We need to teach our children to love, not hate America

I was traveling back to New Mexico from Connecticut this past Memorial Day weekend when I happened to pick up a copy of the Sunday Wall Street Journal to read on the plane ride back home.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m a bit of a newspaper junkie. I’d rather read a newspaper than watch television or listen to the radio. On that particular Sunday morning as I settled into my plane seat, I opened the paper to the Opinion section to see what national media “pencil pushers” had taken a fancy to write.

On the top of page 3 was a column written by Peggy Noonan titled, “Teach your children to love America.” Her intriguing headline drew my attention.

She wrote, “Parents, teach you children to love America, either as an extension of your own love or as a simple kindness to them.”

What a powerful statement. It reminded me of my World War II veteran father who taught my siblings and I about patriotism, respecting the flag, respecting our country more importantly respecting our nation’s veterans.

“You must start kids out with love. Irony and detachment will come soon enough, but start with love, if only to give them a memory of how that felt,” Noonan wrote.

Noonan had just finished reading an old book, noting couldn’t possibly be published today because it’s so full of respect for America. “Manual of Patriotism: For Use in Public Schools of the State of New York” contained 461 pages of text and was published in 1900. The manual encouraged patriotic exercises to “awaken the hearts and minds of the young” and “appreciation” for “the great deeds” of their nation.

The older generation of Civil War veterans knew their generation was passing. Those veterans had given everything to hold the nation together; they wanted the young to understand why, she wrote.

Unsaid … but if you read between the lines Noonan noted; America at the turn of the 20th century was being engulfed by waves of immigrants; they (immigrants) too needed to understand what America is and means to be, so they would love it too.

So how do you encourage love of country among schoolchildren? You let them have fun, Noonan quotes the manual. “You hold pageants and parades, have them read poems and learn songs. Let them dress up as figures in history and enact great events.

“Tell the story of the American flag. Have children memorize and recite Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride.” Have them reenact the battle of Lexington and Concord and read aloud Emerson’s “Concord Hymn.” Tell the story of the Mayflower and the making and meaning of the Compact, of the landing on Plymouth rock. Remind children, as Senator James G. Blaine once said that the U.S. was the only country with a known birthday, and we announced its birth with a Declaration that was “a revelation”: All men are created equal.

The manual, Noonan wrote, includes a lot of opinions on historical events. One she liked was the assertion that the Civil War ended the day Ulysses S. Grant was buried in 1885. Why? Because America saw who his pallbearers were: “Johnston and Buckner on one side of his bier, and Sherman and Sheridan upon the other.” The first two were generals of the Confederate Army and the last two of the Union Army.

Henry Ward Beecher wrote their marching of Grant to his tomb was “a silent symbol that liberty had conquered slavery, and peace war.”

Noonan wrote, “You come away from that vignette thinking not only “what men,” but “what a country” that could tear itself in two, murder itself, forgive itself, go on.

She concludes her column writing, “Parents – especially veterans – help your children and grandchildren understand how you love this country. It will be good for them, and more to the point this country deserves it.”

That’s some powerful advice for all of us as we get ready to honor our local veterans on Veterans Day next week on Monday.

Despite our political affiliations, we need to teach our children and grandchildren to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, respect our flag, respect our country, respect our veterans and love America.