Cheering a Monster's Death Is Not the Same as Patriotism

By Richard Rodriguez, New America Media
Posted on May 2, 2011, Printed on May 3, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150808/cheering_a_monster%27s_death_is_not_the_same_as_patriotism

There was something unseemly about that gathering of college-age Americans outside the White House just before midnight on Sunday, cheering at the news of Osama bin Laden’s death. Some of the kids had draped flags over their shoulders; they chanted “USA, USA, USA.” I doubt there was a true patriot in the bunch.

Patriotism is not the same thing as cheering in the streets when your side wins the Super Bowl. Patriotism is truest and best when it is quiet, the acceptance of civic duty, as a kind of fate—never with childish glee, but with mature resolution. I think of Pat Tillman, sitting alone in a football stadium after September 11th, deciding that he needed to abandon the boyish game that he loved and instead enlist as a soldier.