It's easy to look at the Speaker of the House chaos right now and say the Republican Party has reached a level of dysfunction on-par with mesh condoms and AT&T customer service. But that's not to say the Democratic Party hasn't made its own mistakes in the last few years, and I think the most damning might be its outright rejection of patriotism.
People forget: the Founding Fathers were liberals. I'm sure George Washington's slaves would challenge me on that, but at their core, the signers of the Declaration of Independence were inherently progressives. They weren't people keen on rejecting new ideas and maintaining the status quo. If Alexander Hamilton was here today, he would have far more in common with AOC than Matt Gaetz.
In many ways, America is liberalism. The story of America is 247 years of being faced with new ideas and, after an inevitable few decades of screwing it up, ultimately choosing the path of progress and greater opportunity for everyone. It's the reason after all these years our reputation is still afloat: the ship is always pointed in the right direction no matter how many holes Jim Crow or Donald Trump poke in the hull.
Which is why it's baffling to me that when our two parties filed for divorce and started the custody battles, the Democrats just totally ceded patriotism to the Republicans. They gave it up. It's not even like the Democrats get to see the American flag on Wednesdays and every other weekend. They just gave it up with no visiting rights. It feels like we're so polarized now that the left would just rather give patriotism up altogether than share even that commonality with the right.
Flying an American flag now feels like an advertisement for the Republican Party. I don't think I would wear a t-shirt with an American flag on it in public now for fear that some people would read it as Trump propaganda. I'm genuinely embarrassed to say that because the American flag should not be a politically charged symbol. It should be something that unites, not divides. But as much as Republicans have done to turn it into a symbol of division (see January 6th), the Democrats are equally at fault for neglecting it altogether.
I want to see the liberal party reclaim patriotism. I want liberals to be able to say they love America again without feeling like they're speaking out of step.
I want to return to a time where I see an American flag and think about it waving atop the Capitol, not carried by someone invading it.
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