Americans have come to recognize the inaugural address as a standard of patriotism, an incoming president's judgment on civic virtue and a vision of American exceptionalism. From Lincoln's Summons “The better angels of our nature.” FDR's intonation “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” President Kennedy's call “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” The inauguration served as a sermon for the president on democratic citizenship as well as an edification of Americanism. What we expect from speeches is not policy or ideology, but insight into the self-understanding of the people and the patriotism that underpins democracy.
In the MAGA era of American politics, Democrats staked much of their opposition to Trumpism on this contrast between patriotism and democracy. President Biden's 2020 address centered on his mandate to: “Reclaiming the Soul” of America To restore our national identity while preserving democracy. The two objectives were framed as indistinguishable.
Like Lincoln, FDR, and Kennedy before him, Biden offered patriotic advice in his inaugural address, marrying national mythology with democratic commitments. “Do not harden your heart, but open your soul.” In response to the riot by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Vice President Kamala Harris modeled the idiom on her presidential campaign, accusing Mr. Trump of defaming the United States while intertwining it with promises of patriotism and democracy. Harris: “We are the inheritors of the greatest democracy in the history of the world.'' professed In a speech to the Democratic National Committee, she called American citizenship “the greatest privilege on earth.”
Part of the necessary consideration in the wake of Trump's re-election is abandoning this notion that patriotism and democracy are synergistic.
It's not just that Biden and Harris' notions of patriotism failed to persuade voters in the 2024 election cycle. More importantly, President Trump's repeated patriotism—a patriotism divorced from the promise of democracy—has more historical resonance. We admire the noble story of the American nation, but our admiration is misplaced. In order to protect democracy in the future, we need to fight against the situation where patriotism becomes indifferent to democracy. Perhaps Mr. Trump subconsciously understood American patriotism correctly.
American patriotism has Puritan origins, which lend it a rebellious energy and moral hostility. Many people remember President Ronald Reagan. call It is a quote from Puritan John Winthrop's prophecy in 1630 that America would become a “shining city on a hill” in his 1989 farewell speech. In this speech, President Reagan lamented the decline in patriotism among American youth. He was concerned that Americans under the age of 35 were not coming of age with teachers willing to impart the wisdom of the Founding Fathers. He harshly rebuked Hollywood screenwriters who, after the turmoil of the 1960s, no longer told Americans the moving stories of their homeland.
To these educational and cultural elites, Reagan implored decent American families to renew their patriotism. Through “civil ceremonies” At the dinner table. Despite President Reagan's reputation for sunny optimism, his speeches were foreboding and filled with fears of national decline.
Title: Winthrop's Sermon Quoted by President Reagan “A Model of Christian Charity” American patriotism flared with an inexorable sense of foreboding. Winthrop understood the Massachusetts Bay Colony, of which he was governor, to be in a covenant with God. God chose Puritan colonists to “work in the wilderness” to bring God’s grace and Protestant virtues to the New World.
Before the United States became independent in 1776, the public theology of Puritan settlers distinguished Americans as a chosen people with a providential mission. This Biblical concept of humanity—which the Puritans modeled on the ancient Hebrews—attached America to moral righteousness. American patriotism, the New Jerusalem and unique among nations, was never simply a matter of love of political ideals or loyalty to political institutions. Rather, patriotism raised questions of faithfulness to God.
Puritan origins give American patriotism an anti-democratic dimension that influences today's MAGA politics. Winthrop's contract with God required him to be constantly concerned about the membership and morality of political organizations. He decreed that no one but members of the church and true believers would be allowed to participate in this polity. Massachusetts Bay had to be wary of foreign contamination. Equally important, however, was to avoid the divine wrath that always befalls a community when it inevitably loses its moral righteousness. Massachusetts Bay, therefore, also had to turn its perspicuous gaze inward, looking for the wayward in its midst.
Trump's 2024 presidential campaign is modeled on these sensibilities. For example, MAGA panic about immigrants has always gone beyond concerns about law and policy and conveyed a venom toward immigrants as people who place an undue burden on the character of American society. And the Trump campaign's laser-like focus on transgender people exhibited all the hallmarks of a Puritan tendency to identify internal moral rot. Even “Make America Great Again” (Trump's patriotic axiom first used by President Reagan) announces a renewal project familiar to Mr. Winthrop.
Many observers were uncomfortable with the darkness of President Trump's first inaugural address and were perplexed by his assertion that: “American Massacre” This is a departure from the hopeful, high-priced banknotes set by previous presidents. However, the “American Massacre” is consistent with Winthrop's eschatology, in which the eternal struggle against corruption is the first step to salvation.
In the final weeks of the 2024 campaign, Harris rallied with Liz Cheney and described their shared patriotism as a love of the Constitution and the rule of law. But the elementary elements of liberal democracy that Harris and Cheney sought to preserve owe their existence to a distinct political lineage that is incompatible with patriotism.
The social contract underlying liberal democracy, first developed by modern political philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, makes universal rights, rather than moral personhood, the core of political membership. Therefore, we think of political community not as a practice of collective loyalty but as institutionalized cooperation. Indeed, the very concept of civil liberties that only liberal democracies can foster raises the kind of civic doubt that is fatal to Winthrop's project: whether my God, my morals, my speech, or my country is unique. It is premised on the suspicion that there is no justice.
What prompted this reckless conflation of a paean to American exceptionalism and a declaration of democratic principles? We've managed to get by on a flawed compound since the American Civil War. This is because we have been steadily progressing with democratization, even if it has been in a random order. But now, with the success of Trump and MAGA, the political logics that have always been disconnected have become clear.
We shouldn't expect politicians to stop paying tribute to patriotism, but they could do more to force the history of democracy into dry discussions about defending democracy. Since the abolition of slavery, through the anti-war movement and the civil rights struggle, the American democratic movement found it necessary to challenge the traditional framework of democratic life, which understood democracy as the development of patriotism.
Our arguments about defending democracy undermine its own rationale if we fail to draw insights from the movements that facilitated its achievement.
Dr. Maxwell G. Varkey is an assistant professor of political science at Kean University.
