Loyalty

Of all of the readings for Monday, I particularly enjoyed “Who Is Loyal To America?” I think the piece raised several interesting points. Where can you draw the line between critiquing our society and offering alternatives to better it and acting “disloyal.” It isn’t hard to imagine that in the 1940’s, when this teacher gave her lecture, the line was rather fuzzy and pushed far to the right.

In particular this quotation stuck out to me, “Merely by talking about Russia, Mrs. Lewis was thought to be attacking Americanism.” With each text we read, this time period becomes scarier and scarier to me—threat of being a perceived communist, critiques been thrown out of proportion. What’s worse, Commanger argues that loyalty is conformity. Even though this piece was written about the 1940’s, I found it to be really eye opening. Even in our modern day, it seems this carries some light. Although in some communities it is cool to “hate the president” I believe there is still the underlying idea that loyalty is conformity. We have certainly made strides but there is something to me that still rings true about that statement.