At one time, Independence Day was my favorite holiday. (As an aside, I should note that I am not the least bit religious, and if I were, I’d turn Jewish, but when I was a child, Christmas was my favorite holiday for all the wrong reasons.) I enjoy fireworks, and I love to hear readings of the Declaration of Independence, which is, after all, what we are celebrating today.
But last year on this day, I did what I considered the most American of all July 4 activities. I went to a baseball game (I skipped the hot dog, which might be the most American of all foods, but I had a BBQ pork sandwich, which has to be a close second). But I was SO uncomfortable. Not with the game, which was great, even if the Padres were playing one of thw worst teams in baseball (the Royals, just after they had traded Carlos Beltran). No, uncomfortable with the forced rituals of a distorted view of ‘patriotism.’
I thought I had descended on a military base (it’s San Diego, so I more or less had). Soldiers and sailors everywhere, military flyover, and the obligatory ‘God Bless America,’ the new post-9/11 and Iraqi war-era ritual at Sunday and July 4 baseball games. I just felt out of place, because celebrating the military is not what July 4 means to me.
A celebration of America and its greatness (realized and still promised) and the anniversary of its independence should not be hijacked by a mass salute to the power to subdue and kill, least of all in the midst of a war that is thoroughly divisive at home, initiated under false pretenses, slaughtering good patriotic American young men and women and innocent Iraqis, and in all probability being lost.
Patriotism is not the same thing as nationalism, and certainly not the same as jingoism, imperialism, or militarism. Yet we live in an era when, increasingly, those who control publilc events (including baseball games) conflate patriotism with all these other, more sinister, -isms.
A celebration of patriotism should be about the original birth of a free nation in a struggle against imprerialist oppression. It should be about our young country’s development of one of the greatest minds ever in democratic theory (James Madison). The Underground Railway and the defeat of the secessionist slave-state governments. The women’s suffrage movement. The Civil Rights Movement. What makes America more than just another country is the constant struggle to improve and extend freedom for all our citizens.
This struggle remains critically imperative today, as some of those freedoms are being eroded even as people stand up and sing ‘God Bless America,’ put flags and ‘Support our troops’ stickers on their vehicles, and think think these vacuous gestures are sufficient to place them among the good patriotic Americans.
Patriotism and the Fourth of July should not be about how we are bigger and better and spend more on military force than the entire rest of the world, and can blow things up better than anyone else.
I won’t be going to any baseball games today, unfortunately. But I will remember those here and around the world, alive and long gone, who struggle to make their own countries more democratic and free of militarism.
Happy Independence Day everyone.
Matt,
What you perceived as “distorted patriotism” att that baseball game would bring tears to my eyes. Without the military America would not celebrate those events in history that you listed.
Comment by Barbara — Monday, July 4, 2026 @ 6:42 pm
[…] exception on this day of national “unity” to the moanings of Dr. Shuggart re: his traumatic experience at a San Diego Padres baseball game last year. A celebration of America and its grea […]
Pingback by PoliBlog: Politics is the Master Science » Well that’ll stir the pot — Monday, July 4, 2026 @ 6:53 pm
I’m sorry you are so uncomfortable about those things. Unfortunately, you seem to ignore that democratic political theory would never have been implemented without the force of arms, and likely would have succumb to great powers without the force of arms.
Rather than being pained by the deaths of patriotic Americans who were trying to change the status quo in Iraq, I am more pained by the deaths of Americans in the Korean War and during the Berlin Airlift, because if they could bear witness to the attitude of Germans and South Koreans today, they would wonder why their lives were wasted for the ancestors of such ingrates.
Comment by ATM — Monday, July 4, 2026 @ 7:10 pm
If anyone thinks my comments were directed against WW II or past democratic revolutions, then I respectfully ask that you read the post more carefully.
Comment by Matthew Shugart — Monday, July 4, 2026 @ 8:54 pm
And why would WWII (or WWI) be a good thing? The US could have always avoided those wars by actually being as isolationist as the country desired and not doing anything to antagonize the either side in the war, just as the US could have avoided 9/11 by not going to war to force Saddam out of Kuwait and then pursuing the a policy containment of containment. Containment is what brought us into contact and conflict with al Qaeda, regardless of whether Saddam provided them any aid or not. At some point a nation has to recognize that the costs of containment have been too high, and that it is time to move from a strategy of containment to a permanent settlement.
Just to be clear I consider all these wars, except WWI, to be good things.
Comment by ATM — Tuesday, July 5, 2026 @ 3:55 am
Let me note that we’ve been doing this military during July 4th thing long before the war in Iraq.
I think just about every 4th parade involves honoring the military at some point - I’ve always seen it as a thank you to those who voluntarily serve our country.
Comment by B. Minich, PI — Tuesday, July 5, 2026 @ 9:24 am
In Matt’s defense, he’s objecting to the military display to the exclusion of other things one might celebrate about the United States. Although he backs into the point a bit, that’s what I understood to be his basic argument.
I’ve been a lifelong student of military history, and I’ve been consistently been impressed by the people in uniform I’ve met, from former JCS Chairman Admiral William Crowe to the rank-and-file Marines to whom my wife taught political science classes. I’ve also spent a great deal of my adult life trying to get people unfamiliar with the US military to understand it better. For example, a lot of people might be surprised at the open, blunt, and often highly critical comments about current US strategy in Iraq that you’ll read in the military’s own publications, such as the Joint Forces Quarterly and Parameters.
Still, I cringe a bit at the kind of displays Matt describes. They are frequently vacuous (”Please welcome America’s heroes!”), and they do run the risk of overshadowing the non-military aspects of American history. I’m also deeply concerned that we’re setting up the same kind of backlash against the military that we saw in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. (We certainly are headed toward the “hollow army” of the 1970s, if current trends continue.)
I don’t want to see us return to the days when returning GIs were greeted with epithets like “babykillers.” The Administration’s mishandling of the Abu Ghraib scandal (which extends to Guantanamo Bay, Baghram Airport, and plenty of other locations worldwide) has left many Americans with the strong opinion that there were not just a few bad apples in one detention facility. However, the larger systemic problem remains–and we hear more about it as time goes on. When public displays of our military prowess are vacuous, disillusionment might someday fill that vacuum.
Anyway, a long response, I know, but Matt’s post touched a lot of issues.
Matt, have you ever thought of starting your own Fourth of July traditions? At our house, we read from the Constitution, discuss the characters in the American story–some in uniform, some not–whom we admire. If you want to make it a more public event, you can always invite people over for a barbeque, expanding the group of people involved in this ritual of America’s “civil religion.” (And I’m sure you’re not surprised that I slipped a reference to Rousseau into the discussion.)
Comment by Kingdaddy — Tuesday, July 5, 2026 @ 3:48 pm
I can see Matt’s point, though I disagree with his apparent opposition to the war in Iraq. I often see the tribute that some people pay to our service men and women as disingenuous and obligatory. If there is one thing I cannot stand it is insincerity. I do differ a little with Matt in that I don’t think that it is inappropriate to honor the military in the fashion he witnessed, but I also don’t believe that he should feel unpatriotic should he not wish to participate. It sickens me a little when people do things like praising the military or policemen or firefighters just because it seems like they should, instead of doing so out of geniune fullness of heart. But I suppose it is impossible to really know people’s motives.
Comment by Ross Edgin — Wednesday, July 6, 2026 @ 1:28 pm
Bravo Matt!
Comment by The Misanthrope — Wednesday, July 6, 2026 @ 7:10 pm