In Search of Good Citizens

When row upon row of neighborhood homes continued to display the nation’s flag in the weeks after 9/11, it seemed confirmation enough that the proud public spiritedness of the World War II years had reemerged from the attics of a younger generation’s hearts. Also a WWII veteran, the late constitutional scholar Walter Berns was asked to comment on this sentiment so vividly demonstrated—the sentiment of patriotism. The precise question his interlocutor wanted to know, was whether the (truly impressive) flag-waving in 2001 didn’t in fact prove that in America at least, patriotism, or even patriots, requires war to be fostered.