Why You Should Love America

**Jon Favreau** (0:00)
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**Jerusalem Demsas** (1:14)
Instead of just being like, yeah, we're all wear American flags. Like, you're not just going to get, let that be like the American, the far right symbol. We've just been like slowly seeding it like, oh, they're wearing it. I can't wear it. But you don't see the opposite happening.
Whether or not you think this is analytically or descriptively correct that the American flag or these symbols of American heritage have been used to do bad things. What is the end game of a country where the entirety of the left decides that being positive about your nation's history, heritage, future symbolism is a bad thing? Is that gonna end in a good place for us? I just think obviously not.

**Jon Favreau** (2:16)
I'm Jon Favreau, and you just heard from today's guest, writer and founder of The Argument substack, Jerusalem Demsas. Jerusalem recently wrote a great piece for The Argument titled, You Have to Love America to Save It. Basically, she traces how liberals have come to abandon patriotism and argues that reclaiming it is crucial for building the kind of country liberals want to live in. She notes that many of America's greatest orators, from John Winthrop to Martin Luther King Jr. to Barack Obama, have all embraced a vision of patriotism that's about confronting America's failure to live up to its founding promise, but then challenging Americans to make that promise true.
I figured with America's 250th around the corner, Trump's 80th in the rear view, and the opening of Obama's presidential center on Juneteenth, this was the perfect time to talk to Jerusalem about why liberal patriotism is so important and what it should look like. We'll get to that conversation in a moment, but before we do, one way to show you love America is to support independent media companies doing their best to protect it. And you can tell I just read that now for the first time. And the best way to do that is to become a friend of the Pod subscriber. Subscribers get access to this show and all of your favorite Crooked Media podcasts ad-free, as well as special behind-the-paywall shows like Pod Save America Only Friends and Dan's Polar Coaster and also access to all of our great substack newsletters. Plus, again, you get to feel great about supporting pro-democracy independent media, and that's about as patriotic as it gets. Head over to crooked.com/friends to subscribe today.
All right, here's Jerusalem Demsas. Jerusalem, welcome back to Offline.

**Jerusalem Demsas** (3:47)
Thanks for having me.

**Jon Favreau** (3:49)
In honor of America's 250th, Trump's 80th, and Obama's Juneteenth library opening this week, I wanted to talk patriotism with you because you just wrote what I thought was a fantastic piece about the topic for The Argument. It seems to have been inspired by an anecdote that your old Atlanta colleague, Yoni Applebaum, told. He apparently dropped the word patriotism in a closed-door room of liberal jurists, professors, journalists, and it apparently landed like a live grenade, he said. One person said it made her feel excluded. Another said it connoted violence and racism. I guess the facilitator wouldn't even write it on the easel.
What was your initial reaction to that story, and why was it the thing that made you sit down and write this?