The author Arthur Krystal had a confession to make. “I did not grow up loving America,” he wrote. That was more a result of indifference than alienation. “I didn’t think about it,” Krystal added in his essay for the New Yorker. “I can’t recall anyone I knew declaring a love for America.”
Krystal took his readers on his personal journey through the second half of the 20th century, when he began to take a deeper interest in patriotism as a subject of study. He dwelled on how America’s competing political factions have defined what love of country means to them — often in ways that conflict or that may even be mutually exclusive. And yet, Americans of all political stripes still told a story about themselves that both ends of the partisan spectrum would recognize.
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