“We must perpetrate the paradox that our American cultural tradition lies in the future.” — Randolph Bourne, via Dominic Erdozain

Should Americans be proud of their country? The Anglo-American historian Dominic Erdozain thinks not. His new book, To Love a Country, argues that there’s a problem with American patriotism. Americans shouldn’t love their country, Erdozain says. It’s not a good place.

His argument is that American patriotism has the same Puritan root as British imperialism. The idea of a chosen people, a city on the hill, a nation with a special mission is a kind of moral virus. He says it infected America in the great awakenings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and has provided moral cover for slavery, military aggression abroad, and the denial of rights at home.

So what America needs, he argues, is a new set of foundational myths laid out by progressives like Jane Addams, Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison and Martin Luther King Jr. This would establish a new kind of American patriotism which is forward-looking and internationalist rather than nativist or exceptionalist. Erdozain even gives Gandhi a shoutout as a model of American patriotism, although one wonders what the Indian pacifist would have made of this.

So what will the Atlanta-based Erdozain be doing on July 4? Hiding under his bed, perhaps, rather than enjoying the hotdogs and fireworks. In hiding from hundreds of millions of patriotic Americans.

Five Takeaways

• The Puritan Root. American exceptionalism was inherited from English Puritanism — the chosen nation, the city on a hill. It spread through the great awakenings. You didn’t have to be a theological Puritan to shelter under it. The canopy of national righteousness protects those beneath it from scrutiny.

• Nationalism Is Immune to Failure. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan — a certain kind of nationalism absorbs any amount of failure. It’s always someone else’s fault, never the national premise. This makes exceptionalism uniquely resistant to democratic accountability.

• Randolph Bourne and the Patriotism of the Future. Radical journalist, First World War: nativism and nationalism are European imports, backward-looking and derivative. His phrase: ‘our American cultural tradition lies in the future.’ A patriotism faithful to the diversity and pluralism of modern America must look forward, not back.

• Alternative Founders. Jane Addams: what can we learn from immigrants, not what can we teach them. Frederick Douglass. William Lloyd Garrison. MLK, who went to India to learn from Gandhi. These are the founders adequate to twenty-first century America.

• JFK’s Strategy of Peace. His American University speech, June 1963, two months before assassination. By then he believed the impetus for war came from within his own country. Generous about the Russian people, conceding nothing to communism. Erdozain’s model for reinvention — on the job, at the last moment.

About the Guest

Dominic Erdozain is a historian, graduate of Oxford and Cambridge, and visiting professor at Emory University. He is the author of To Love a Country (Crown, June 2, 2026) and One Nation Under Guns.

References

To Love a Country by Dominic Erdozain (Crown, June 2, 2026): penguinrandomhouse.com/books/795670/to-love-a-country-by-dominic-erdozain
JFK Strategy of Peace speech, American University, June 10, 1963

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: the week’s patriotism thread — Natapoff, Cunningham, and now Erdozain
00:02:26 Is the problem of patriotism in America different from other countries?
00:02:45 The Puritan inheritance: the chosen nation comes from England
00:03:34 France: the humble nation that’s somehow the proudest
00:03:42 Nationalism is immune to failure
00:04:19 Should Americans be ashamed?
00:04:41 Randolph Bourne and the patriotism of the future
00:04:50 New founders: King, Addams, Douglass, Garrison
00:06:20 What right does a Brit have to write this book?
00:07:00 Jane Addams: what can we learn from immigrants?
00:08:21 Mansplaining and travel narrowing the mind
00:08:53 The Southern tradition and the Puritan canopy
00:09:35 The New Englandization of America
00:11:00 Why do we need new founders?
00:38:58 JFK’s strategy of peace speech, June 1963
00:40:06 Bay of Pigs: JFK learned from it
00:41:26 What are you proud of America for?
00:42:16 Preston North End or Liverpool?