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Today is St. Valentine’s Day, a holiday centered around love — most especially romantic love. But every American, whether married, dating, or single, should all agree on the importance of loving one’s country.
Today’s holiday is named after St. Valentine, an early Roman cleric who was martyred for secretly marrying Christian couples in defiance of a government edict. But Feb. 14 is also the birthday of Frederick Douglass, one of the greatest American heroes. Douglass didn’t know his exact birthday (though he thought it was sometime in February), but he remembered his mother calling him her “little valentine,” so he picked Feb. 14 to celebrate. It is said he also “liked the traditions surrounding that date” of Valentine’s Day, which makes sense since he had two happy marriages over the course of his life. But Douglass was also a patriot, who loved America despite being very clear-sighted about its citizens’ crimes and sins that had caused him and many other slaves to suffer so greatly.
In fact, as it turned out, Douglass loved America much more than the slave owners and their Democrat allies who launched a Civil War, willing to sacrifice the union to preserve slavery. Douglass said after the war, referring to the heroism of black troops whom he helped recruit, “We Negroes love our country. We fought for it. We ask only that we be treated as well as those who fought against it.”
Another speech that can teach us about love of country as distinct from blind admiration for everything its citizens do, and love of country in spite of everything its citizens do, is Douglass’s famous speech, “What to the slave is your Fourth of July?” Thanks to modern Democrats, most Americans have only heard the part of the speech where Douglass mourns that Independence Day was not then a holiday for all those living in America.
