Over 10 years ago, I began writing an autobiography of sorts on my blog based on meaningful objects in my home. These are the possessions – an ornamental sword from the long-defunct Staunton Military Academy, a slender Lladró figurine of a nurse I’d given to my wife Kris one Christmas, a large, time-battered desk she’d once given me for a birthday, and a couple of dozen other treasures – which bring alive moments from the past, even for a split second, whenever my eyes and thoughts rest on them.

In each essay, I described the item, then wrote of the events that saturated it with special meaning. If nothing else, I told myself, my kids and grandkids would have explanations of my affection for these possessions once they’d planted my flesh and bones in the grave reserved beside Kris.

Recently, for whatever reason, after a grandchild asked if she could blow the Japanese bugle that her great-grandfather had brought back from the war in the Pacific – the girl can blast out a note with authority – it struck me how easy it was to love and care for these objects, these props from my museum of memories, when compared to love and care for our country. Many of the things I own either directly or indirectly touch on our country’s past and need only a dusting off to make them shine, whereas the history, ideas, and people we should cherish often go begging for even that bit of rag and polish.

Even if we set aside the leftist endophobes who despise all things American, why is it that so many Americans these days, from politicians to protestors, seem either indifferent or hostile to their own nation?

It struck me that familiarity might be one answer. Familiarity may breed contempt, but it can also breed blindness. Some of us, for example, live as if a marriage or a friendship will last forever, and are blindsided by a sudden death or catastrophe. In my case, my wife’s sudden death from a brain aneurysm not only immediately made me a single parent, but left me with a lifetime of regrets for everything I’d failed to say or do to show my love for her.

The same can happen with a country. We become so accustomed to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” that we rarely think of expressing our gratitude. Only when these things disappear, either slowly or suddenly, do we lament our failure to love our country as she deserved.

The opposite of familiarity, ignorance, also explains the disdain many today feel for America, her past and her present – and that contempt exists among the old as well as among the young. It’s a contempt based on illiteracy regarding the past. Many today talk about America’s record of racism, for example, but never pause to consider the record of all those who fought against prejudice and bigotry and so changed the country for the better. Presentism, judging the past by current standards and declaring our superiority, is also a marker of this ignorance.

The cure for familiarity is to put on a pair of glasses that allow us to see America as men like Puritan leader John Winthrop and Ronald Reagan saw her, “a city upon a hill” and the world’s exemplar of freedom. The cure for ignorance is simpler, though more time-consuming. It means learning some history, whether through textbooks, narrative histories, biographies, or even novels like Louis L’Amour’s Sackett series.

On the wall of my apartment are two of those beloved objects I mentioned, samplers embroidered by my mother. The first reads, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Here we should note that this pledge is made to a republic, a nation under God, not to a party or an ideology, as so many politicians and other people these days seem to believe.

The second sampler reads:

A house is made of
Brick and stone
But a home is made of
Love alone.

Like that home, a country is made and preserved by love. More than anything else, love is what America needs at this crucial time in our nation’s history. We can tender that love by treating her past with its hopes and promises as a precious legacy, not as a dumping ground for loathing or behaving as if America can survive all manner of abuse and apathy. We can learn more of our history, and we can vow to safeguard that pledge.

One final note: That love of country, that patriotism, isn’t about nationalism. As is the case with so much of what we love, it’s about gratitude.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.

Image credit: Public Domain Pictures