Chesterton touches on patriotism in his famous book Orthodoxy. In the chapter The Flag of the World, as he is trying to describe what is wrong with with both optimism and pessimism (about existence), he uses patriotism as a point of reference to illustrate the alternative. Is this concept of patriotism so incomprehensible nowadays? Read the following, and for "Pimlico", insert "America":

Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing—say Pimlico. If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought that leads to the throne of the mystic and arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide horrible things; but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is theirs, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilisation and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

A priest said to us in a sermon on this 4th of July: if you do not have patriotism, pray to our Lady, and she will help you.

I’m curious as to how many folks critical of US history/patriotism are millennials and/or were educated in public school?
Conservative voices argue that the negative outlook on America’s founding has been spread by liberal/socialist teachers in public schools and universities, with the agenda of reshaping these US after a socialist model. Also that American history is not taught with an understanding of the uniqueness of what the founding fathers created in the long story of human history.
Knowing that JohnathanKK and I were both homeschooled, I am thinking these conservative voices may not be too far off the mark.
Those that disagree with us, I am interested as to who influenced your thought on these matters! Thanks!

I’m a homeschooled millennial.

Davido – I would say “all of the above”. My family is big and full of opinions, but all of my grandparents were immigrants who care here in the late 50s/early 60s from Germany and Canada. I was very close to my late maternal grandparents; my grandmother remembered her mother trying to keep her out of the Hitler Youth/BDM and counteract her indoctrination in school, and her father seeing boxcars full of prisoners in his railway work, and miscoupling as many as he could get away with onto trains toward places he thought were safe. My grandfather had the bad luck to be born in a German colony in Ukraine, which Stalin decided to annex. When he was 14, his parents were deported to Siberia to do hard labor, and he never saw them again. He escaped alone to Europe, but was drafted by the Germans, wounded near Stalingrad, and ended up in a Russian POW camp until the end of the war.

So they knew what several kinds of nationalism really look like, and where it leads. Of course they were glad to have a home in America, but they were also extremely skeptical of the new spirit of rally-round-the-flag militarism that Bush stirred up after 9/11 (I was eight), and downright nervous when we went to war. Every time he saw me with toy guns or soldiers or some other such thing, my grandfather would call out: “War is the most idiotic, dumb thing anyone can do”, and tell me he’d write me out of his will if I ever was stupid enough to volunteer for the military. So that sort of personal example and lived experience certainly makes a deep impression on a little kid. Add to that also regular reading of the Bible as a homeschool student: the prophets and apostles again and again proclaiming their allegiance to the Kingdom of God and loving the nations where they lived enough to tell the truth about them, but without forgetting that their true citizenship was in heaven.

As for college/graduate school/my own reading, I certainly think one always learns more about America after meeting others from around the country, continuing to study history, and reading more about the current situation.

So for me, it’s just an empty and fruitless exercise to praise America with the National Anthem. Perhaps it’s a generational thing. In my 28 years, America hasn’t won a war (or fought anything resembling a just, or even logical war). In my father’s lifetime, you can add the folly of Vietnam to that. Maybe sing it a few more years in honor of the few remaining soldiers from World War 2, and be glad they defeated Hitler and Japan. Maybe sing it for Dr. King and those continuing his fight, but probably he’d be happier with “Lift every voice and sing”. Other than that, there just isn’t much to praise, and quite a lot more to weep and mourn.