Thursday, July 6, 2023

July 6, 2023: Patriotism in 2023: Critical Patriotism and the Court

[It’s been two and a half years since my book on the contested history of American patriotism was published, and let’s just say it doesn’t feel less relevant at the moment. So for this year’s July 4th series, I wanted to highlight a handful of places and ways I’ve been thinking about the book and patriotism here in 2023. Leading up to a request for any and all further such opportunities to share the project!]

One of the very best parts about teaching adult learning courses is that the students feel very free to continue the conversation by email after the class is officially done (often years down the road, in fact, which are some of my favorite emails to receive). As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, that happened again with this Spring’s BOLLI course on patriotism, and with a particularly thoughtful and helpful idea at that. The student (whom I won’t name as I haven’t gotten her permission, but she was a great contributor throughout the course) shared a New York Times article entitled “Supreme Court Justices Don’t Like Being Criticized in Public, Which is a Good Reason to Keep Doing It,” calling it “a beautiful illustration of critical patriotism at its best.” As someone who has directly criticized a Supreme Court Justice in order to advance my ideas about the worst and best of American ideals, I wholeheartedly agree; but until she shared the article and this perspective I really hadn’t thought of that practice as an embodiment of critical patriotism. I’m definitely convinced, however, and this additional and important application of our class conversations really drove home how much Of Thee I Sing can help us analyze in our contemporary politics, debates, and culture.

Last patriotic post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Ideas for places/ways I could share Of Thee I Sing?

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