We’ve neglected citizens’ well-being for a long time
I appreciate the sentiments expressed by Andrew Bacevich about the loss, perhaps permanently, of the glue that binds this country together (“The fading faith of American patriotism,’’ Opinion, April 18). However, for all his sentimentality, we have not been a country that embraces the care and well-being of its citizens. Think of the cruelty of how health care is apportioned; of the financial burden of day care that is placed on parents who must work; of the inexcusable epidemic of homelessness.
Yet with the judicial and legislative branches of the federal government abdicating their responsibility to tame the outrages of a rogue president, we have truly entered a new and dangerous time in American history.
The president is exploiting the fault lines that have long existed in the uncaring and unequal way we treat each other. I continue to be perplexed as to why this administration is dismantling all that binds this country together. What is its endgame?
I hope that Bacevich is right, that the collective outcry of “patriotic Americans’’ will help tamp down the mindless excesses and cruel actions that we are witnessing now and that, unfortunately, have long been a hallmark, in one form or another, of many administrations.
Allen M. Spivack
Jamaica Plain
There are patriots today who are rising to challenges of these times
Andrew Bacevich speaks elegiacally about how patriotism feels like a lost art in the United States today. As someone a generation younger (my great-aunt was an Army nurse in Europe during World War II), I see a different shift happening among my peers. Many of us are responding to the awful and lawless behavior emanating from Washington, D.C., not merely with shock and horror but also with a surprising realization about how much we also love our country. We may never have thought of ourselves as patriots before, but with the Republic in danger, we, too, are pledging our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor to its defense.
Dave LeLacheur
Milton
The wealthy few are succeeding in widening our divide
My siblings and I, raised by a Navy flier and a War Department secretary, have lived by the principles of our laws and with respect for all others in what Mom often called the melting pot. Yet I believe that the Citizens United ruling remains one event most damaging to democracy, shifting political — and policy — influence to the monied few. While our family has achieved much with successful careers, we see a deliberate dividing of influences between the self-serving rich and the riled-up masses they rally, against their own interests, to fight for them.
Andrew Bacevich is spot-on with his observation of a change in the understanding of what patriotism is. My worry is the complexity and scale for addressing core values in a country as vast and divided as ours is today. The media, partly controlled by a handful of billionaires, is the new major battleground. Meanwhile, far too few elected leaders are willing to acknowledge the hard work of democracy, and they lazily accept “purchased’’ policy.
Under these circumstances, the risk is great for authoritarians to redefine patriotism as adherence to their values; advocates for democracy must find ways to push the media to keep our core values top of mind.
Larry Kennedy
Jacksonville, Fla.
A Republic, if we can keep it
Re “ ‘It reminds us of the American story’: Lexington and Concord mark 250th anniversary of the opening salvos of the Revolutionary War’’ (Metro, April 20): It’s ironic and tragic that this year’s celebration might mark both the beginning and the end of our 250-year experiment in democracy.
“A Republic, if you can keep it,’’ Ben Franklin said of the United States in 1787. Since then, our democracy has struggled to survive — at one point severed by the Civil War, but we persevered.
It’s less clear that we will make it through this current crisis, with a president willing to shred the Constitution if it serves his ends for more money and more power.
The future of our Republic will depend on the courts’ willingness to stop the aggression of the Trump administration and on the willingness of people to stand up to a bully.
Susan Shelton
Falmouth
