I’m patriotic, I think. Sometimes, though, I wonder just what that means.

Earlier this month I wandered around a Waynesville art gallery staring at photographs taken by Vietnam veterans, an exhibit that was nothing if not somber. Two days later, on Independence Day, I ran around Bryson City with my 9-year-old daughter while she wore a “Lady Liberty” headdress, eliciting smiles from those who recognized her outfit.

As that Independence Day weekend drew to a close and many put away their flags, we were all shaken by the July 7 terrorist attacks in London. The sheer madness that has become such an everyday part of the world we live in was incomprehensible. I was angry with the Muslim extremists whom I assumed were responsible, and hoped we would be ferocious in our retribution. I wanted vengeance, the same feeling that swept over me after our Sept. 11, 2001.

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The Waynesville art exhibit that made me question my own patriotism was titled “1,000 Words.” It was made up entirely of pictures taken by soldiers, amateurs to the art of photojournalism. But that fact only added to their power. Many of these men — the ones in the photos and many of those who were there in the gallery — had been, in many cases, a breath away from dying.

The exhibit took me home. I grew up in Fayetteville in the 1970s in a neighborhood where a great majority of the families had direct ties to the military base at Ft. Bragg. Kids would suddenly be out of school for a few days, and the teacher would tell us what had happened.

My own father was retired Navy, but he hung with the Army and Air Force vets that dominate Fayetteville. One memory that has stuck with me from those days — and that stands out in these times when I hear politicians who have never served blustering incessantly about being patriotic — is how little my father and his friends discussed their love of country or patriotism. It was their job, and they committed their lives to it. But they didn’t waste many words cursing Jane Fonda, those who fled to Canada or the anti-war protestors who were rallying all around the country. They did what they did, for most part, with a kind of stoicism perhaps steeled by the knowledge that life was precious and oh-so-tenuous.

My father and those men were patriots. They spent their lives in the fray, so no one questioned their patriotic intent if later in life they criticized the actions of political and military leaders. They had earned the right to criticize.

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What about the rest of us, the great majority of Americans who don’t know a C-130 Hercules from a Chinook helicopter? Do we have to earn the right to criticize? If not, is that why so many people assign so little credibility to the young people who are so full of criticism for the way government and big business operate?

When nowadays we have what many Americans consider “political wars” — those fought for political gains instead of for security or homeland defense — then one has to reconcile patriotism with being against a war and against the government leaders who took us there. Perhaps we are against the restrictions on freedoms that followed Sept. 11, and perhaps we see so many problems in the way our democracy operates that we think it arrogant to try and export it.

For centuries, many great thinkers have warned of the evils of patriotism and nationalism. Some thinkers call Leo Tolstoy the greatest anti-patriot in history. He said patriotism justifies the training of wholesale murderers and requires better equipment for the exercise of man killing than the making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses.

In other words, Tolstoy thought patriotism completely distorted the natural order because it instills in people a conceit and arrogance. That label of arrogance, it seems, is very often pointed at America. And we make no bones about the fact that our way of life is a good thing and should be embraced the world over. We have become, in two world wars and the cold war, the saviors of freedom.

There’s little chance I will reconcile my confusion about being a patriot. I do know that it is not a black and white issue, despite what some politicians try to tell us. Consider the proposal right now before the Senate to outlaw flag burning. I think Americans who burn flags are idiots, but they shouldn’t be arrested for that. Why bother? For some, though, pushing through as shortsighted law while soldiers are dying in the Middle East seems reasonable and even patriotic. I don’t get it.

Maybe being patriotic today means, at the least, taking part in the civil discourse of the country. One writer I looked up while getting ideas for this column laid out his standard clearly: Stay informed, vote, protect civil liberties, work toward a sustainable future for this country and the planet, eliminated dependence on the Middle East, be willing to die for something, and show compassion to all people.

That’s a good standard, but it doesn’t settle the issue. Perhaps the question is too complicated for an easy answer, and perhaps it wasn’t as easy for those in my father’s generation as it seemed to be. Knowing that would at least give me some peace.

(Scott McLeod can be reached at info@smokymountainnews.com.)