Politics & Power Quote by Herbert Croly

Croly’s “higher American patriotism” is a careful piece of Progressive-era jujitsu: he’s trying to rescue nationalism from nostalgia without handing it over to mere utopianism. The phrase “on the other hand” signals a rebuttal to the two tired poles he saw in American public life around 1900: the reflexive reverence for “historical tradition and precedent” (a conservative comfort blanket) and the airy, self-congratulatory belief that America is already the finished product. Croly wants a third posture, one that treats the past as ballast rather than a cage.

The subtext is political and strategic. By yoking “loyalty” to “imaginative projection,” he reframes reform as fidelity. This isn’t patriotism as flag-waving; it’s patriotism as a moral project, a willingness to judge the nation against what it claims to be. His capital-P “Promise” is doing a lot of work: it’s mythic, almost covenantal, implying that America’s legitimacy rests on an unfinished commitment to democracy, equality, and social capacity - not simply on ancestry or triumph.

Context matters: Croly was writing in the wake of industrial consolidation, labor unrest, mass immigration, and the visible failure of laissez-faire politics to match the country’s scale. Progressives needed national cohesion to justify stronger federal power and social reform. This line offers an elegant rationale: reform isn’t betrayal, it’s the “higher” loyalty. The rhetorical trick is elevating patriotism from sentiment to standard - a way to make change feel not radical, but overdue.