As a Muslim-American, I spend a decent amount of time thinking about patriotism. This has become increasingly so as some far right politicians and “conservative media outlets” seem to be intent on suggesting that my citizenship and my religion are incompatible. So what does it mean to be a patriot? Does it mean blind support of everything the United States does? Does it mean that anything the government does, especially anything it does abroad, I have to support? Does not doing so make me unpatriotic?
My answer to all the above is no. American patriotism extends far past borders, political affiliations, and current administrations. It has nothing to do with any specific policy objective, and it has even less to do with politics. It is not nationalism. It is idealism.
Ideas make this country great. Concepts like diversity and pluralism. Values like freedom and liberty. The rights guaranteed to us in the constitution. Being a patriot means standing by these values; no matter the circumstance, no matter the time period, and regardless of what may be politically expedient.
Patriotism has nothing to do with unconditional support of the government. In fact, I would argue that unconditional support of anything is toxic, and unconditional support of the government is almost certainly unpatriotic. When the NSA violates the constitutional right to privacy and the Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches by conducting warrantless domestic surveillance it is unpatriotic to be unopposed. Thinly veiled attempts at retroactive justification by appealing to issues of National Security aren’t patriotic. They’re hypocritical and contrary to the ideals that this country was founded on. As Benjamin Franklin famously wrote, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
To make this more contemporaneous, when Donald Trump proposes a completely un-American Muslim Ban we can’t allow silence to take the guise of patriotism. Silence is not patriotism. Unconditional support is not patriotism. Standing up for American values is patriotism, regardless of who is in office and what their policies entail.