Politics & Power Quote by Robert Reich

“True patriotism isn’t cheap” flips a familiar American reflex: the urge to treat patriotism as performance. Reich is poking at the low-cost rituals that let people feel righteous without surrendering anything material - the flag pin, the bumper sticker, the virtue of “supporting the troops” while refusing to fund the institutions those troops come home to. The line works because it reframes patriotism as a bill that eventually comes due, and it names who usually tries to dodge it.

As an economist, Reich is smuggling a fiscal argument into a moral register. “Fair share” is doing double duty: it’s the language of tax policy and the language of civic ethics. He’s not just calling for sacrifice; he’s calling for proportionality, a rebuke to a politics where the wealthy and powerful can buy exemptions (through loopholes, privatization, and influence) while middle- and working-class people pay in wages, debt, and precarious public services.

The subtext is that America’s biggest patriotic fights aren’t only fought overseas; they’re fought in budgets. “Keeping America going” isn’t abstract inspiration - it’s roads that don’t collapse, schools that don’t crumble, healthcare that doesn’t bankrupt, elections that remain legitimate. Reich is also preempting the right’s monopoly on patriot language: if you define patriotism as shared obligation, austerity and tax-cut absolutism start to look less like freedom and more like freeloading.