Patriotic sentiment is considered to be politically conservative, while the left is resistant or neutral. Can I, an American leftist and socialist be ‘patriotic’? I believe so. In avoiding this virtue, a celebratory attachment to civic life, we risk rejecting the stewardship of our own nation. Here, I will share ideas for a patriotic left to inspire profound and revolutionary changes for our troubled democracy.

Today, rightwing messaging is cynical, vengeful, and resentful. Campaign slogans like “f**k your feelings,” “daddy’s home,” and “I’m voting for the felon” calls within us not pride, but a desire to be dominated. These messages demonstrate a failure of civic life, it questions if our fellow citizens are fearful of discourse. Traditions of the left must save democracy, demonstrating virtue beyond militancy.

Patriotism arises from an authentic attachment to institutions and practices, and ours must evolve to encourage a binding sense of meaning. The Declaration of Independences’ “pursuit of happiness” then meant the Common Good, an ‘enlightened self-interest.’ Patriotism can mean taking part in collective happiness, solidarity, obligation, the celebration of public and private life.

Patriotism can ring hollow, echoing Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the 4^th of July?,” a “constant reminder of injustice.” In its place, leftists offer critique, identity matrices, and treat intersectionality as the ‘end of theory.’ Dissent, while insightful, can become a repetitive truism. What then must we do?

A Constitutional right to democratic education can transform a generation, giving young people varied pathways to meaningful work. Public education is unique to all, rich and poor. Attempts to end the department of education embarrassingly reveal near non-existent federal funding. Imagine classrooms of not 35:1, but 10:1; with time and space to learn trades and study great works, and reflect and struggle over serious ideas. Spaces to practice democracy, engage in discourse, free thinking, and pluralism.

From this, we need a job guarantee and workplace democracy. Democracy must extend to our “9-5” life. Biden and Harris were wrong to suggest that the dignity of labor is only a good paycheck, this must also mean ‘having a say.’ Imagine basic utilities as property held in common and run by workers for their community. Labor innovates and makes production decisions collectively and individually. All skill and education levels work in different capacities to provide community laundry, diners, entertainment, and farms – creating relationships outside social class boundaries.

The left must celebrate individualism. We value the balance of public and private life, but there is almost none today. Americans are overworked and indebted, and time for socializing is often limited to screens. Our private lives are only ‘free’ so far as our time and ‘attention’ are privatized. Old Marxist dictatorships used coercion to dominate, today we voluntarily embrace corporate totalitarianism. Our self-worth is determined by a new ‘positivity fascism’: you must feel bad if not constantly on the ‘grind,’ posting gym selfies, at work constantly on ‘self-improvement’ and being ‘mindful’; you will be positive and not ask questions. The left ought to organize ‘traditional’ forms of community, demand decentralized digital spaces, and legal protections of ‘free time.’

Internationally, the left must critically reflect on foreign policy with an awareness of our significance. Protest of our imperialist history does not dismiss the crimes of Cuba or Iran, but is a necessary civic duty. We cannot ignore Realism, Machiavelli, and the complexity of international relations. We need policy proposals beyond American withdrawal, which, as seen in Afghanistan and Gaza, can create greater quagmires.

Our soldiers, first responders, and USAID also provide medicine, housing, and aid to underserved areas of the world. Imagine if nations limited their aggressive ambitions and focused on international cooperation. Put wealth and power toward aerospace and high-speed rail allowing travel anywhere within minutes and hours to rescue, rebuild, and serve. We can create a new myth of “destiny” for what government and tax dollars can allow men, women, and transgender public servants to do.

Property rights have been central to both our identity and contradictions. Every few decades we wrestle with forming a more perfect union, often by revolutionizing property relations. In 1776, we abolished monarchy and nobility. Slavery was then destroyed in favor of free markets. Again, new contradictions arose between the common good and private interests in inherited wealth, corporate power, and political corruption, i.e. real-word capitalism. Democratic socialism thought the welfare state could combine the best of capitalism and democracy, but this has been all but dismantled, largely due to not changing concrete property relations.

History points not to Trumpian-nationalism but to 21^st century communism. A slower, more development-oriented society, organized by co-op-driven markets and communal ownership. From these revolutionary changes will arise a new status quo of property relations, expanded personal liberty, common interests, humanized politics, and a new sense of the good life.

Chenjeri lives in Klamath Falls