Politics & Power Quote by Herbert Croly

Croly’s line lands like a compliment that can’t quite hide its raised eyebrow. “Nothing if not” is the key turn: it pretends to praise, but it also narrows the citizen down to a single reliably marketable trait. The average American, in this framing, may be inconsistent, distracted, even ill-informed - but patriotism is the one identity you can count on. That’s not a love letter so much as a diagnostic.

The intent is double-edged. Croly is describing a cultural reflex that political leaders can mobilize, and that reformers must work with rather than sneer at. His era - the high Progressive moment moving into mass politics and mass media - was thick with arguments about national purpose: immigration, industrial power, labor unrest, empire, and the question of whether democracy could scale without turning into pure spectacle. “Average” matters because it invokes the new political subject of the 20th century: the mass public, not the statesman, not the local notable.

The subtext: patriotism functions as social glue and social pressure at the same time. It’s the language that lets diverse people feel like “we,” but it also sets the terms of legitimacy. If patriotism is the default proof of belonging, dissent becomes suspicious by definition; criticism has to wrap itself in flags to be heard. Croly’s understated cynicism is that American identity can be so performative it crowds out other virtues - curiosity, solidarity, even competence - leaving politics to reward the loudest declarations of loyalty rather than the hardest work of self-government.