IN PRAISE OF PATRIOTISM (NPG Footnote)

• Lindsey Grant
• August 1, 1995
• Forum Papers
• Forum Paper
• 0 Comments

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IN PRAISE OF PATRIOTISM
An NPG Forum Paper
(NPG Footnote) 
by Lindsey Grant
August 1995

On the old road between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, at a crossing called Budaghers, there is an abandoned roadhouse and gas station, bypassed by the new Interstate. Whoever owned it retreated in good order. Plywood was put over the windows to protect the place. On one of those sheets of plywood, now partly obscured by an ailanthus, somebody took a paintbrush and wrote “U.S.A.#1 !” in big, bold letters.

There is a lot of courage reflected in that little scene. I don’t know who owns the place, and I don’t know who wrote the graffiti. I suspect it was an Hispanic. It was probably somebody who had had his share of lumps, culminating in a distant decision to cut off his roadhouse with a new highway. He was undaunted nonetheless. He believed in the system, and he believed in an abstraction called country.

In a fractioning age and society, we could use more of that spirit. In fact, we desperately need it. There is not much to rally the spirit in the cry “I’m all right, Jack” — i.e. I’ve got mine — that animates the era. Humans are at least in part a social species. In the absence of a larger group with which to identify, we tend to fall back to identifying ourselves with subgroups, whether they be urban street gangs, ethnic groups, or economic class.

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