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This version of patriotism links criticism of our countrys failings with a commitment to changing them. It cleaves to principles of freedom and equality because they are right, and also because they are ours, they are us. It addresses Americas worst aspects, not as enemies to be eliminated (as in our many domestic wars on this or that) but as we would approach a friend or family member who had lost their way. In this spirit, even the harshest reproach, the most relentless list of wrongs, comes with a commitment to repair and heal, to build a more just and decent country. It also entails a practical faith: As long as change might be possible, we owe it to one another to try.

These may sound like the gentle tones of a more nave time. Dont we know more now than earlier generations did about the cruelty and complexity of history, the intensity of white supremacy in the early Republic, the constitutional compromises with slavery? Havent we outgrown complacent patriotism? But this is wrong and, really, embarrassingly parochial. We do not know more about American injustice than King, or, for that matter, Johnson, the son of bigoted East Texas who became a complex but effective civil rights champion. There was nothing complacent in their patriotism.

They insisted that every American ought to shoulder some of the responsibility for their countrys crimes and failings, whether or not they had personally benefited or suffered from them. And, for Johnson and King, everyone deserved to take some pride in American progress toward justice. Patriotism was a practical task: to appreciate and preserve what is good, work to change what is bad, and remember that part of what is good in a country is that citizens can change it. Patriotic effort came with no guarantee of success, but it was an obligation nevertheless a duty akin to what the philosopher William James once called the moral equivalent of war.

Today, America faces threats to national well-being and even survival: climate change, racial inequity, oligarchy, the economic collapse of whole regions. But the enemy is not an invader: These slow-moving crises pit us against one another. Spewing our carbon, living in our economically and ideologically segregated neighborhoods and regions, trading accusations of bigotry and bad faith, we are one anothers problems. In these conditions, it is hard to find threads of commonality. At some point, a liberal gets tired of saying, We are better than this, when we seem resolutely not to be.

But there is something beyond both one last We are better than this and your preferred update of Garrisons a covenant with death and an agreement with Hell. Progressive patriotism justifies risks and sacrifices to try to create a country that deserves them. Loyalty to the country, in this light, means faith that you and other citizens can still build better ways of living together.

Progressive frustrations such as climate inaction, gun proliferation and the erosion of reproductive freedom are rooted in ways our political system stops majority opinion from ruling through the Senate, the Electoral College, and the Supreme Court, for starters. Earlier political transformation, such as the New Deal and the civil rights movement, had to shift political power and make the country more democratic in order to make it better. Because democracy is power, and power is scary and dangerous, political trust and a generous vision of the country are especially important in making a country more democratic.

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Opinion | Democrats Need Patriotism Now More Than Ever - The New York Times