To the Editor: America Needs Our Patriotism

On Wednesday, The Crimson published an op-ed against “institutional worship” arguing that deriving our values from an institution, whether the object of devotion is the United States or Harvard, is mere “loyalty to a myth” — one that strips us of our will to act.

Among the mentioned initiatives is the Concord Institute, a nonpartisan student organization we founded this fall to foster patriotism on Harvard’s campus. We hope to inspire students to use the skills that brought them to the College in service to our country.

You can change something for the better only if you believe in its promise and care about its future. “Forever” devotion to the United States is far from “worship” or pretending perfection. Loyalty to something means you want to make it the best it can be.

This loyalty is called patriotism. It’s neither sycophantic nor blind to problems, and it’s certainly not the idolatry the article makes it out to be. It’s an enduring confidence — a love — for the American project, and a resolute hope for its future. Indeed, love is a constructive force. Even in our nation’s most difficult moments, many effective changemakers grounded their efforts in patriotism.

In his address during the March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr., a titan of the civil rights movement, called the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution “a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” Few would say King deified America, but he was undoubtedly a constructive patriot; he implored his country to fulfill, as an act of fidelity, its own promises.

Patriotism is not a barrier to change — it is its catalyst, and it must have a home at Harvard. Organizations like ours give it one. At America’s oldest university, where Washington’s Continental Army established barracks in Massachusetts Hall, at a college expressly dedicated to the cultivation of “citizen-leaders,” our responsibility is to understand what citizenship means and to perpetuate it. “A republic, if you can keep it,” declared Benjamin Franklin upon signing the Constitution. Patriotism is the first step to doing that.

— Brandon H. Cheng ’29, Jerome A. Comar ’29, and Henry M. Mishkin ’29 are the cofounders of the Harvard College Concord Institute.

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