Courtney E. Martin considers the true meaning of patriotism and its implications for America's future:
Loving this country means not just loving and interacting with one segment of it...
To realize this definition of patriotism, we need the guts to walk up to people unlike us and introduce ourselves, the initiative to create authentic relationships with folks outside of our organic social sphere, the presence to recognize -- and this is how bad it really is -- that those who work for us or employ us, those who serve us or are served by us, those in both red states and blue are human beings with things to teach. Too often, class, race, political, and geographic differences still dehumanize us. The taxi driver is just hands and foreign music. NASCAR moms are just minivans and juice boxes. We neglect to discover the stories behind the stereotypes. Sometimes it feels as if we're moving too fast to be curious anymore, to look beyond the cultural shorthand.
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--The Editors
