David Walsh at WSWS considers, qualifies and ultimately echoes actor-director Sean Penn's worries about the uses of patriotism.

In 1951 James P. Cannon, the leader of US Trotskyism at the time, addressed the question of the relationship of America's past to its present. Explaining his attitude to American Independence Day, he wrote: "The representatives in Congress assembled 175 years ago were the great initiators. When they said: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident,' they started something that opened up a new era of promise for all mankind. That's what I am ready to celebrate any time the bands begin to play: the start and the promise. But nobody can sell me the Fourth of July speeches which represent the start as the finish and the promise as the fulfillment. I quit believing in them a long time ago. As soon as I grew old enough to look around and see what was going on in the country. All the inequality and injustice still remaining. The beneficiaries of privilege claiming the heritage of our first revolution struck me as imposters."