Editor’s note: This commentary is by Dan DeWalt, an artisan and activist interested in democracy and the Constitution. He writes from South Newfane.
If you were at the supermarket with your 6-year-old child, and you saw them take a candy bar off the rack and start to eat it, would you simply shrug and pretend you didn’t notice? Or would you stop them and explain why that is wrong? And would you love them any less for their mistake?
And if that same child started picking on the neighbor kids, making them cry by taking their toys and being physically aggressive, would you ignore it and claim that it is “just a phase” they are going through?
If, a few years later, the child steals a car for a joyride and survives the crash that ensues, would you rationalize it as simply an act of a freedom-loving kid, or would you try to improve your child’s sense of morality and teach them to be aware of the ramifications of their actions? If the latter, would these remonstrations show that you hate your child for trying to discipline them?
If your grown child got drunk and had an accident that killed someone else, would you shrug and say “it is what it is,” for fear that any other reaction would make your child think that you didn’t love them?
The answers to these questions are obvious. You wouldn’t ignore the aberrant behavior; you would try to correct it, and that work would be undertaken because you love your child and want them to do right in the world.
But if the entity in need of correction is your country, or a country allied to yours, and you do the hard work of trying to correct the mistakes and repair the harm caused, a choir of furious “patriots” will cry out that you hate your country, or if the criticism is about Israel, you are anti-Semitic.
Apparently, rooting for the team is far more important to these people than noticing what the team does. If you are a whistleblower exposing crimes and lies, you end up being the one prosecuted more often than not.
“My country right or wrong “ is an abominable phrase, giving license to politicians to conduct illegal wars, abuse human rights, or promote racist policies without fear of being held accountable for actions that ultimately weaken and destroy the country. But the knee-jerk reactions of Americans to any critique of the ruling class that threatens the sanctity of militarism, white supremacy or unfettered capitalism, and the greed that it engenders, shows that “my country right or wrong” is deeply rooted and not going away any time soon.
America isn’t structured as an ad-hoc, lawless mob. We have a Constitution that governs our political system and lays out the moral framework about how we see ourselves. The fact that the founders built in a mechanism to legally change the Constitution shows that they understood that their contemporary ideas about nations and governance may require amending as times change and evolve.
When the evils of slavery became so obviously abhorrent that the conscience of the majority of Americans could no longer countenance it, we sacrificed 1.5 million lives to end it. That sacrifice could happen only because Americans loved their country and understood that it was no longer living up to our beliefs as expressed in our founding documents.
The Constitution has been amended several times to bring the nation’s political structure into closer alignment with these founding ideals. We realized that denying black Americans equal rights and recognition was an abomination and so ended the legal framework that made that possible. We gave women the right to vote.
These amendments were driven by love, not hate. We loved our founding story and ideals and knew that hard work was required to bring the current status quo more closely into alignment with those values.
Today we face the same challenge. Unfettered capitalism, white supremacy and militarism are still deeply entrenched in our collective psyche and have driven the country to the breaking point. We have made racist discrimination illegal, but it still thrives in the hearts of many.
The stranglehold that the 1% have on our political system has ensured that their wealth will continue to grow obscenely while more and more Americans succumb to the deprivations of poverty and despair.
We are supposed to be equal under the law. But if you are rich, like the Sackler family, you can poison and kill thousands, pay a fine and be left alone with your fortune and your freedom intact, while if you are a low-level dealer of those same drugs, and especially if you are a person of color, you will be imprisoned for years and forever after be treated as a second-class citizen.
If you try to overthrow the government, you can still count on your “team” to cheer you on and ignore the stark results of your efforts.
Shooting the messenger has never been good policy. The message isn’t “we hate this country and we hate you.” The message is that we have failed to live up to our ideals and the moral and economic fabric of the nation is being shredded as a result. We owe it to ourselves and our fellow citizens to stand up and speak out when the nation behaves badly.
The message is: “We love this country and it is time that the country loved EVERYBODY back.” Too many people in this country don’t get that love; in fact, they are beaten and bullied by a system that is not living up to its own principles. If we won’t accept the need for change, if we’re not willing to face up to our failures, then we aren’t only falling far short of our ideals, we are in fact nurturing the seedlings of our own destruction.
