I have looked to public broadcasting for coverage of news and current affairs for much of my adult life. PBS NewsHour has been a go-to resource since the McNeil-Lehrer era. Co-anchors Amna Nawaz and Geoff Bennett did not miss a beat when they took the reins after Judy Woodruff’s retirement at the end of 2022. They carry on a proud tradition that runs through their predecessors Robert MacNeil, Jim Lehrer, Gwen Ifill, and Woodruff. The stellar team includes Lisa Desjardins at the Capitol, Laura Barrón-López covering the White House, Nick Schifrin all over the place, including Ukraine, Stephanie Sy, John Yang, and others too many to name.
I listen to National Public Radio when in the kitchen making coffee, preparing meals, cleaning up afterward, and during my exercise and stretching routine after a run. When I think of NPR, I think of people like Cokie Roberts, Linda Wertheimer, and Susan Stamberg. Mary Louise Kelly, Tamara Keith, and others continue to provide the kind of reporting and analysis I once took for granted, but that brand of journalism no longer serves as the face and the voice of NPR.
It is not uncommon for me to turn off the radio soon after tuning in while kneading dough for bread baking or making pancakes for breakfast after the Saturday morning run when yet another piece is devoted to identity-group grievance and victimization, hyperbolic paeans to TikTok celebrities, or Youtube authorities weighing in on whatever has gone viral in the last moments. Some of these features are newsworthy. Others are trivial, the reporting shallow, contributors perhaps a tad too pleased with themselves and their own righteousness.
Mona Charen expresses similar discontent with NPR’s present direction in her column Democrats Should Reclaim Patriotism:
I’m a devoted listener to NPR, and they do excellent work. But their progressive bias results in a seemingly endless litany of American sins and shortcomings past and present. Every other story seems to feature a “marginalized community,” discrimination, bias, and hardship. It’s such a pervasive aspect of the brand that I was taken aback, a few months ago, when they aired a segment on the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party that told the tale with amusement and without implied censure of America’s past sins.
Charen is a woman of the right. I still think of myself as a man of the left, although some progressives may not welcome me into the fold. I echo her on NPR: I remain a devoted listener. They do excellent work. If I am put off by a good deal of NPR’s programming, it seems fair to wonder what people with a more middle-of-the-road perspective make of it.
Critique of NPR is not Charen’s concern here. She uses it to illustrate tendencies associated with progressivism that are detrimental to efforts by the Democratic Party to appeal to moderate Americans, many of them Democrats, who are disturbed by the “seemingly endless litany of American sins and shortcomings” pouring out from the left flank. Her presumption is that some, maybe many, of these moderates are also disturbed by the Republican Party’s stampede into Trumpism and thus open to persuasion.
Charen opens with an account of Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s address at the Republican National Convention in 1984, where she “lambasted her former party for always ‘blaming America first.’ It brought the house down. ‘San Francisco Democrat’ became a catchphrase that haunted Democrats for years to come.” Kirkpatrick was appealing to “middle-of-the-road voters…put off by what they perceived as the Democratic party’s drift toward anti-Americanism.” I believe this perception was then and remains to a considerable extent a product of Republican calumnies that exaggerated the influence of blockheads on the left who unfortunately gave them ample material to work with. Charen might dissent.
The Kirkpatrick anecdote is the prelude to a searing indictment of today’s Republican party:
Today, it is the Republican party that—despite its MAGA slogan—is trafficking in dark, anti-American ideas and imagery. The party that claims to put “America first” is led by a man who describes the nation as “failing” or “corrupt” a hundred times for every one mention of an American virtue. He shrieks that “Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION!”
…
Trump’s factotums in the GOP sound the same themes. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson condemns the nation he serves as “dark and depraved.” Rep. Jim Banks describes the country as beset by “creeping tyranny.”
The Republican party has traded patriotism and uplift for an apocalyptic cult. This presents Democrats with an opportunity—if they can seize it.
I do not go as far as Charen does in embracing American exceptionalism, a term she does not use but a notion that runs throughout the essay. I would go further in calling out dark pages of our history that were largely neglected or ignored until recently and that Republicans now try to sweep back into the shadows. In general though and on certain key points we are in agreement.
Of course the country has committed its share of wrongs…But progressives have not figured out a way to balance the bad with the good. Arguably, our capacity to face our failures and crimes is one of the traits that sets us apart from nations that whitewash the past. Some self-criticism is a sign of maturity. Too much can be demoralizing.
Does she paint with too broad a brush? Is the progressive movement really the bogeyman she portrays? Would it not be more accurate to say “some progressives have not figured out…” or even “too many progressives…?” Or am I the one who is out of tune? Suppose for a moment I am right and not everyone to the left of me is a blockhead. What Charen describes is nonetheless out there. It is more than simply a misperception. One need only scroll through the pages of Jacobin, which bills itself as “a leading voice to the American left,” for the slant that distresses both Charen and me when it surfaces at NPR.
The accepted truths and articles of faith that make up what Charen calls progressive bias inform the views of many academics, intellectuals, journalists, pundits, and politicians on the liberal-left as well as institutions such as NPR. Does this orthodoxy define progressivism? Is there a place in the progressive sphere for dissent from the movement’s sacred cows alongside dissent that speaks truth to power in the interest of peace, decency, and the common good? Or does merely posing the question put me beyond the pale?
On a key point though Charen and I are in substantial agreement. The perception persists, rightly or wrongly, fairly or not, that Democrats, liberals, and progressives see America through a lens of guilt for “slavery, ethnic cleansing (of Native Americans), discrimination, religious bigotry, and always and everywhere racism,” while blind to aspects of our heritage that should be celebrated despite our repeated failures to live up to them. Charen cites the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Housing Act, among other achievements. America “is the nation that, imperfectly but steadily, implemented Brown v. Board of Education.” Too imperfectly, not steadily enough, with progress frustratingly incremental, we have inched on from where we were in the 1950s and ‘60s. I was born in South Carolina in 1952 and grew up there. Early memories of segregation and the civil rights movement inform the social and political views I hold today. Despite backsliding, too much of it, we live in a better time, though much remains to be done. Much always remains to be done.
“What is there to love about America?” Charen asks. “Let’s begin with the Declaration of Independence. Though written by a slave owner, its stirring words inspired not just colonists along the Atlantic coast of the New World, but all of humanity.” Throughout our history we have fallen short of the principles and ideals enshrined in the Declaration. The founding fathers themselves fell short. It is worth reminding ourselves that it is on the basis of those principles and ideals that we hold our flawed forebears and our own flawed selves accountable when we fall short.
Charen’s call for Democrats to reclaim patriotism seems beyond dispute, so obvious it should hardly need stating. She is far from alone in exhorting Democrats to take up that banner. Aliza Astrow is a senior political analyst and Rachel Reh a senior communications advisor at the center-left think tank Third Way. Astrow and Reh issued the call in an opinion column published at The Hill more than a year ago. They put it bluntly:
It’s time for Democrats to reclaim the mantle as the party of patriotism…
For too long, Republicans have successfully wrapped the flag and other symbols of patriotism in a veneer of partisanship, falsely portraying Democrats as radicals. This characterization is only worsened by some progressive activists who consistently highlight America’s flaws, rather than touting our accomplishments. But love of country matters, and it lines up with how most Americans feel. (Astrow, Reh, Democrats: Don’t let).
The more I ponder these things, the less straightforward it becomes. Republicans have gift-wrapped an opening for Democrats to claim the mantle of patriotism for themselves, but taking advantage of that may not be as simple as Charen appears to think when she writes,
There is much to make the heart swell with pride about this country. Democrats should sing it proudly. The MAGA vision of a woke, corrupt, crime-infested hellscape is not patriotism but its opposite. Speaking up for the goodness of America is just—and may also be politically potent.
Who but a Republican would question the patriotism of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Congresswomen Elissa Slotkin (Michigan) and Abigail Spanberger (Virginia), Governors Jared Polis (Colorado), Wes Moore (Maryland) and Josh Shapiro (Pennsylvania), and any number of other prominent Democrats? Biden regularly honors our patriotic heritage in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln’s words from his first inaugural address:
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely, they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
The problem for Democrats lies less with the party than with the ethos reflected in the NPR programming that Charen and I find annoying. It represents only a portion of NPR programming, and maybe a smaller portion than my subjective perception has it when it seems to come up every time I turn on the radio. There are Democrats who say things that make one cringe, even when there are elements of truth in what they say. They are not however as representative of the party as they appear to think or as mainstream and social media coverage might suggest.
Astrow and Reh single out Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez by way of example, quoting her when she spoke about voter suppression before the 2022 midterms: “We are really truly facing an environment of fascism in the United States of America…It brings us back and harkens back to a very unique form of American apartheid that is not that long past ago, and we have never fully healed from it.” They hold that Ocasio-Cortez was right to talk about voter suppression but wrong when she framed it in a way that “suggests that America is not great—that our many failings and defects are too deep a stain to sustain full-throated patriotism.”
Ocasio-Cortez is frustrating because she is smart and capable. Even arch-MAGA Republican James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, acknowledged that she comes to committee meetings prepared and asks good questions (alas, I cannot find the source for this, so must rely on memory; I think I have it right). She is, however, also given to ill-advised, counterproductive remarks like those cited above in interviews and on Twitter/X. Not that she stands alone in this regard. It is a bipartisan failing.
So what is to be done? Democrats need to find a way to make people like Buttigieg, Whitmer, and Spanberger the faces of the party. They need to make the case for an authentic patriotism far removed from the crude nationalism that infects Republican ranks, the brand of patriotism Samuel Johnson had in mind when he said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Boswell tells us that Johnson “did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest” (Tearle, The Meaning and Origin). There has to be more to it than waving the flag and denouncing racists, fascists, and, yes, mea culpa, blockheads.
The flag and other patriotic symbols are important. Symbols matter. They stir us to embrace and try to live up to principles and ideals expressed at the nation’s founding in the Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the Constitution. They call us beyond these symbols to a deeper patriotism that manifests itself in the way we comport ourselves in civic life.
Keep the faith. Stand with Ukraine. yr obdt svt
References and Related Reading
Aliza Astrow, Rachel Reh, Democrats: Don’t let the Republicans Own Patriotism, The Hill, January 23, 2023
Andrew Beaujon, NPR at 50: A Highly Selective History, Washingtonian, June 1, 2021
Mona Charen, Democrats Should Reclaim Patriotism, The Bulwark, April 3, 2024
Nathaniel Rakich, Dhrumil Mehta, We’re Divided On Patriotism Too, FiveThirtyEight, July 6, 2018
Oliver Tearle, The Meaning and Origin of ‘Patriotism is the Last Refuge of the Scoundrel,’ Interesting Literature
The Progressive Magazine: Mission and History. The magazine was founded on January 9, 1909, by Senator Robert M. La Follette Sr. of Wisconsin “to be a magazine of ‘progress,’ aiming to document the work of those resisting corruption and working to protect representative government.”
interesting. unlike you i, still find npr a great source that i respect. i do share problems some of pogressives. the sanders and warren wing of the party i sstill stand with