True patriotism is not reflex, Jingoist Chauvinism. True love of one’s country means neither hyperfocus on its imperfections, nor just ignoring them. As in loving another person, authentic affection doesn’t require pretense of perfection, but appreciating the beloved’s full potential, beyond any undeniable flaws.

So for me, America’s 250^th Anniversary elicits reflection blended with some pride; and cautious optimism. As my title means to suggest, she may still offer much to the world, if she surpasses forces that tainted her founding promise.

I thought of this during a walk in my vibrant Chicago neighborhood recently. The sense of freedom and security I felt seem valid reasons for thanks, as well as hope for, my country. My area reflects a society with good social ‘bones,’ not inherent, ambient chaos. And recognizing such seems a better way to appreciate America than any parade or statue.

But even those whose well-being our society long prioritized take such privileges for granted at their peril; personal freedom and security are not defaults in this world. Nationalist songs like ‘America the Beautiful’ may exaggerate positivity, with lyrics like ‘thine alabaster cities gleam,’ but such words stretch imagery to absurdity. Neither Chicago, nor any other American city is literally alabaster, white, pure, flawless stone.

To say the least, our heritage is not pure and flawless either. And it may have too long been presumed to be ‘White,’ which – ironically – has stained it.

While my neighborhood is relatively safe, clean and attractive, it still shows signs of the instability of any society where prosperity is protected to the detriment of those who lack equal access to it by legal, economic and cultural barriers. This should be an intolerable mismatch for any land that reveres equality.

The new Obama Center pictured here is granite, yet reflects genuine hope for ideals, for which allusions to alabaster cities get brandished, rather than face the reality of failing to uphold them. Its design, so unlike other public institutions of its type – the classical Museum of Science and Industry appears behind it – suggests how diverse visions can be stimulating and beneficial.

The vision released on July 4, 1776 would diverge far beyond anything those prosperous male Caucasians, seeking redress against the authority of their lawful King, foresaw or imagined. They simply meant to adjust the power structure to benefit those they, presuming to define who was worthy (and ‘normal’), considered more fit and entitled to rule than any hereditary monarch: Themselves.

But the grand ideas they declared that day took on a life of their own, for if such mere mortal men need not submit to alleged ‘natural’ rulers – princes and lords – why did anyone else? Those men opened a door to individual worth and autonomy that could not apply, indefinitely, only to those like themselves.

In time, their adjustment swelled to an avalanche, gathering all people suppressed by traditional hierarchy, demanding control over their own lives. They never foresaw full citizenship for women, let alone ‘Negroes’ which would likely have horrified them. Progress has been slow and uneven, but it seems willful to deny that such counter-traditional leaps towards general personal liberty are not genuine evolution toward equality; based on one’s humanity alone. One should not expect perfection, or nothing; human affairs rarely work that way.

Consider: there was a built-in crossed-purpose for our professed ideals, which has deflected them ever since. A priority for many Americans was exploiting the wilderness of the continent, portrayed as a quasi-sacred duty, in which material success was divinely sanctioned.

But the sort of folk willing to endure hardship, ocean voyages in primitive ships, risk life and limb to develop this enormous land, were more likely driven by self-interest than abstract principle (including concern for native peoples who already lived here). And that’s fair; those willing to exert themselves beyond what is easy should get greater rewards. To a reasonable degree.

But American popular culture now approves rewards to ‘unreasonable’ degrees. Thus, our economy recently spawned history’s first dollar Trillionaire (a South African immigrant who, unsurprisingly given racial presumptions amid which he grew up, rejects empathy as a value).

Self-interested vigor, first released to tame a wild continent, leads many of us to still consider naked greed a virtue. Such vigor may have been necessary to develop needed natural riches, but has outlived its usefulness, and made our nation the place where a phenomenon as unequal as ‘more money than there are stars in the heavens’ was apt to appear first. America too often encourages, facilitates – quasi-deifies – such financial overkill, rather than treat it as a gross failure of proportion, self-awareness and modesty.

Is it hugely surprising that a society that largely approves such excess might lack moderation in its politics? The validation of the Self in the Declaration has, in many ways, decayed into indifference to the Other. That engine of greed collides repeatedly with the aspirations of the Declaration of Independence; historically, greed almost always wins.

Almost.

Events generally get driven by people with abundant energy, if often short on scruples. Actions speak louder than words however grand, and our true priorities gradually slid from the sublime to the avaricious.

Further, while the ‘equality’ the Founding Fatcats of ’76 sought chiefly rejected hereditary privilege by asserting the inherent sovereignty of all (men), today many Americans – especially unremarkable white men – do not want to be ‘equal.’ They want to be ‘supreme,’ and so many without distinguishing deeds or gifts cling fiercely to the unwarranted ‘ruling class’ status our society has long accorded them. They would stand atop others to keep themselves raised.

(I will say more about that issue in other posts.)

To return to my ‘almost’ caveat about self-interest versus principle:  ideals like those America asserted as its foundation are organic, self-sustaining, and cannot be put back in a box. They still win over ‘rugged individualism’ enough to display their power, and thus remain worth striving to advance, rather than abandon as unrealistic.

Hope is often unrealistic, but ideals are conceived to oppose intolerable (apparent) realities. Refusal to accept things as they are – belief that something better is possible – is an indispensable well-spring of much human progress. It’s what the Philadelphia Patriarchs intended. They knew their undertaking had historic implications; they just didn’t realize how much.

There are still prominent American voices advocating aspirations higher than Plutocracy, if we listen to them.

It is easy to focus on all the ways America has deviated, obstructed, or failed in its lofty pretensions. But it is worse than useless to give it up as a lost cause, and not still try to absorb those pretensions, mutated but improved, from those envisaged by those Patriarchs. Passivity concedes the public realm to the scruple-free.

The nation we can realize by seeing ‘Patriotism’ as combining personal autonomy with contributing to our broader community can genuinely nurture our experiment in freedom. Maybe observed as ‘Inter-Dependence Day?’

Imagery like ‘alabaster cities’ is so far from reality as to seem like an admission that, since we cannot really be good citizens, we may as well aim for impossible perfection. But we do not need alabaster cities, we need faith that what got set loose 7/4/1776 deserves our best efforts to keep alive and evolving.

In addition, we should ditch our widespread knee-jerk near worship of wealth, as a worse-than-useless relic of a grasping frontier mentality. If we don’t start to reject baser impulses like hyper-Egoism, we will never attain, nor deserve, the higher state the founders offered us all; however unintentionally.

We may pray, as the song says, of America, that Providence may ‘Mend thine every flaw.’ But it is also said that Heaven helps those who help themselves, so we should actively pursue benevolent – meaningful – contributions to life as individuals and collectively. Not just for our nation but humanity in general.

What may be accomplished, by free people with material sufficiency, focused on values immeasurably greater than rampaging rapacity? Reaching for and spreading such values may be more powerful than the self-interest of those who set them in motion – and possibly, worth more than all the stars in the heavens.