[For this year’s
series on genuine American patriots, I focused on contemporary figures who are
doing the hard work of patriotism. If there was a through-line to these four,
in addition to the ideas I discussed in my Patriot’s Day post, it’d be Howard
Zinn’s famous quote, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” This
crowd-sourced post is drawn from the responses and nominees of fellow
AmericanStudiers—add your own in comments, please!]
First, I’ll add
one more great example of online public scholarly patriotism to Friday’s list: ‘Merica
Magazine, which was founded
by graduate students Ed Simon and Wade Linebaugh precisely to practice this
more critical but still celebratory form of patriotism.
Responding to
the Howard Zinn quote, Matt
Ramsden writes that it “reminds me of a video I
saw yesterday of Keith Haring drawing graffiti in an extremely public place; fresh off
a train in a New York City train station with dozens of onlookers.”
Steve Edwards writes, “I like John
Francis, the environmentalist who gave up riding
in cars & *talking* in order to protest our reliance on fossil fuels.”
Ben
Lieberman writes, “George
McGovern. Not only a Presidential candidate who
combined real policy chops with principle, but a pilot who flew many missions
over Europe during World War II”; Ben also nominates “Thurgood Marshall and
Nelson Mandela.”
Andrew DaSilva nominates, “First are the US patriots.
Former State
Senator Therese Murray she helped pave the way
for major health care legislation. Then there's Congressman Joseph P Kennedy III who has picked up the torch of public service for the
people of this great Commonwealth like his great Uncle President John F Kennedy
before him filling the shoes of the great liberal icon Congressman Barney
Frank. As for foreign patriots I know it's controversial and he maybe a lot of
other things but he is most certainly a patriot that being Prime
Minister Netanyahu of Israel while in the
military he saved Israeli lives on the hijacked plane Sabena Flight 571 and
while in politics he championed the Israeli cause of continued growth and
nationhood. Lastly there's José
Mujica former president of Uruguay. He donated a
large percent of his salary to charity and although being imprisoned and shot
at by the gov't he still went on to serve his country with compassion and
humility of a bygone era....”
The
aforementioned Wade
Linebaugh goes way back and provocative (in the
best sense), writing, “Not (just) trying to be a square peg here, but how about
John
Brown? He is far from an uncomplicated figure,
of course, and memorializing his role in history doesn't need to mean condoning
violence in the here and now. But still: a certain (maniacal, homicidal,
treasonous) kind of patriot, perhaps.”
Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
Other figures you’d nominate?
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