I gathered with members of my community last week at a gospel concert in honor of Martin Luther King. I looked around at many recognizable faces, some well dressed doctors, some loosely draped hippies hanging in the rear, all affected by the unity created from our gathering and singing together in the hope of freedom and peace.

This last year has brought challenges to our awareness long ignored. It has also brought a sense of shared experience that has recently been scarce in our hyper-mediated lives. I appreciate this reawakened desire for unity, yet a part of me shies away from the fervored patriotism due to our current crisis. I believe it is because I share with my neighbors, with the dreams of King, a craving for unity, of bringing all together. By its nature, patriotism creates a divide based on geo-political boundaries, and also a psychological one summed up by President George Bush, “with us or against us.”

There is correlation here between the events of the Sacramento State graduation last month, and the divide between unity, patriotism and our freedoms. Really, I wasn?t so surprised that a speech about the loss of our civil liberties, racial profiling and questioning the government was booed off the stage. We have changed as a nation since Sept. 11, and we are clinging to the beliefs that we are doing right action in the Middle East, and that changes to our rights here at home are warranted, because the other option, questioning, is scary and hard work. Sacramento Bee Publisher Janis Heaphy?s speech challenged students to “to be active participants in the democratic process.” Well, in a way I can appreciate the vocal heckling at the ceremony as a form of expressing one?s opinions, exactly what Heaphy was calling for. However, I also see it as an immature refusal to hear ideas that were not shared, apparently, by a loud portion of the 10,000 plus audience.

More so, Heaphy?s comments angered attendees due to the fact that she asked for students to investigate our governments actions, here and abroad, and therefore she became, as Bush had said, “against us,” or unpatriotic. Are we a nation that is based on blind following of narrow principles, or were we intended to be a nation of working thinkers, of champions of freedom? Right now we walk that line, each of us choosing every day the degree to which we will participate in our democracy. We each choose to unite together or divide, to contemplate actions, or accept them.

I reflected upon these ideals of freedom and unity on Martin Luther King Day, a day honoring one of our nation?s heroes. One psychologist concludes that our nation hasn?t dared to believe in a cause since the dual traumatic deaths of King and John F. Kennedy. We haven?t dared to engage in a passionate debate of ideals, and now we embrace patriotism, sometimes noble, sometimes divisive, in a belated attempt to express that suppressed desire for a cause. We can believe in something! Unfortunately, I don?t think that it is that easy. We must couple belief with deliberate introspection. It?s not the easy way. It isn?t the way of booing a speaker off stage. It is the way of King, of the best in each of us. We can unite together as one nation, all people, and all thinking, different, challenging people. We can be patriots, true Americans who work for the diversity of thought, the blessed danger of freedom, united in our differences. I dare us to be that brave.