I had the remarkable experience of growing up as an ex-patriot. Yes, I grew up in the strange and foreign land of Canada, our friendly neighbor to the North. While my citizenship remained firmly American, an interesting thing happens when you live abroad. You suddenly become the spokesperson for your entire country. A strange transformation takes place and after a few years I found myself highly critical, yet highly patriotic. I knew all the flaws of my homeland — I had people ask me about them almost every day, and I would fight with tooth and nail to defend it. You can imagine my surprise when I came to Middlebury.
Yes, Middlebury, we are not the most patriotic of places. What was I to expect? An elite, liberal arts college in New England? Surely it must be filled with all manner of socialist degenerates! I digress. No, it wasn’t crude stereotypes about political affiliation (socialists make America great just like anyone else). It was a deep discontent with our republic. Something that went beyond the mere cynicism often associated with students.
I couldn’t and can’t understand it. I’m not exactly a red-blooded, Bible thumping American. I am often critical of my home: its foreign policies, its social policies, the people in it, but when push came to shove the United States was and is my home. My family has no real military tradition and has only been in this country since around the Second World War. There were stories about America told by my grandparents, though. Not necessarily how great it was, but how much worse the alternative was. Sure, grappa was drunk at family occasions and the toast “Next year in the homeland” was an ingrained tradition. These were empty words however. When asked directly whether my great-grandmother would want to ever go visit Sicily, her reply was simply, “Why the hell would I ever want to go back there?”
America, for her generation, was a dream, not because it promised anything, but because here they had the right to simply be left alone. Free from the horrors of endemic unemployment and Cosa Nostra, my grandparents and their parents had few positive thoughts about their homeland. Their children got American names and they were happier for it. They were happy to be free of a situation that was so hopeless they decided to get on a boat and sail for some unknown destination simply because it could not get any worse.
Of course things are not so black and white. The Mafia put my grandfather out of work at least once in New York. Their culture and language were effectively snuffed out, and for a long time, along with Jews and Blacks, Catholics were not welcome at institutions like Middlebury. But things were better. Imperfect, yes, but better.
So why have I walked you through this fairly typical immigrant odyssey? Because we lack something that generation had. It is the classic problem of the next generation: we don’t know how good we have it. We take things like Democracy, our Constitution, the wonders of the Bill of Rights, and accept them as merely for granted. Not many of us have had the experience of living in a place that did not have these things. So we are comfortable being opinionated, cynical, and unpatriotic.
True patriotism isn’t agreeing with everything your country does or says or liking the people in charge. I’m sure we can all think of true patriots who shook the status quo to its very core because they believed in American principles.
The elephant in the room (no party references intended) may just be our arrogance, Middlebury. Isn’t it convenient to become saturated in like opinion to the point where any idea outside our cozy bubble seems alien and wrong? Here we sit in our little ivory tower of liberal learning, in one of the most liberal of states, happy to enjoy the freedoms given to us at no cost, yet unwilling to participate in even the simplest of patriotic activities, voting for instance.
Have we ever paused to consider how incredible it is that we can do the things we do, simply without being bothered? We are allowed to protest tailgating bans, protest the protest of tailgating bans and openly critique our professors, elected officials and police officers (if you’re not stupid about it). What’s more, in perhaps the most deeply patriotic gesture, some of us even to spend our days critiquing, debating and questioning our government and then get a degree. Yes, our country is not perfect, yes, it could use some work. But it’s a lot better than most of the alternatives. So I make my case for America. Let’s hope our generation is willing to plug the holes in what might be a sinking ship rather than jump overboard.
Artwork by GLORIA BRECK
