More recently, Aaron Copland created his symphonic classics Fanfare for the Common Man and Lincoln Portrait, two Independence Day favorites, in the 1930s, when he was part of a composers collective dedicated to writing music that honored the working class. And America’s unofficial national anthem, "This Land Is Your Land," was written in 1940, when folk singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie was well connected with the Communist Party.

"The progressive authors of much of America’s patriotic iconography rejected blind nationalism, militaristic drumbeating, and sheeplike conformism," write Dreier and Flacks. "So it would be a dire mistake to allow, by default, jingoism to become synonymous with patriotism and the American spirit."

Twenty-first-century America, of course, is a different world from the country that spawned these progressives of the Gilded Age and the Great Depression. Theirs was largely an immigrant culture whose memory of injustices on foreign shores served as a daily reminder of America’s promise. And there was, I think, a sense of wonder that still surrounded the American experiment, a feeling perhaps that our democratic structures and civic commons were still capable of being shaped by regular people. It was, in other words, a flag worth waving.

Immigrants still stream to our borders with hopes of a better life, but today it’s hard to think of the USA as a work in progress. Its political culture is rigid and systemized. Its economy rules the world; its military might is virtually unchallenged. Its astounding affluence argues more eloquently against dissent than any patriotic rhetoric. It is, in many ways, the country many of our forebears dreamed it would be.

Still, it’s hard to sing the praises of a nation whose leaders regularly treat the rest of the world with open contempt and whose dominant culture glorifies getting over giving. From the point of view of other countries in the global community, you have to admit, America is not always a good neighbor. We play our music too loud, drive our vehicles all over everyone else’s lawns, and like to shoot out the streetlights on the weekends.

Yes, we are richly blessed. And, yes, I’d rather be living here than trapped in the terrifying squalor of a Palestinian refugee camp or in a cinder-block apartment building amid the political and economic chaos of post-communist Russia. But that doesn’t mean I need to run Old Glory up the flagpole every time American soldiers are deployed somewhere around the world or my local Chevy dealer announces a factory clearance sale.