Every year on the Fourth of July for as long as I can remember, my family has gotten an ice cream cake, adorned it with candles, and sang “happy birthday” to America.
This resilient tradition has looked different throughout my life. It began with my grandparents and their 22 grandchildren at their house in Cape Cod as we waited for the fireworks; survived a lonely, humid, sort of melty celebration with my wife and best friend during the pandemic years; and now happens in the narrow window between my toddler’s nap and dinner in a festive backyard party with our boisterous group of neighborhood friends.
This over 30-year-old tradition was imperiled this year, when, during a planning conversation in early June, I found myself asking my wife: “Does America even deserve a birthday this year?”
I’m not one to dispense with a tradition, let alone one that has endured for so long, but it’s a fair question.
A concentration camp in the Florida swamp. A “big beautiful bill” that strips health care from millions. A 6-year-old with leukemia seized by ICE. Indiscriminate bombing of Iran. Complete inaction as thousands of children suffer and die in Gaza and Sudan. Repeated Supreme Court rulings that imperil civil liberties. A relentless assault on every American institution from NASA, to universities, to weather forecasting.
To cloak myself in an Old Navy American flag T-shirt and naively sing “happy birthday” to a nation causing so much suffering on such an unprecedented scale would feel, at best, willfully ignorant and, at worst, like an endorsement of this wanton destruction. I do not want to be associated in any way with the evil that is being perpetrated by the alt-right. I was fully prepared to make this argument to my wife as I awaited her response.
“Yes it does,” she paused. “Because I won’t let them take this from us too.”
She’s right, of course. Patriotism has been wrestled from liberals in the same way that “trad Caths” have hijacked public perception of Catholicism. I already have to qualify myself every time I tell people I am a Catholic: “I care about the environment! I’m a feminist!” Now I have to qualify my patriotism: “I believe in universal health care and think the government should exist to help people!”
As someone who spends many hours of my day on social media due to my profession, I often see variations of the same line when people engage in criticism about the Church: “Well if you don’t like it, you can go and become *insert other religion here.*”
That thinking is backwards and inappropriate — and leads to scandal. How can we (or anyone else) help Holy Mother Church be her best self if we’re supposed to pretend that she is fully without flaw? The American church has endured scandal after scandal in the 21st century due to this mindset.
I feel the same way about my country: I love it enough to speak out when something is not right. I love it enough to know that it is not perfect, but to strive for that perfection. I love it enough to know when it is not living up to its promise.
St. Thomas Aquinas says that love is a choice to will the good of another. To love one’s country does not mean wearing an American flag T-shirt and pretending it has no flaws or shortcomings. That is not patriotism. That’s delusion.
True patriotism is not obnoxious chants of “USA,” performative singing of the national anthem during a sporting event, or puffing out one’s chest with an “America: Love it or Leave it” t-shirt. True patriotism is not the paranoid reclusivity that manifests as “America first.” Patriotism is knowing that the American experiment — where all are created equal with certain inalienable rights, where there is enough wealth, opportunity and promise for everyone — still requires a lot of work to make it a reality.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells us that “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”
“America first” is a scarcity mindset. Authentic patriotism is an abundance mindset.
The truth is, no, America doesn’t really deserve a birthday celebration this year. Has it ever though? I’d probably argue no. But when it comes to the promise of our nation — the ideals we espouse — I’d argue that they need to be celebrated and cherished now more than ever.
So we’ll have the ice cream cake this year. And as the children of the neighborhood joyously shout-sing that all too familiar refrain of “happy birthday,” we’ll hope that someday, we can build a country that will earn it.
Image: Adobe Stock. By Janis.
John Grosso is digital editor for National Catholic Reporter.
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