Lately, I’ve been thinking about the identity of America, how it’s shaped by our shared culture, myths, and stories. If America were truly to change and become more progressive, part of that transformation would have to involve reframing our cultural heritage to align with new, humane, and collective values.

Right now, many people struggle to feel patriotic because American patriotism has been built around negative foundations, capitalism, religious fundamentalism, exploitation, and empire. These have defined what it means to be “American,” but they’re not the only possibilities. To rebuild the system, we would need to shift our focus toward the positive aspects of America, the ideals that people have always cherished, even if they were never fully realized.

One of the deepest American values is freedom. Yet under the current system, that freedom is largely an illusion. In a truly American socialism, freedom would actually be realized: freedom from poverty, from domination, from the constant struggle to survive. That’s what a genuine American commitment to liberty would mean.

In this sense, a progressive, communal, and socialist movement wouldn’t be un-American, it would be the fulfillment of America’s real promise. The so-called “American Dream” was never real under capitalism, but it could become real under a system that values equality, democracy, and care. That vision, the realization of our mythic ideals in a just and cooperative future, is what could truly define an American socialism.

I believe that we, as the Left, have given up the flag too easily to conservatives, to the traditionalists and fundamentalists. But if we want to build socialism in America, we must reclaim the spirit of this country for ourselves.

There is a deep well of progressive, democratic, and humane values within American history, a heritage of thinkers, artists, activists, and dreamers who believed in civil rights, equality, and genuine freedom. These voices are part of our national story, and they should be the moral foundation of any movement that seeks to create a new America.

Even the symbols, the flag, the language of freedom, the idea of “the American spirit”, need to be reimagined. They should no longer stand for empire, greed, and exclusion, but for democracy, solidarity, and liberation. We need to construct a new vision of America: one that is truly free, truly diverse, and genuinely democratic.

I don’t want America to become some kind of “red fantasy,” pretending to be the Soviet Union or any foreign model. I want it to be America, but America as it was always meant to be. An America that actually lives up to the promises it made: liberty, equality, and justice for all. Because there is nothing less American than capitalism, exploitation, and bigotry. These are the betrayals of the nation’s ideals, not their fulfillment.

When people think of “American patriotism” today, they imagine right-wing nationalism, a narrow, exclusionary vision. But that image must change if we are ever to move forward. We need to reclaim the stories, the songs, the symbols, and the hopes of America, and make them our own again, transforming them into the foundation of a future that is worthy of the word “freedom.”

To rebuild America on these truer foundations, we have to understand that culture itself is political. The myths we tell, the holidays we celebrate, the heroes we honor, all of it shapes what people believe is possible. For too long, the Right has monopolized the language of patriotism, of faith, of family, turning them into weapons of exclusion. But those words can be reclaimed and transformed. Family can mean community and mutual care. Faith can mean belief in the human spirit and in our collective power to create justice. Patriotism can mean love for the people who share this land, not blind obedience to those who exploit it. If socialism in America is to grow, it will not do so by rejecting the national story, it will grow by rewriting it, by telling a version of America that is finally honest, humane, and inclusive. Our revolution must be cultural as much as political: a rebirth of the American soul in the service of equality and freedom.