The Famished Patriot

We are the patriots—the ones who have the heavy lifting to do. The mess in which we find ourselves today is of our own doing—well ours and our parents’ and our grandparents’. Few of us actually tended to our republic as Ben Franklin had admonished. We did not take our responsibilities for self-government very seriously, […]

Ahhh … the power of the patriarchs! A little while back I had a jaw-dropping revelation. It might not seem like anything of importance to you, but for me, it opened up a world of thought and meaning. “What was the revelation?” you ask. I realized that the words patriot and patriarch find their origins […]

You’ve seen them. And maybe you know some. They are the busy patriots. I love them. They are everywhere. They show up at the offices of elected officials, ready to dialog or push an agenda. They possess a tenacity that would make most of us blush. You will see them on buses, heading south to […]

To keep patriotism alive, we must continue to tell the kinds of stories that speak of vision and self-sacrifice. My generation, and the generations before me, were weaned on patriotic stories. Though not always completely 100% factual, the stories we heard as kids inspired patriotism and fed our love of country. They told of larger […]

We are beginning the END of this series, The Patriot, with a look at some ways we can be working to restore authentic American patriotism. I concluded my last blog post with a thought about intentionality. I wrote that America hating is learned. So is patriotism. In the years since my youth—the ’50’s and ’60’s—the […]

They are out there. You know it and I know it. I am talking about those people—those Americans—who hate America. And it troubles me … it troubles me greatly. The worldview that I have enjoyed all of my life cannot make room for hating America. The sentiment does not fit into my personal perspective on […]

It happened nearly nine years ago and involved but a few words. But those few words, spoken from a stage in London to a crowd of country music fans, shocked millions of Americans and altered the course of perhaps the hottest music group of that day―The Dixie Chicks. Just ten days before the U.S. Military […]

Just about everyone remembers where they were on the morning of September 11th, 2001. My wife and I had piled into the car and were on our way to Dulles Airport. Packed and ready to go, she was slated to fly to Myrtle Beach to spend the rest of the week with some friends. As […]

Across the board, in the overall scheme of things here in the early years of this new millennium, questions about American patriotism must be raised. ● How deep does patriotism really run in our land? ● How fertile, how rich, is the soil into which the seeds of patriotism fall? I do not pretend to […]

Do you recall the surge of national pride immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Patriotism ran high, and everywhere we looked, flags unfurled. Dotting our yards, flying above our car windows, and draping down from our highway bridges, Old Glory’s image painted a colorful reminder that we Americans stood as one, united against terrorism. Decorating […]