We had just settled our differences on another subject. I do have answers but you may not like them. You did ask.
American patriotism only in a very ideal form in the minds of a few idealists may resemble slightly the ways of Jesus. Was our patriotism better in the past? What I know of history now and what I have experienced personally tells me, No! Of course I grew in a nice quiet small California town where the Mexicans, Filipinos and Japanese were my friends. [There were no blacks in that town.] In the first grade in school [about 1949], my very best friend was Japanese. I did not know it then but probably his parents and grandparents had been in American concentration camps because they looked too much like that acknowledged enemy. No due process of law even though they were natural born U.S. citizens who had lived all of their lives in the USA. Due process was suspended twice that I recall in spite of the Bill of Rights. Once was by FDR in WWII. The other it was done by one our best Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, during our Civil War. Both times it was illegal and finally declared unconstitutional. That belated Supreme Court action did not help the citizens who had their rights removed. Of course patriotic Americans supported the actions so the illegality it did not matter, did it?
The men who put together the U.S. Constitution with its first 10 Amendments [Bill of Rights] did a pretty good job and maybe some of them may have been guided in part by God, but their purpose fell far short of lining up with God and His Son at least as I know them. The aftermath?
The purposes and efforts of our leaders in the USA have had their ups and downs since it beginnings. Even in the best of times, they were not even close to what God's kingdom is supposed to be.
If you were a White Anglo Saxon Protestant [WASP] male living above the poverty level your lot for many years may have been pretty good... especially compared to those not in that group. So everyone wanted to come to America for land, opportunity, freedom and easier money.
For women, blacks, native Americans and other groups visibly different [Japanese, Chinese, Mexicans and so forth] how was it? Even white, well to do men, who were Catholic were second class citizens when it came to political leadership. John F Kennedy went against the odds as a Catholic even though he was a millionaire when he became a Catholic President.
I believed strongly in our government in the days of JFK, but I was naive and ignorant as well. When Kennedy was assassinated I was at the U.S. Army Signal school at Ft Monmouth, New Jersey. I was proud to be an American and to be an active duty soldier. It warmed my heart and spurred my patriotism to see everyone everywhere crying tears at his death, Our classes were suspended for the day when we heard of his death. The whole complement of the military post joined together in a parade in our best dress uniforms for our beloved and deceased Commander and Chief.
From there LBJ [President Johnson] sent me and most of my signal radio class to Viet Nam in 1964 . I did not volunteer but Pres. Johnson said only volunteers were going to Viet Nam so I must have. In spite of my doubts about our President, I did then volunteer for duty in the Dominican Republic during a crisis in that country as part of an OAS [Organization of American States] force sent there in 1966 at the instigation of the USA. Not a much later when I was a civilian college student another Kennedy brother and Martin Luther King Jr were assassinated. As a student and a Vet I was proud still but not all of my fellow students were proud of me as a very unpopular war was raging across the Pacific. I was still too naive to understand... why? They be crazy those student protesters. We were really working toward the greater good, weren't we? I thought so. I had U.S history in both elementary and high school, but a whole lot of facts and points of view were omitted from our text books.
I never liked Nixon as my governor in California nor as my President later. Smart perhaps but not a nice guy. When he did that which caused him to resign it made deep inroads against my faith in America as a great nation. How had such a man become President? What else was there? I believed in God already but it was a superficial thing for I did not really know God at all... In 1976 I met Jesus for real and began a slow and long journey toward God and His Son which along with it brought a whole lot of my own ignorance and naivety into the light. As God went "up" before me, America and mankind went "down". That message is in the written Bible, but surprisingly few who called themselves believers seemed to have received it... That was then and it really has not improved, Donald Trump notwithstanding.
Our first president venerated by nearly everyone of his time that mattered and many people today was a slave owner and never came out against slavery. That was OK for him and for others... But did anyone ask for the slaves' opinions?
Thomas Jefferson our 3rd President was also a slave holder and wrote some powerfully eloquent condemnations of slavery, but he never lived by what he wrote. His slaves were part of the reason he could live 'high on the hog' in his day. He would not free his slaves because it would have force him to change his life style. Even when he died, he did not free his own slaves as some other presidents did.
Lots of other Presidents, with most of them prior to Lincoln being slave owners. One of the most popular Presidents while actually in the office was Andrew Jackson. The so-called Civilized Tribes among the native Americans probably remember him best for what is known as the Trail of Tears. Those tribes were called civilized because they made the transition to the white man's way of life, buying property, farming, paying taxes to local and federal governments and so on. Under the leadership of Pres. Jackson their land was taken away from them and given to whole bunch of greedy white men, many of course well known to the President. The Indians? They were told to walk to Oklahoma from their confiscated homes in mostly the southern states of Georgia and Alabama. It was called the Trails of Tears because so many of those dispossessed people died along that long barren trail never reaching Oklahoma at all. Of course the civilized "Indians" were not the only ones to suffer loss at the hands of selfish greedy white men. Their uncivilized brethren of many other tribes farther west who were only uneducated heathen [not Christian] savages, so it was even easier to take away what they had.
Then there were other American patriots who dealt with Spain, Mexico and the Philippines. A principal leader in those instance was the first President Roosevelt [Teddy] with his Manifest Destiny policy. Following him the WASPs knew they were destined to rule and of course. no one should ever compare what they did with Adolf Hitler's Lebensraum policy toward Poland and any Slavic nations a few decades later. Was that policy better than his Jewish policy? Was our Manifest Destiny Policy strictly according to the teachings of Jesus?
But, we were always the 'good guys'. Didn't anyone ever watch the movies or read the history books carefully emphasizing all of our good points and our good causes?