Loving America with reservations

In June I visited my parents near Dallas, and my father took my two nephews and me to a Texas Rangers baseball game. The night was humid and my lower back was aching, so by the seventh inning I was ready to stand and stretch. But when the announcer declared that a choir would be singing "God Bless America" (which supplanted "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" for seventh inning stretches after 9/11), I faced a dilemma: Should I stand with my family or remain seated to protest the gratuitous patriotic cheerleading?

My aversion to patriotism began in college. At Penn State University in the mid-1980s I was a clean-shaven engineering student drawn to campus demonstrations against apartheid. I actually believed in "Liberty and Justice for All," and I imagined I was being a good citizen for questioning my government and the university's support of the despotic South African regime.

At one vigil, I held a sign reading "Democracy and Freedom for South Africa." Drunken football fans passed by and screamed, "Get a job, commie!"

Such reactions motivated me to learn more about U.S. history and foreign policy. I read about the genocide against Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans, and learned how, even in current times, the U.S. armed and supported oppressive dictatorships from Southeast Asia to Latin America to the Middle East. The knowledge gave me headaches that crying didn't relieve, but I kept reading. And because school, church and government had covered over all the blood and injustice with pretty patriotic myths about a Good America blessed by an ethnocentric god, my youthful disappointment and anger blazed even hotter.

Once when I was a graduate student in philosophy at Duke, someone on my Durham summer league softball team inquired what I was doing for Independence Day.

"Asking forgiveness for a nation built on slavery, genocide, and war," I replied.

Our 40-something pitcher, who worked for the phone company and had taken me fishing a few times, glared at me. "If you hate America so much, why don't you just leave?"

"Because I want to watch this system burn."

We didn't go fishing together again.

Yet as I aged, other July Fourth experiences tempered my disillusionment.

In my late 20s I drove cross-country and was awestruck by the Grand Canyon, the Tetons and Yellowstone. One evening on a western highway several miles from any town, I watched the sun dropping out of sight, cooling the air and leaving a clear view across the plains. Right at dusk the sea blue horizon erupted with distant bright bursts of fireworks. Beneath the vast canopy of the sky, the explosions were beautiful, small and quiet. They were remarkable, yet ultimately insignificant. And it struck me that no matter how much noise I made criticizing America and no matter how much noise others made praising it, our voices were tiny compared to the mystery and beauty of this land.

In my 30s I traveled to Washington, D.C. to visit a friend. She wished to see the Fourth of July fireworks display at the National Mall, but I feared a White People's Patriotic Rally. After she persuaded me to stroll into the immense crowd, we reveled in a mesmerizing palette of blacks, Latinos, Asians, whites and Indians picnicking and dancing to live music at the base of the Washington Monument. It was a healing glimpse of the rainbow promise of America.

At the baseball game this summer, I knew my refusal to stand would not accomplish much besides intensifying the pain in my back, so I rose with my family. About halfway through the song, I looked up at the Jumbotron screen and saw the camera panning over my 7-year-old nephew and me, a three-second shot that would be beamed out over cable and satellite TV.

"Well," I thought, "I've got some explaining to do."

Time has mellowed me, and I no longer wish to see the system burn. But despite what appeared on the Jumbotron, I'm still not turning patriotic.

I love the land and people and potential of America. But rather than worship this nation, I'm asking it to live up to its ideals and even embrace some new ones.