherent reason for attacking Iran. When we did, we sent a smart weapon into a girl’s school and killed over 100 children. Yes, the military said it was “a mistake,” but why do we even deploy forces capable of making such a mistake to a part of the world in which we have no significant interest and where there is no reason for military action whatsoever?

This country was founded in racism, and it remains rotten with racism to its core yet today. We had made some not insignificant progress toward eradicating racism until Donald Trump became president. Now avowed white nationalists parade openly in our country’s capital just as the Ku Klux Klan did in the 1920s (though in considerably smaller numbers). We imprison more people than any other nation in the world, and a grossly disproportionate parentage of our prisoners are people of color. Our president is an overt racist, and he panders to the underlying racism of American society to get and keep himself in power. I will not be patriotic toward a nation as racist as mine is.

Then there is the shame of our health insurance system. Every other industrialized nation on earth has a system of universal health care supported by taxes. We don't. The power of the wealthy keeps us from creating one because creating one would nearly abolish the enormous health insurance industry. The Republican Party has been making it impossible for more and more people to obtain health insurance, something that makes not a lick of sense even from a Republican or Trumpist fascist perspective. For-profit insurance companies, in business only to make money, make decisions about people's health care that belong only to practicing physicians and their patients. I will not be patriotic toward a nation that refuses to make health care available to all of its people the way this one refuses to do.

The American economy is capitalistic. It is regulated a little bit but not nearly enough. Our economy is dominated by enormous corporations in nearly every sphere of economic activity. American law says that the duty of corporate leadership is to increase the financial return for the corporation's investors and is nothing else beyond that other than comply with whatever laws there are that control what the corporation must or must not do--and there aren't anywhere near enough of those. Capitalism works for the wealthy. It does not work for anyone else. The United States government has regulated capitalism enough that it has survived, but today the income disparity between the wealthy 1% and everyone else is so great that there may be some hope that a democratic socialist system will eventually regulate it enough so that it works for everyone.

So, no I am not an American patriot. I wish no harm for the people of the country, but I then I wish no harm for anyone anywhere. I do not value American people over other people. I wish no harm for my country, but I don't wish it anything better than I wish for any country. I want my country to become the country of justice and freedom that it has always claimed to be but has never been, but I know that won't happen in my lifetime. I wish peace for my country just as I wish peace for all people everywhere. I want my country to stop being as militaristic and imperialistic as it has always been and remains today, but I know that won't happen in my lifetime either. The forces against peace and justice in this country are just too strong for any systemic change to happen except over very long periods of time if they happen at all. 

Are you an American patriot? You certainly have the right to be one. We do have at least that much freedom in this country (though it is much less socially acceptable not to be one). But if you are, let me ask you this: Have you thought about this country seriously and open-mindedly? Have you set aside the myths about this country and seen her as she actually is and always has been? If not, I beg you to do so to the greatest extent that you can. This country could be a whole lot better than it is, but it will never be better as long as most Americans buy our national myths over our national reality. Some will say that what I just said makes me a patriot. I do not believe that it does, for I do not value my country over any other. I am indeed not a American patriot.