Jason Crow calls for a new patriotism rooted in service and accountability at Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics

By Susan A. Hughes
April 13, 2026

Jason Crow wants to rebuild patriotism.

Crow, a congressman from Colorado, was recently at HKS for a day of service with students at the Institute of Politics. That call to service, he believes, is key to building a new, more engaged wave of patriotism and lifting up a new kind of leader. He explained this concept in a conversation with Heather Cox Richardson at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum.

“The old style of leadership is largely dead,” said Crow, referring to the belief that our leaders are the smartest people in the room, have all the answers, and are untouchable.

At the lectern, he told two key stories from his past. The first was from his service in the Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment as a paratrooper in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I was thrust into leading a platoon of 50 paratroopers,” he said, “a group of strangers who came from every facet of this country.” In that moment, he explained, they realized they couldn’t focus on their differences. For success, they had to find common ground.

The second story centered on his horrifying experience as a member of Congress, representing Colorado, in the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection. As he helped build barricades to keep out Americans who wanted to do their representatives harm, he wondered how people who came from rural towns just like he did, many who raised their hand for service, just like he did, were now on opposite sides of that chamber door. “How did we get here,” he asked, “and how do we rebalance?”

“A period of democratic enlightenment can put us in a better place,” said Crow. “It can fulfill the promise of this country [for everyone] in a way that we have not up until now.”

Richardson, Harvard AB, MA, PhD, is a professor of history at Boston College and writes a daily newsletter, Letters from an American, with over two million subscribers. She began by asking Crow how he sees a new American patriotism in the current political moment.

“There’s no secret that I am not a fan of this president,” said Crow. “And he is not a fan of me. He actually tried to put me in prison.” Crow was referring to his role in a video created by Democrats in Congress, all veterans, reminding the military that they can refuse illegal orders. The Department of Justice indicted Crow and the others featured in the video, but a grand jury refused the case.

The idea of service to one’s country, despite challenges, forms the basis of Crow’s vision of a new patriotism.

“I’m a Democrat because I was sent to war three times in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Crow said. “A war that we shouldn’t have fought, that we spent eight trillion dollars on, and lost over 7000 American lives. And it is the working class in America who largely paid for it.”

People, he said, don’t want to be saved, or have others solve their problems. “The bottom line is you have to unrig the system,” said Crow. You have to actually level the playing field for working class people in this country, he said, so they can compete and achieve the American dream. “How is that not a patriotic act?”

Crow said the path forward is to have a positive, proactive, affirmative vision of how to address real issues like the cost of living, the housing crisis, health care, and immigration. But that can’t happen without addressing the degradation of American democracy. “There is a reason why people are disengaged from our politics,” he said. “They see rampant corruption.”

The corruption and the lack in a quality of life for most Americans are merging, Crow said. And he wants to be clear: “The old version of patriotism whitewashes an awful lot of things.”

Along with recognizing the beauty of American democracy, said Crow, there must be the ability for self-correction, and an admission of failures. “Why can’t we have the strength and confidence as a country to acknowledge our failings, acknowledge we haven’t lived up the promise of a more perfect union?” he asked.

“That,” Crow said, “is also a patriotic act. Recognizing our deficiencies and figuring out how we move forward from there.”

The full conversation is available on the IOP YouTube channel.

Photography by Martha Stewart

Read the original article here.