What does it mean to 'love America?'
“They hate America” snarls a conservative pundit regarding the American left. And while Democratic Party politicians would never admit to this, many of their constituents would. After all, the United States was built upon the backs of slaves, the exploitation of workers by greedy capitalists, and destruction of the pristine environment previously safeguarded by the people they call “Native Americans,” at least as far as they’re concerned.
However, most people, whether they identify as conservative or liberal, would emphatically claim to “love America.” And there is no reason to believe they are insincere.
But what exactly is it about America they love? Do they know?
Certainly, everyone develops an affinity for the place where they were born and raised. Having lived in more than one state and traveled to most others, as well as abroad, I can understand this affection. No other place feels like the place one was brought up.
There is nothing special about America in this regard. The natives of every country feel the same, even those countries whose governments make them difficult to love. But when Americans say they love America, they mean something more than that. They recognize America as different from most or all other countries in some way. Some even describe it as “exceptional,” although that modifier has acquired a somewhat unsavory connotation due to its use by American neoconservatives.
If pressed, most Americans who say they love America would make vague references to the U.S. Constitution or Declaration of Independence, although most probably couldn’t tell you much about either. Even many elected officials don’t seem to realize they are separate documents; that the Constitution does not contain the words “all men are created equal” or endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…among these Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Regardless, most Americans who say they love America could at least paraphrase that paragraph (or the parts they like) from the Declaration. But most don’t actually agree with the political views of the people responsible for it.
Let’s start with “all men are created equal.” Like the rest of that famous paragraph, this is a concept drawn straight from John Locke’s Second Treatise, the document Jefferson told people to read if they wanted to understand “ the general principles of liberty and the rights of man in nature and in society” as Americans understood them. Its meaning is extremely limited.
All Jefferson and the Continental Congress meant with this statement is that no one person is born with a natural right to rule over another. Period. It doesn’t mean people of different races should earn the same incomes or men have a right to compete in women’s sports leagues or any of the other bizarre beliefs about equality 21st century Americans seem to hold. It was purely a political statement about what Locke claimed could be observed in the “state of nature” (the state without government).
It is because people are equal in this very limited, political way that their consent is required to any type of government over them. This is also the basis for Locke’s argument about the limits of government power, that even a democratically elected government could not exercise any power other than those individuals have in the state of nature.
That’s a severe limit that virtually no American believes should apply to government today.
Modern Americans similarly don’t agree with the founders on the purpose of government. Again, from the Locke essay:
…it is not without reason, that he seeks out, and is willing to join in society with others, who are already united, or have a mind to unite, for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name, property.
The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.”
It wasn’t just the British philosopher who inspired them who said this. Thomas Paine wrote, in the pamphlet credited with convincing the critical mass of Americans necessary to support independence,
“For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest;”
The founders understood the purpose of government to be the safeguarding or preservation of property, as Locke defined it (life, liberty, possessions). Modern Americans don’t agree with this, either. Virtually every political initiative popular with Democrats or Republicans is a direct assault on property. Modern Americans believe no part of one’s property, not even one’s thoughts (see the latest antisemitism bill), are safe from government power.
During the Stamp Act controversy of the 1760s, American colonists had a peculiar way of expressing their unhappiness with colonial legislators who supported the Act. They would visit the legislator’s home with ropes and chains and literally pull it to the ground.
When a false rumor spread that Benjamin Franklin, in Great Britain representing the colonies, supported the act, a mob of colonists began making their way to Franklin’s house to administer the usual punishment. Franklin’s wife and a cousin armed themselves and waited in the kitchen to defend the home. The crisis was averted when a town official convinced the mob the rumor was false.
Does anyone believe there is any resemblance between those Americans and the ones who cheerfully submitted to having their schools and businesses closed, self-righteously deriding on the government’s behalf anyone who objected?
18th century Americans also mistrusted standing armies. After the Quasi War with France, President John Adams and the Congress now hostile to him attempted to outmaneuver each other for credit for disbanding what David McCullough called, “the hugely unpopular army.” Upon succeeding Adams and the Federalists, Jefferson and his Republicans, having no army to disband, went about cutting the Navy by over ninety percent.
Adams and Jefferson truly “gutted the military,” as opposed to the fictional gutting conservatives accused Barack Obama of perpetrating.
Rather than mistrust, modern Americans of either major party fully support the federal standing army, clapping like seals for anyone in a government costume, regardless of whether he, she, or “they” have been anywhere near a battlefield.
In his farewell address, George Washington advised Americans to honor any current alliances with foreign nations but “steer clear” of any new ones, implicitly recognizing they were not good for America. Thomas Jefferson famously restated this position in his first inaugural, recommending “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
This guided America’s foreign policy for more than a century, regardless of which party was in power. Today, the United States is in an alliance pledging its defense of over twenty countries, most of which Americans could not find on a map if the names were removed. That doesn’t even count Israel or Ukraine, with whom the United States has no treaty at all, but which most Americans nevertheless believe it is American taxpayers’ responsibility to support.
During the twentieth century, after much of the founding principles had been trampled to dust, there was still a belief in America as “the land of opportunity.” Waves of immigrants came to the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to avail themselves of this opportunity. But what was it?
It wasn’t voting, or equality, or free speech they came for. It was economic opportunity. They came to make a materially better life than they were able to in their home countries because America was the economically freest country in the world. The government spent about three percent of gross national product and there were no regulatory agencies telling people how to run their businesses or their lives. Somehow, the country didn’t burn to the ground.
Today, the United States isn’t even in the top ten on economic freedom indexes. And both major political parties only want to push it lower. Nobody really believes in a free market anymore. The Republicans have reverted to their true, mercantilist roots. The Democrats are more interventionist than ever. So, even the “land of opportunity” slogan rings false these days; the opportunities are elsewhere.
As I said, I do believe most Americans are sincere when they say they love America. But honestly, considering the distance between modern Americans and their politics and the principles that made American different from any other Western country, one cannot help but ask:
What’s left to love?
Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?