Abstract
Abstract: For both intellectual and civic reasons, including America’s current crisis of civic culture and civic order, civic educators must recover the rational, discursive mode of patriotism Tocqueville articulated. His complex argument in Democracy in America about our unique “reflective patriotism,” sustaining the new democratic republic, deserves scholarly discussion and should guide reforms to K–12 and higher education teaching. Americans of the 1830s blended gratitude for their country with insistence on rational debate about both ideals and practical governance. The elements of reflective patriotism range from a Christian-civic foundation to the rational self-interest in committing to civic duties, and to formal schooling. Subsequent changes in American culture, including intellectual and academic transformations, pose challenges to renewing elements of a considered, discursive patriotism, but the grave condition of our civic order and the failure of the democracy-education approach descended from Dewey recommend that educators consider their role in supporting a healthier civic culture.