{"id":248,"date":"2003-11-12T18:24:06","date_gmt":"2003-11-12T18:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:24","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:24","slug":"selective_service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=248","title":{"rendered":"Selective Service"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my ill-tempered post<\/a> responding to Matthew Yglesias, I made the statement that <\/p>\n

…I think they opposed the war because they believe they can have the benefits of modern liberal society without getting their hands dirty<\/a>. They value moral purity and self-satisfaction above everything else – with the possible exception of creature comfort.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Two people recently wrote things that – to me – perfectly expressed this issue.Over at Crooked Timber<\/a>, Daniel Davies has a post up about Remembrance Day<\/a>:<\/p>\n

On the 85th Armistice day, I remember with honour the memory of:<\/p>\n

* Military casualties of the First World War
\n* Military casualties of the Second World War
\n* Casualties of conscripted labour in the Second World War (such as the \u201cBevin Boys\u201d conscripted to work in coal mines in the UK, who had a casualty rate higher than most active service units)
\n* Casualties of the Second World War among the fire service, ARP, ambulance service and similar, many of whom were conscientious objectors to the war itself
\n* Military casualties of the Falklands War<\/p>\n

In their own ways, all of these people gave their lives in protecting the lives and liberty of Britons, for which we owe them the most profound thanks.<\/p>\n

I also remember with the deepest sympathy and pity the men and women of our armed forces who gave their lives in the other military operations which the United Kingdom has carried out in the last century. They died for the most part in the service of dishonourable missions which were forced on them by governments which we elected, so we bear them an equally heavy debt, though much less glorious and more shameful.<\/p>\n

This is the nearest I can come to a pacifist\u2019s response to this day; I long since gave up wearing a white poppy in remembrance of the conscientious objectors in my own family, simply because it caused so much offence. I wholeheartedly apologise for any offence caused by this statement, without withdrawing any of it.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And then a comment on Rob Lyman’s great post here on “Tribal Patriotism”<\/a>, poster ‘Anonymous Coward 8’ wrote this:<\/p>\n

…
\nThis prompts a question: If I vote against someone who wins, am I blameless?<\/p>\n

I voted against Clinton and I voted against Bush, and I think the war in Iraq weakens us with respect to terrorists (more cause for terrorists to attack the US, while wasting our strength disarming the disarmed). This administration seems uninterested in my opinion, or in the opinions of anyone outside of a very small circle, excluding the CIA, state department, hawkish bloggers, and conservative members of the military, legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government. If they want me to accept blame or responsibility for their actions, they’ll have to sell it a lot harder than as ‘patriotism’. Attacking Iraq seems like an act for the sake of action, or a diversion from the retribution against Al Qaida. It isn’t enough to be gifting freedom to the unfree while bartering away our bill of rights in the name of homeland security.<\/p>\n

If you want me to share blame, you’ll have to share the planning and answer criticism. If not, it is your responsibility.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think these two quotes perfectly embody one of the defects I see in liberalism today; the notion that one can, personally, have clean hands despite the acts of one’s people. You get to that position, I think, because you have a fundamentally cosmopolitan viewpoint – you are an individual whose connections are equally to all other individuals, and the connection you have to other Americans (or Britons) is really no stronger or less strong. The connection to the nation is therefore arbitrary and most of all, chosen<\/i>, rather than accepted.<\/p>\n

Schaar explicitly rejected this notion when he talked about patriotism:<\/p>\n

“To be a patriot is to have a patrimony; or, perhaps more accurately, the patriot is one who is grateful for a legacy and recognizes that the legacy makes him a debtor. There is a whole way of being in the world, captured best by the word reverence, which defines life by its debts; one is what one owes, what one acknowledges as a rightful debt or obligation. The patriot moves within that mentality.”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And I do too. <\/p>\n

I wrote a long time ago<\/a> that<\/p>\n


\nPart of political adulthood is the maturity to realize that we are none of us<\/b> innocents. The clothes we wear, money we have, jobs we go to are a result of a long, bloody and messy history.<\/p>\n

I see my job as a liberal as making the future less bloody than the past.<\/p>\n

But I accept the blood on my hands. I can’t enjoy the freedom and wealth of this society and somehow claim to be innocent. I don’t get to lecture people from a position of moral purity. No one spending U.S. dollars, or speaking with the freedom protected by U.S. laws gets to.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Both Davies and AC8 seem to think that they can.<\/p>\n

They can’t. You don’t get to enjoy the material and political benefits without bearing the costs, and so somehow claim that one can be born into privilege and enjoy it without taking on its obligations is offensive.<\/p>\n

And they shouldn’t if they want progressivism to succeed. It is exactly that position of obnoxious (and demonstrably false) moral superiority that violates Schaar’s (and my) prescription for an effective progressive movement. Remember?<\/p>\n

“Finally, if political education is to effective it must grow from a spirit of humility on the part of the teachers, and they must overcome the tendencies toward self-righteousness and self-pity which set the tone of youth and student politics in the 1960’s. The teachers must acknowledge common origins and common burdens with the taught, stressing connection and membership, rather than distance and superiority. Only from these roots can trust and hopeful common action grow.”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Listen to those words, folks, because we on the left haven’t shown those things, and we’re getting our heads handed to us as a consequence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my ill-tempered post responding to Matthew Yglesias, I made the statement that …I think they opposed the war because they believe they can have the benefits of modern liberal society without getting their hands dirty. They value moral purity and self-satisfaction above everything else – with the possible exception of creature comfort. Two people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}