I can't speak for all young Americans, and whether they're proud of their country. I know even less about Michelle Obama.
But I'm highly suspicious of Michelle Malkin's brand of pride as she describes it. It's troubling -- although typical of jingoists wrapping themselves in the flag -- that most of her points of pride in America relate to our military: Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Medal of Honor ceremonies, the Blue Angels, Pearl Harbor, and the U.S.S. Abraham. Sure, I'm proud of our military, I respect its difficult job, but I don't worship it. And I never forget that its real job is to kill people -- a necessary job at times, but always a regrettable one, not a blessed calling.
Malkin's is a pride that says, "Ignore or deny all your country's warts and defects; love it or leave it." Hers is a pride that she wears on her sleeve like a badge of honor. But advertising that you love your country, or even genuinely feeling it, is not an accomplishment. It is not even a virtue. If all you do is say and feel it, it's an empty emotion.
Indeed, if that feeling of pride compels you to deny real problems in your country, and make apologies for your country's faults, then it is an unhealthy emotion. It is exactly what your country doesn't need from you. It is like the mother who is the only one who can't see her child, a real delinquent, isn't mommy's little angel. Her love for her child, without strings or conditions, is admirable, but it is actually harmful to her child, because such blind love enables continued bad behavior and impedes the child's development.
If you love your country like you love your child, then you want your country to do what's right and make you proud. You feel a responsibility to help it. You never renounce your country, because it's a part of you and who you are. By accident of birth, you have no choice in the matter, just as children don't choose their parents and vice-versa.
Moreover, just as parents should not live vicariously through their children, so too citizens should not draw excessive pride from their country's accomplishments. Similarly, children should be proud of their parents and grandparents and where they came from, but they should not rest on their forebears' reputation and past accomplishments -- or worse, behave like privileged, spoiled brats because of their great inheritance. Children have a responsibility to find their own way and make their own reputation.
So, like Michelle Malkin, I'm proud of my country for things like Iwo Jima and George Bush's funding of anti-HIV in Africa. But those deeds -- and this is so often forgotten! -- are not the measure of me personally. Simply for being lucky enough to be born in America, I do not have the right to borrow against America's greatness and claim it makes me a better person, or a person worth looking up to. And my country's greatness certainly does not relieve me of my responsibility to be a concerned citizen who wants to improve his country -- not just so that America continues to be "great" (whatever that means to whomever) and envied, but so that it is actually a better place to live in than today. After all, the real measure of a parent's love is wanting what's best for his children and encouraging them to be their best; it is not covering up or turning a blind eye to his children's faults. That is why parenting often requires tough love and discipline.
Likewise, America is crying out right now for tough love from Americans who really love it. And yes, that love will require change.
The last thing America needs right now is more blind flag-wavers who have nothing to offer us except their sappy, jingoistic, more-patriotic-than-thou attitude. Those people -- even if they think they mean well -- are doing us absolutely no good at all.
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