“We Love America” is one of CBS News’ “five simple principles” under new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss. In apparent defiance of a powerful, unseen enemy that demands they not love this country, the network added on social media, “And we make no apologies for saying so. Our foundational values of liberty, equality and the rule of law make us the last best hope on Earth.”
The strangeness of a straight news outlet — whose job ostensibly is to be skeptical of the powerful, especially the government — feeling the need to distinguish itself by proclaiming “love” for America aside, it’s a reductive, Manichean sentiment. Its opponent is a strawman, and it carries the implication that there’s only one way to love America: their way.
America showed its distaste for the Blame America First crowd and voted for Donald Trump even after he attempted a self-coup, among other national disgraces.
Now, I’m not oblivious to the point CBS News is trying to make. There’s a subset of far-left Americans, particularly in academia and activism, that considers the United States to be inherently illegitimate because of its history of slavery and ethnic cleansing. Some others in left-wing spaces believe capitalism is the root of all evil, that people should be judged by their immutable characteristics in the name of “anti-racism,” that political violence is justifiable (as long as it’s from the left) and that any deviation from their radical values is problematic. I’ve been critical of some of the more prominent figures in this area, whose work I’ve found ranged from the vacuous to the merely unhelpful if justice and equality are the goals.
In 2024, America showed its distaste for the Blame America First crowd and voted for Donald Trump even after he attempted a self-coup, among other national disgraces.
But America’s backlash against far-left activists far exceeds their actual influence in government, business and culture. They did, however, make for great bogeymen in GOP campaign ads — and were often their own worst enemies. As the progressive comedian Marc Maron asked his audience in a recent special, “You do realize we annoyed the average American into fascism, right?”
Still, there are plenty of people, myself included, who “love America” and don’t subscribe to a childish — and frankly, dangerous — “my country, right or wrong” binary.
The America I love is a representative democracy where the ruling party doesn’t try to stay in power after losing an election or permanently brain-poison its followers with lies about voter fraud. The America I love respects civil liberties and due process under the law and doesn’t make exceptions in the name of meeting mass deportation quotas.
The America I love stubbornly defends freedom of speech. Its government doesn’t try to forbid the use of certain words to describe political opponents or harass news outlets with bogus litigation or ideologically-motivated regulatory threats. The America I love doesn’t deport people for their legitimate political activism.
The America I love is strong and reflective enough to grapple with even the worst of its own history. It doesn’t ban the teaching of slavery in public schools as a “divisive concept” on the grounds that it will make the children of right-wingers feel bad about their country. That’s what has happened in many Republican-led states and localities in recent years, but, if anything, the decades we’ve spent confronting America’s racist sins — and expanding the scope of civil rights — demonstrate that the country we love so dearly has the capacity to evolve for the better.
But, as the second Trump administration keeps reminding us, America also has the ability to devolve for the worse.
I don’t love that Trump’s America has renormalized gutter racism, helped in large part by the president, the vice president and many of their most influential supporters, including the richest man in the world (who was also the biggest donor to their campaign).
As the second Trump administration keeps reminding us, America also has the ability to devolve for the worse.
Just this week, Elon Musk posted a “100” emoji to promote an X post that declared, “If White men become a minority, we will be slaughtered. … White solidarity is the only way to survive.” As of Friday, it had been viewed over 42 million times. Also this week, Vice President JD Vance, who last month touted that in America you no longer have to apologize for being white, said America has a “Somali problem,” a kind of phrasing that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in early 1930s Germany.
I don’t love that Trump’s America allowed Musk’s ludicrously destructive Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to destroy America’s moral and strategic advantage in “soft power,” killing USAID, which cost a pittance of our annual GDP to save millions of lives in poor countries from preventable diseases, and keep warlords and despots from filling the power vacuums. I don’t love that in Trump’s America the executive branch ignores the Constitution, invades a sovereign country without congressional consultation and deposes its tyrannical leader with no apparent legal justification, while deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller touts the virtues of neo-colonialism. And I don’t love that Trump is threatening to seize Greenland from Denmark, our NATO ally, an ambition that seems hellbent on pointlessly destroying the rules-based international order that has made the United States a superpower since the end of World War II. And I don’t love the fact that Musk and Vance have been enthusiastic boosters of Germany’s ascendant Nazi-sympathizing party, the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD). Nor am I proud of the fact that on Friday a DHS post on Instagram featured a recording of, “By God We’ll Have Our Home Again,” a chilling marching song known to be popular among the Proud Boys and white ethno-nationalist separatists. (I asked DHS for comment on the use of the song, but have not received a response.) I don’t love that during Trump’s second term, it has become completely normal for masked, secret law enforcement agents to violently accost and arrest people without due process, including American citizens. As I warned in September when Trump’s campaign of extralegal killings of alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean kicked into high gear: “President Donald Trump — whether intentionally or not — is laying the groundwork to normalize the concept of the U.S. military’s killing Americans without due process.” ICE agent Jonathan Ross killing Renee Good in Minneapolis this week shows my fears were not unfounded. The celebratory bloodlust on the right that followed Good’s death tells me the worst is yet to come. You can love America, and also apologize for it. But if loving America means caping for the powerful, whitewashing the racists and believing that military might-makes-right, you don’t love America. You just love saying you do.
Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and opinion columnist for MS NOW. 
“We Love America” isn’t a journalistic principle, it’s barely a bumper sticker. True patriotism does not mean ignoring your country’s faults or dismissing its critics as haters or disloyal. Loving your country means taking the good with the bad. It means being proud and being embarrassed — or even appalled — when necessary.
