There are two concepts in US history that deserve to be revisited if the Fourth of July is to have any meaning at all for the next century. The first is “patriotism.” The second is “jingoism.” They are not synonyms, much as we are sometimes inclined to make them so. Patriotism is love of country, literally—the “father” land. Jingoism is chauvinism, a love of country that lacks a critical eye. When we “love” something to such a degree that we lose the capacity to compare it to its own best potential, we don’t really “love” it at all. We idolize it.

Jingoism is destructive idolatry, the kind of national fetish which can, if taken to its limit, end in the holocaust of Jews, the genocide of Bosnians, the decimation of Palestinians and the massacre of Native Americans. And yet we pray from the Book of Psalms that God “cares for all nations.” What we do in the name of “Americanism” to people will be weighed in the light of what is good for all creation—our own and those whose lives as a nation we touch.

Patriotism, on the other hand, is a commitment to the ideals for which, as a people, we say we strive. Real patriotism welcomes, encourages, commits itself to the great national debates that question war, resist unfair taxation, and determine penal systems.

Patriotism asks hard questions: Are we really putting enough money into education? How can we approve a health care system that rewards the wealthy but is callous towards the poor, the elderly, the most vulnerable among us? What exactly does an ethic of life require at all levels, at all times? Should we still be putting over half the national budget into the military establishment? Those questions engage the patriot with honesty and courage. Those questions and others just as difficult, just as scalding, will determine the real direction of this country.

The virtue of patriotism demands that we put our founding ideals above our present opportunities. Otherwise, like all the decayed regimes before us, we may well put our national politics before our national character.

Beware the Fourth of July. It can beguile, seduce, and lead us to believe that having done right once, we need never fear not doing it again.

—from 1997 The Monastic Way by Joan Chittister