Update: go check out the comments on this at the NY Times ‘Opinionator’ blog…OTOH, they did call us ‘idiosyncratic’, so I’m happy…
Jonah Goldberg is contemplating patriotism in the LA Times.
I’ve come around to the view that the culture war can best be understood as a conflict between two different kinds of patriotism. On the one hand, there are people who believe being an American is all about dissent and change, that the American idea is inseparable from “progress.” America is certainly an idea, but it is not merely an idea. It is also a nation with a culture as real as France’s or Mexico’s. That’s where the other patriots come in; they think patriotism is about preserving Americanness.
I’m not sure I completely agree with him (more in a second) here, but I think he’s hitting on the divide that I think matters.
He goes on:
Many liberals hear talk of national culture and shout, “Nativist!” first and ask questions later, if at all. They believe it is a sign of their patriotism that they hold fast to the idea that we are a “nation of immigrants” — forgetting that we are also a nation of immigrants who became Americans.
As the host of the “Today” show in 2003, Couric said of the lost crew members of the space shuttle Columbia: “They were an airborne United Nations — men, women, an African American, an Indian woman, an Israeli. . . .” As my National Review colleague Mark Steyn noted, they weren’t an airborne U.N., they were an airborne America. The “Indian woman” came to America in the 1980s, and, in about a decade’s time, she was an astronaut. “There’s no other country on Earth where you can do that,” Steyn rightly noted.
For cosmopolitans like Couric, however, the very best thing you could say about those heroic astronauts was that they weren’t part of the national “we” but of the global “we,” for the only “we” that counts is that of “we are the world.”
Matt Yglesias disagrees, or would, if he found the question interesting enough:
So I read Jonah Goldberg’s column here and I’m left wondering, does he really think that American nationalism is insufficiently present in American television news? Like, sincerely believe that in a way that would make this a subject worth arguing about?
Yglesias reduces Goldberg’s serious question to a silly one: is there enough patriotism in the news? (Note: I don’t think there is, but that was another story.)
But it’s not just Couric – Yglesias himself is a great case study in what Goldberg is talking about.
Here’s Matt in 2004:
Well, that was yesterday. I remember back in 1997 talking to a Czech guy who was confused as to why Americans would have a holiday commemorating Independence Day. The real point, though, is this: Not be an left-wing America-hater about it all, or to deny that our Founders had some legitimate grievances* but in retrospect wouldn’t America and the world both be better off if the USA had remained more closely associated with the British Empire and her Commonwealth? After all, if the erstwhile “greatest generation” had gotten in on the Hitler-fighting action at the same time as Canada and Australia did, a whole lot of trouble could have been avoided. See also World War One.
In that light, it seems to me that while the Revolution should not be condemned, it is something to be regretted: a failure of Imperial policy and an inability of leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to work out some thorny governance and burden-sharing issues. Not much of an occasion for fireworks.
He revisited the issue:
That’s almost certainly right. I wouldn’t want to be understood as saying that the Founders should have known better than to rebel. There’s no way they could have seen the sort of geopolitical conflicts between the English-speaking world and various Teutonic and Slavic (and now, perhaps, Arab) tyrannies, nor is it by any means clear that Britain and her dominions would have developed such benign governance structures absent the Revolution to cause them to rethink a thing or two. I just want to consider what sort of emotional response we should have to the fact of the Revolution.
Hold the fireworks seems to be the right sentiment for him.
Now I’ve argued on and on that we need an anticosmopolitan liberalism, one rooted firmly in the American Founding if liberalism is going to get any traction here in US politics. I’ve slagged and been slagged by the usual cast of Netroots characters over this issue, and I’ll point out that the Netroots liberalism for all the sound and fury hasn’t signified much in the political scene except to – almost certainly – hand the nomination to the least liberal candidate running, Hillary Clinton.
The basis for much of my argument has been the work of John Schaar, a little-known political theorist who happened to be one of my professors. Who I admit I should have paid more attention to back then.
The work I keep pointing to is his work, ‘The Case for Patriotism’ (excerpted here).
Here are two quotes I think worth thinking about in the context of Steyn and Yglesias.
“Patriotism is unwelcome in many quarters of the land today, and unknown in many others. There is virtually no thoughtful discussion of the subject, for the word has settled, in most people’s minds, deep into a brackish pond of sentiment where thought cannot reach. Politicians and members of patriotic associations praise it, of course, but official and professional patriotism too often sounds like nationalism, patriotism’s bloody brother. On the other hand, patriotism has a bad name among many thoughtful people, who see it as a horror at worst, a vestigial passion largely confined to the thoughtless at best: as enlightenment advances, patriotism recedes. The intellectuals are virtually required to repudiate it as a condition of class membership. The radical and dropout young loathe it. Most troublesome of all, for one who would make the argument I intend to make, is the face that both the groups that hate and those that glorify patriotism largely agree that it and nationalism are the same thing. I hope to show that they are different things–related, but separable.
Opponents of patriotism might agree that if the two could be separated then patriotism would look fairly attractive. But the opinion is widespread, almost atmospheric, that the separation is impossible, that with the triumph of the nation-state nation. Nationalism has indelibly stained patriotism: the two are warp and woof. The argument against patriotism goes on to say that, psychologically considered, patriot and nationalist are the same: both are characterized by exaggerated love for one’s own collectivity combined with more or less contempt and hostility toward outsiders. In addition, advanced political opinion holds that positive, new ideas and forces–e.g., internationalism, universalism; humanism, economic interdependence, socialist solidarity–are healthier bonds of unity, and more to be encouraged than the ties of patriotism. These are genuine objections, and they are held by many thoughtful people.”
and
“But if instinctive patriotism and the patriotism of the city cannot be ours, what can be? Is there a type of patriotism peculiarly American: if so, is it anything more than patriotism’s violent relative nationalism?
Abraham Lincoln, the supreme authority on this subject, thought there was a patriotism unique to America. Americans, a motley gathering of various races and cultures, were bonded together not by blood or religion, not by tradition or territory, not by the calls and traditions of a city, but by a political idea. We are a nation formed by a covenant, by dedication to a set of principles, and by an exchange of promises to uphold and advance certain commitments among ourselves and throughout the world. Those principles and commitments are the core of American identity, the soul of the body politic. They make the American nation unique, and uniquely valuable among and to the other nations. But the other side of this conception contains a warning very like the warnings spoken by the prophets to Israel: if we fail in our promises to each other, and lose the principles of the covenant, then we lose everything, for they are we.” [emphasis added]
The problem with Yglesias shrugging at the 4th of July is that what is really being shrugged at is the complex civic religion that makes my immigrant neighbors as American as I am – more American, I’ll argue, than Yglesias. That civic religion has kept this Republic alive for 200 years, and serves as the compass point for countless people throughout the world, as well as the uniting force – the weakening uniting force – in American politics.
When this religion gets shrugged off, we will lose far more than Couric or Yglesias think. And because it is a civic religion that can be freely assumed, the nature of the ‘Americanness’ Goldberg worries about is less cultural and less a national identity as the French see it and more explicitly political – in a uniquely American way, thankfully…
Welcome Instapundit and Opinionator readers…it appears to be ‘patriotism’ week here, so please check out the four posts I’ve done this week on the subject: ‘Patriotism – Goldberg to Couric to Yglesias‘, ‘You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me‘, ‘Patriotism Rears Its Head Yet Again‘, and ‘Rorty on Patriotism‘
Hear, hear!
AL —
I believe you are wrong on this subject for the following reasons:
1. Patriotism and nationalism are both good in and of themselves. Because they expand the trust-obligation network to every citizen. Nationalism is not a bad thing, it is a good thing, like love or marriage of which it resembles. Japanese militarism and National Socialism or Italy’s Mussolini are not examples of either patriotism or nationalism (despite what Leftist / Volk Marxists think). The latter are examples of racialism excluding large swaths of people from power and civic life. Well, like how Hollywood excludes anyone who is not an elitist.
2. Elites HATE HATE HATE the nation-state, patriotism, and nationalism because they are the means that protect the average person and enable his power to be expressed collectively, outweighing the powerful-wealthy and their hangers-on (which would include Couric, Yglesias, and the like).
3. America has it’s own nationalism. Which centers on the unique culture, language, music, cuisine, and customs of the US, most of which are descended from England and Europe, but also include a healthy dose of African culture. We are mestizo no less than Mexico, in many ways more profoundly than Mexico.
4. Being an elite means belonging to an international priesthood. Just as the Medieval Church was unalterably opposed to the Nation, so too are Liberals who belong to the Davos crowd.
5. Liberalism is dead, because it is primarily cultural-ideological reflecting the class interests of the wealthy and powerful. This is why Liberals push Gay Marriage and not exclusion of say, H1-B visa holders and illegal alien labor.
Albert Camus, writing to a German friend who was drifting into Nazism, said “A patriot ought to prefer justice to his country.”
That’s the proper corrective to excessive nationalism, provided “justice” is properly understood. Unfortunately the left doesn’t understand any sort of nationalism that’s short of Nazism, unless it’s the nationalism of an anti-American regime, in which case they can’t bring themselves to say bad things about it. (It’s forgotten that the Nazis had no shortage of leftist apologists in this country before June 1941; both pacifists and communists who followed the party line on the Nazi-Soviet Pact.) So every defect of America is used to excuse and exalt foreign tyrannies.
What is not recognized is that “internationalism” as a universal political principle is just as prone to extremism as nationalism, and in practice is elitist, authoritarian, anti-democratic, and ultimately murderous. It’s oligarchy writ large.
If patriotism can morph into nationalism, why not just settle for the watered down variety?
What possible benefits outweigh the risk of another world war?
If nationalism were all we cared about, we would have stayed out of the last two world wars.
And Hitler would have gotten to speak at Columbia University after all, and they absolutely would have loved the evil little f–k.
We stayed out of the last two world wars until it was beneficial for us to jump in, Glen.
America doesn’t do very well in wars it starts on its own.
Unless the war is in Iraq, where we whipped Saddam twice, and are now in the process of kicking Al Qaeda’s stinky ass.
How’s your war with Rush Limbaugh going? It appears to me to be degenerating into a quagmire. I think you should have tried to negotiate with him first.
By the way, what’s your exit strategy? Don’t tell me you don’t have one.
“More American than Yglesias”? We’ve got a great country, but it’s a sure bet that whenever “patriotism” comes up on the right, some goofball “I’m more patriotic than you” is sure to follow. I’d argue that what makes America great is that it leaves me alone (excepting jury duty, taxes, and voting); having to “prove” my patriotism through tacky shirts and obsequious posts defeats the point of our country.
America doesn’t do very well in wars it starts on its own.
Spanish-American War, Operation Just Cause (Panama), Mexican-American War.
We did pretty well in all those. I can’t find any other example of “wars it starts on its own.”
Also, wouldn’t it have been much more beneficial for us to get into WWII with a full Pacific Fleet before letting Japan bomb the hell out of Pearl Harbor?
AL,
Excellent commentary. How precisely apt that you quote Lincoln in this context. He is paramount among those in history he seized the notion of we are a Nation of immigrants, bound together not by race nor ethnicity nor religion, but by grand ideas, the grandest in fact.
Glen adds a very insightful postscript to your post, in observing that Internationalism carries its very own risks of excess and tyranny.
It’s unfortunate that this represenst a very rare debate anywhere leftward of solidly right in American political discourse right now.
If those on the Left could acknowledge and reject their shallow biases against Patriotism (and even a healthy Nationalism), those of us on the Right would be less prone to knee-jerk reactions or beligerence towards the Left.
It’s hard not to grow indignant over those who hypocritically dismiss the treasures and core principles of America’s founding, the grand strides of our history, who see only flaws and blemish, yet enjoy liberties unknown to 80% of the world, and extravagance of luxury unknown to 99%.
I think both the right and left in the U.S. have lost any idea of what patriotism is. They are both mired down in slogans and name calling.
Over 70% of Colleges and Universities programs in the U.S require no history courses, at all, in order to earn a degree. Civics courses, the bane of High schoolers existence in the 50s no longer exist. As awful as they were to sit through for a teenager, the study of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights helped one define themselves as an American and what exactly we should be patriotic about.
We have an incredibly important debate in this country to address concerning Habeus Corpus. It is the cornerstone of our freedoms. I was taught what it meant in these high School Civics classes. What percentage of present high school students do you think can define it.
My point is this. We are not patriotic because we repeat slogans like “We are the greatest country in the world.” We are patriotic because we know what we believe in. We are not patriotic because we call one another names like liberals and conservatives. We are patriotic because we know what we stand for as a people and what we won’t.
Unfortunately, that knowledge is lacking and the moronic finger pointing and name calling that passes for debate these days is the product of our self ignorance as a people.
___________________________
Abraham Lincoln the supreme authority on this subject, thought:… We are a nation formed by a covenant, by dedication to a set of principles, and by an exchange of promises to uphold and advance certain commitments among ourselves and throughout the world. Those principles and commitments are the core of American identity, the soul of the body politic.
**************************
This covenant is the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. How well do we teach this to our children.
__________________________
the prophets to Israel:
if we fail in our promises to each other, and lose the principles of the covenant, then we lose everything, for they are we.” [emphasis added]
*************************
How can we not fail in these promises if we are not even aware of what they are?
___________________________
There is no Liberal vs. Conservative debate here. There is only a debate by the citizenry about these principles. If you want to have a serious debate about patriotism this is where it lies and it doesn’t get anywhere if it isn’t recognized as being above politics.
Encyclopedia Britanica
Nationalism: ideology based on the premise that the individual’s loyalty and devotion to the nation-state surpass other individual or group interests.
I agree with Jim, in theory at least, that all nationalism should be a good thing. However, I think sometimes nationalism does go too far. We are so sure of our greatness, that we miss mistakes we have made, and refuse to acknowledge them.
We are a good nation, with people who genuinely care about our nation’s path (on both sides of the aisle). However, we are still a nation of people, and people make mistakes, often with the best intentions (or rather, especially with the best intentions). Sometimes a critical voice is a good thing, an empowering thing, in making a nation better than it was before. And sometimes that critical voice goes too far.
Liberals, like myself, like to phrase it: Is a friend someone who stands by you all the time, and takes your side no matter what? Or is a friend someone who tells you when you’re wrong, and will help get back on track?
I think diferent people here have different answers. Really, I think both things are necessary, in friendship and running country. However, too much of either can ruin a friendship (either making you into a n entorouge yes-man, or an a$$). And yes, sometimes you can have two best friends, both with the best intentions, who can’t stand to be in a room together.
And sometimes the nation has to tell them both to chill out and get along for a few hours (after all, it’s the nation’s party).
What remains for the global elites to answer is exactly how a democracy can survive without a healthy dose of patriotic and nationalist sentiment.
A sense of of common interest and of shared ties – whether real or illusory – encourages fair play, common sacrifice, and counterbalances the tendency to seek after ones own self-interest, which can be dangerous in a government where the people have unlimited access to everyone else’s wallets.
With patriotism, we fight wars for reasons we understand, with a clear purpose, and give our military the tools (i.e., men) it needs to do its job. We commit ourselves to victory. These were the kinds of wars fought up to and including World War II.
Without patriotism, we fight wars for no clearly defined reason and allow the bulk of young men to escape such service. These are the kinds of wars (Vietnam and Iraq) we’ve fought since World War II. What came between? Multiculturalism, open borders, and the civil rights movement which, for all its good, encouraged people to think of we in a restricted rather than expansive sense.
Patriotism requires a “we,” not a “me, she, and they.” But our modern culture; our obsession with cultural and ethnic and racial differences; our encouragement of these differences; and our failed sense of a common detsiny undermines this.
The sickness in the soul of every Western nation manifests itself in the symptoms of shrinking birthrates, excessive materialism, growing entitlement burdens that threaten to swallow the economy whole, and shrinking militaries – even in the United States. How else to explain how, during the Reagan Administration, 20 years and 60 million people ago, we maintained an Army of 750,000 men with little difficulty while today we’re barely able to staff an Army of 530,000 men – and that only after substantial pay raises, added enlistment bonuses, and dramatically lowering the bar for recruits.
WHat the elites fail to understand is why I should much care about the welfare of a world that cares not at all for mine. The global vision of the elites will fail, because it contradicts the very essence of human nature. In a world of scarcity, sacrifice will only be bourne for those one feels connected to.
Elites fail to understand that nationalism, for all its ills, was actually a step up from the old order. It enlarged the circle of people one identified with. Globalism is unable to replace nationalism because one cannot easily identify with people who speak a different language and who live by different laws. Take away the affection for your countrymen and it does not get replaced by affection for the world – it gets replaced by tribalism and materialistic self-interest.
Globalism is the very death of democracy.
Perhaps part of the problem here is how people have their own definition for “nationalism.” One definition of it at MSN Encarta says that nationalism is synonymous with patriotism, while another is that it’s excessive or fanatical devotion to one’s country.
So it’s hard to judge whether “nationalism” is good or bad if each of us has a different notion of what the word means.
Ludwig von Mises wrote a book, “Nationalism,” which excoriated the concept. But then, he defined nationalism as a zero-sum ideology – that my country can never do well unless it’s at the expense of some other country. And obviously, that kind of thinking can get countries into a lot of trouble, very, very quickly.
But I think there’s another kind of nationalism that’s dangerous for a country NOT to have. As individuals, most of us work for the betterment of our own welfare, but our well-being is ALSO connected to the well-being of our country. It’s that kind of nationalism that’s important: the nationalism that says my country is valuable and is worth my efforts to preserve it and improve it.
This is true! Why do you think the monuments in Washington DC are built as temples? They are a place of pilgrimage for those who follow the Constitution.
Take a lesson in veneration of the Constitution and true American patriotism: http://www.ronpaul2008.com/
I should also point out that what I wrote above also applies to globalism. There are plenty of beneficial national effects (and plenty of negative national effects) from thinking globaly instead of nationally. To see Globalism only as roses (or only as garbage) is to forget that almost everything is a two sided coin.
For example: US jobs probably wouldn’t be exported out of the country (in the same scale) if every country had the same wage & enviromental laws. (Although it would have the negative effect of making jobs more difficult in those countries). Still, it would prevent human rights and labor abuses that commonly occur in the China & Mexico. Eventually, I think these plans could bring more benefit to all.
On the other hand, thinking globally also means more competition for national groups. Right now american agriculture is heavily subsidized (as it is in all major industrial nations). While this is a good thing for US farmers, it’s very bad for farmers in starving third world nations. When they try to sell their crops on the open market, their crops are so devalued that they lose money. Eventually, they lose their land to the bank, and then nobody is making food that can feed their countrymen. It becomes a perpetual cycle. Yet, removing those subsidies can have a very negative effect on america’s farmers. How do you find a middle ground between those strategies.
I think the trick is to find a way to make America stronger while helping those that are less fortunate. The $100 (err… $200) dollar laptop is a great example… creating a new (albeit, nonprofit) industry that helps connect third world countries while employing americans simultaneously. There are alot of these projects that break the intuition that thought must be either global OR national.
Thanks for the spam sandwich, Stephen.
But I won’t take lessons in patriotism from a man who propagates the most obscene slander against his own nation. Whether he does it out of cynicism or stupidity is a question for a forensic psychologist.
Amassing a horde of grinning, Larouche-like followers is also not my idea of sound nationalism. I much prefer the angry leftists – at least they don’t smile and offer to shake your hand while they urinate on your shoes.
bq. The problem with Yglesias shrugging at the 4th of July is that what is really being shrugged at is the complex civic religion that makes my immigrant neighbors as American as I am – *more American, I’ll argue, than Yglesias*.
Ouch. That’s gonna leave a mark!
bq.On the one hand, there are people who believe being an American is all about dissent and change, that the American idea is inseparable from “progress.” America is certainly an idea, but it is not merely an idea. It is also a nation with a culture as real as France’s or Mexico’s. That’s where the other patriots come in; they think patriotism is about preserving Americanness.
Goldberg’s ham-fisted attempt to frame this issue is a bit sad. Even the most radical of dissenters focuses on specific issues they believe must change. All work towards a goal, not some philosophical ideal of endless shuffling change.
Similarly, ALL who call themselves patriotic seek to preserve “American-ness” — the different camps just have different beliefs about what “American-ness” is in a given setting. Racial segregation, for example, was part of “American-ness” to some people in the 1960s while others believed it was an affront to the American ideal of equality.
Similarly, kind and humane treatment of enemy prisoners was for quite some time a hallmark of “American-ness.” We certainly tried to sell the rest of the world on this concept. Now, Goldberg and many of his compatriots feel that it is a luxury that must be sacrificed. Certainly that can’t qualify as “Preserving Americanness” — by definition, it is an attempt to sacrifice a component of Americanness in hopes of securing a tactical advantage in a current conflict.
Are there any principles, any aspects of “American-ness” that are so important that we must not sacrifice them, even if it means the destruction of the nation-state? That’s a question that must be answered before anyone can claim to have a handle on “American-ness.” If the answer is no, then “American” is just another word for “The guy who’s left standing.”
bq. We are a nation formed by a covenant, by dedication to a set of principles, and by an exchange of promises to uphold and advance certain commitments among ourselves and throughout the world. Those principles and commitments are the core of American identity, the soul of the body politic. They make the American nation unique, and uniquely valuable among and to the other nations.
Then to the extent that other nations become more democratic and America becomes less unique than we were back in Lincoln’s day, the correct “we” expands towards Couric/Yglesias and away from Steyn/Goldberg.
You and Goldberg seem to be failing to see that you’re in exact opposition. Compare this _Americans, a motley gathering of various races and cultures, were bonded together not by blood or religion, not by tradition or territory, not by the calls and traditions of a city, but by a political idea._ to this _America is certainly an idea, but it is not merely an idea._
If you want to build your “we” on a set of ideals and commitments, that “we” cannot stop at the border unless the ideals and commitments do–which they shouldn’t.
Consumatopia:
Those ideals and commitments do end at “the border”, so far as the rotten clique that runs Mexico is concerned, which is why people want to be on our side of it.
The Republican Party of Lincoln’s day had a huge proportion of immigrants, mainly hundreds of thousands of German workers and farmers who flooded the North before the war. These people made the Republicans a majority party in the North in an incredibly short time, and when war came they filled the ranks of the Union Army. (The Republicans were much derided by their enemies for their “motley foreign ranks”.)
These immigrants brought both a patriotic and an international perspective to the war. On the one hand, they had come to America because they despised the oligarchs of Europe, and they were more than willing to fight for the country they had worked so hard to get into. On the other, they believed that if American democracy perished in civil war, it would give encouragement to tyrants the world over – proving that the American experiment had failed.
Many Mexican Americans follow that ideal; the armed forces are packed with them. But the “open border” political advocates have no such ideal. They have neither the interests of Mexicans or of the United States at heart – quite the opposite. They want what they want precisely because it is destructive to America.
In their more triumphant moments they even brag about how they are going to bring “revolution” into the US (along with all the cheap pot). In other words, rape and loot the United States the way Mexico has been endlessly raped and looted, after which we can all go to Canada, I guess.
“…bonded by a political idea…”
“…a set of principles…”
“…certain commitments…”
“…complex civic religion…”
When it comes to celebrating those principles, commitments, etc., the right wins. Hands down.
But when it comes to specifying and working to uphold those principles, commitments, etc., the left wins.
The right celebrates the bond without much consideration of the what the “political idea” actual *is*; the left strives for perfection of the political idea with comparatively little celebration of its uniqueness in world history.
Sadly, I think the right often confuses what the left does as “a commitment to dissent” or (even worse) “America-bashing”. It’s not. Like a parent who disciplines an errant child, the left wants to correct America so that the “political idea” becomes a societal reality.
Like a parent who disciplines an errant child, the left wants to correct America so that the “political idea” becomes a societal reality.
And there’s my problem with the left in one tidy nutshell…
If you want to build your “we” on a set of ideals and commitments, that “we” cannot stop at the border unless the ideals and commitments do–which they shouldn’t.
You’ve just demonstrated your ignorance of the entire point of the American Revolution and the founding of this country.
Which is AL’s point.
The ideals and commitments DO stop at the border. The United States is a representative government representing a compact between citizen and government in that the government is sovereign over the citizen only insofar as the citizen is sovereign over the government.
To ascribe a membership in a global ‘we’ over your membership in the American ‘we’ is to undercut the power and meaning of democracy. You include us in a group we have no sovereignty over and therefore place us in an implicit tyranny.
Freedom, justice and all that jazz are simply side effects of this. Remember the Bill of Rights is an amendment to the constitution because the founding fathers saw no need to spell out the rights contained therein explicitly because they felt that such rights flowed naturally from the nature of the new government.
No taxation without representation. Still as true today as it was then.
Still no response to my question about what benefits would come from increased patriotsm?
Not every sports fan paints their face and yells at the top of their lung every game…but they are still fans, aren’t they?
_”Like a parent who disciplines an errant child, the left wants to correct America so that the “political idea” becomes a societal reality._
*”And there’s my problem with the left in one tidy nutshell…”*
Care to elaborate?
Expanding on my metaphor, do you think it is okay for a parent to let his/her kid misbehave, justifying their inaction with the excuse “I love my kid”?
Loving your country and trying to make it love up to its ideals are not incompatable. In fact — just as in parenting — the two go hand-in-hand.
Kashford:
Those people in Washington are not my kids. They’re supposed to be my damn employees; I’m paying them enough.
And my country is not whatever the government happens to be doing this week. Or whatever someone thinks the government should do next week. That’s where I sharply part company with the liberal. No party or president is any part of my soul, thanks very much. Every last one of them could fall through a crack in the earth and splatter in Hell, and my amber waves of grain would go on waving. My purple mountain majesty would not even notice.
Your metaphor of leftists as “tough-love” parents is … problematic. Why don’t they shape up their own kids first, and leave my employees alone so they can work?
Care to elaborate?
Well, let’s see.
You take a nation of citizens equal (theoretically) under the law, governed by representatives of their choice and turn us into a mass of unruly children to be ruled over by their loving benevolent parents who are selected to be their rulers by nature of their age, wisdom, and experience.
In other words you assume the mantle of rulership over your fellow citizens, and the right to decide for us what is right and wrong solely on the basis of your own self proclaimed moral rectitude. And if we disagree, you’re going to discipline us. For our own good.
Infantilization, condescension, usurpation of authority, what’s not to love?
Still no response to my question about what benefits would come from increased patriotsm?
Not every sports fan paints their face and yells at the top of their lung every game…but they are still fans, aren’t they?
You’d get more responses if you quit setting up ludicrous strawmen.
World Wars caused by patriotism? Lack of display of patriotism equals lack of patriotism? Please.
Those people in Washington are not my kids.
We’re not talking about Washington, you missed this bit Glenn…
the left wants to correct America so that the “political idea” becomes a societal reality.
We’re not talking treating the government like unruly children (which they emulate more and more to be honest), we’re enforcing a correct political idea down onto all of society. This is classic top-down authoritarianism.
Maybe the confusion comes from the application of patriotism, Tree.
Applied Patriotism?
4th of July celebrations are fine.
Asking Americans to suspend their sense of justice because America is involved in a specific case (like the Blackwater shootings) is not.
It is just injustice and personal gain hiding behind “patriotism.”
Who in this thread is arguing that we should not investigate the Blackwater shootings because the US was involved?
Who in this thread is arguing patriotism trumps justice?
You imply that if patriotism does not trump justice in all cases therefore it has no benefit? For the love of pete…
Then perhaps you could explain what benefit more patriotism would generate, Tree.
Jim Rockford, #2:
1. Patriotism and nationalism are both good in and of themselves. Because they expand the trust-obligation network to every citizen. Nationalism is not a bad thing, it is a good thing, like love or marriage of which it resembles. Japanese militarism and National Socialism or Italy’s Mussolini are not examples of either patriotism or nationalism (despite what Leftist / Volk Marxists think). The latter are examples of racialism excluding large swaths of people from power and civic life. Well, like how Hollywood excludes anyone who is not an elitist.
As it is written, this is nothing more than a fancy No True Scotsman fallacy, where you’re arguing that because you like nationalism, and don’t like the results of Nazism and related movements, those movements can’t be nationalism. No true expression of nationalism can be a bad thing, therefore bad things can’t be nationalism.
That, as an argument, is simplistic and wrong.
You don’t even offer up your own definition of nationalism, other than to say it’s good, and kinda, in some unspecified way, sorta like love or marriage.
2. Elites HATE HATE HATE the nation-state, patriotism, and nationalism because they are the means that protect the average person and enable his power to be expressed collectively, outweighing the powerful-wealthy and their hangers-on (which would include Couric, Yglesias, and the like).
And this is building on some imagined definition of nationalism that seems to imply that nationalism goes hand in hand with representative government.
The problem is, that’s not what nationalism means. Nationalism is a suite of political philosophies defining the relationship of nations, large sociological blocks of people, to each other and their governments, specifically, that those nation-blocs, however defined, ought to be politically autonomous. But nationalism, as a suite of political philosophies, says nothing about the relationship of the individual man to his political structures from the inside. Nothing at all. It’s not too far a stretch to say that the whole philosophical point of nationalism is precisely that nationalism itself should not make that determination, but that each nation would define it differently– nationalism in the English liberal tradtion (or civic nationalism) does imply representative government, while nationalism in the Islamic tradition would mean the submission of the man to the nation, and therefore the religion.
Elites of the west fear nationalism because they saw the results of ethnic nationalism in the 20th century, which reduced Europe and Japan to smoking rubble, and because they do not trust themselves or their cultures, it scares the living piss out of them. There is no fundamental contradiction between civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism, and no reason that one cannot grow into the other. Elites of Islam– some of them, anyway– are all in favor of religious nationalism, though, because it will put them in charge.
There’s a lot to be said for and against various kinds of nationalism, but please, please, please, don’t try to re-define already well-defined terms just to suit yourself.
That’s just crass.
Ok Alphie, you want benefits of patriotism, here goes.
For me, the ultimate example of patriotism will always be the 442nd Regimental Combat Team ( “Wiki Link”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/442nd_Regimental_Combat_Team ).
This is my penultimate example of patriotism, loyalty to and support of the ideals of the United States even in the face of one of the more prominent examples of the United States failing to live up to it’s own ideals.
Without patriotism, I like AL’s definition as adherence to a shared civil religion, we lose the common ideological glue that holds us together.
Every American has competing interests and loyalties. However, at the end of the day, no matter how many variant group adjectives you wanna stick on the front, we’re supposed to be American at the end. African-American, Asian-American, Catholic, Buddhist, Democrat, Republican, etc, etc, if the buck doesn’t stop on American something is wrong.
Without that overriding loyalty, the other ideological loyalties would rip the country apart. One need only look at Europe to see what an implosion due to a collapsing sense of identity looks like. Belgium is coming apart along ancient fault lines, the others suffer sub-replacement birthrates, and increasingly large and unassimilated immigrant populations marginalized both along ethnic and economic lines.
Throughout the world there are conflicts along ethnic and/or religious fault lines. I’d rather avoid that here, thank you very much.
There’s a perspective missing here on Americanism. That of the Native American. We are not immigrants in the true sense of the word. Our heritage on this continent goes back so far, that it begins here in America.
We’ve seen the Hispanics come from the south and the Anglos come from the east. Mostly, the Anglos are responsible for the conquest by force of arms of the lands that were ours for tens of thousands of years.
I think that’s the biggest difference between us and the newcomers. We’ve seen many changes over those past tens of thousands of years. So you’ll have to forgive us for not being impressed by a popular culture barely 200 years old.
The big question we ask is where does all this Americanism take us? Your scientific method and popular culture, with all its excesses and constant change, is putting a lot of strain on the earth. And by many accounts, it is said to be getting worse.
Treefrog,
The military unit you cite was indeed patriotic, but I believe we’re discussing cranking up the patriotism among American civilians. What is the benefit of doing that?
As for Europe “coming apart”…that’s been predicted for over a thousand years, but its still there.
Sorry, folks was traveling today. A few fast comments, and then some longer ones later tonight if I can:
alphie #4 – well, there are worse things than another world war. So to pose the problem as ‘that’s the worst thing that can happen’ seems odd – unless you really think that’s the worst thing that could happen?
jpe #8 – well, objectively, my neighbors are more American, because they believe in the national enterprise we’re in, and Yglesias seems to just want to consume it. And that’s a good thing, for a lot of moderately complex reasons that come down to “legitimacy”:http://www.armedliberal.com/2002/05/on_inequality_legitimacy_and_l.html (note that that post is at core about inequality, but it makes my basic point about legitimacy).
TOC #11 – I agree 110% – we need to be teaching these principles, and valuing them – and we don’t do either.
Alchemist #16 – I agree, esp on the ‘chilling out’ part…
Jeff Eaton #19 – Jeff, you’ve gotta go read a lot more history, please. When you talk about the treatment of captives, I’ll hold our current treatment against historic American treatment any day – and against the treatment by any other power you can name.
I agree that we need to keep sight of our principles. But they are much richer and more complex than the ones you name here – TOC touches on them.
Consumatopia #20 – pure democracy had little to do with the American model; it’s a common error…and yes, as the rest of the world becomes more like America, the ‘specialness’ of America will diminish. Fortunately, we have a long way to go in thatregard…
A.L.
It would have been nice in a column about how America has a unique “national culture” for Goldberg to include some example as to what the heck it is.
Our heritage on this continent goes back so far, that it begins here in America.
Technically it began in Asia, and before that likely in some valley in Africa, same as the rest of us.
And frankly I always felt kinda sorry for the North American tribes. They were shafted no matter how history went down. The Aztecs were aggressively pushing north and were on the verge of bumping into the mouth of the Mississippi when Cortez wiped them out. Without the Europeans, the Northern Native American tribes would have been facing a technologically, numerically, and organizationally superior Aztec empire. And without the mobility advantage horses provide, the nomads wouldn’t have stood a chance.
The only certainty in history is change.
As for what western civilization has wrought, I have only two words: toilet paper.
Here’s a possible line of thinking: Nationalism is evil. Patriotism is nationalism. Therefore patriotism is bad. Therefore: get rid of patriotism.
Here’s the same line of thinking as modified by Armed Liberal: EXCEPTION! American patriotism is unlike all other patriotisms. It is not nationalism, and it is good.
Implication: get rid of all patriotism except American patriotism.
Armed Liberal, you’ve run this up the flagpole before, and I never salute it.
Now I’m going to argue you should drop your position as self-contradictory.
If a line of thought leads to the conclusion that it ought not to be advocated, it may not be self-contradictory in the pure logical sense, but it is self contradictory enough that reasonable people should at least think of it as suspect.
Example: one of the arguments against utilitarianism is that teaching it may not be the best way to uphold strong taboos that promote utility. If the goal of ethical action is to optimize utility, and teaching utilitarianism does not optimize utility, utilitarianism is in trouble.
Would de-credentialling all heroes of patriotism other than (uniquely acceptable) American patriotism lead to outcomes that an American patriot ought to want? If Winston Churchill was excluded from the ranks of the mostly righteous because his patriotism was not the only kind that would be acceptable, that is all-American, would American patriotism be better off?
If countries that support America rather than the internationalist United Nations do so because of their own strong tradition-based patriotism, with values such as mateship, would it lead to results that an American patriot ought to approve of if that stopped?
Bearing in mind that with more enemies and fewer friends overseas, Americans themselves would likely be less inclined to patriotism and more inclined to corrosive, self-destructive national self-criticism, how can you consistently maintain this?
Damning all patriotism other than the all-American kind is practically self-contradictory.
So I suggest you knock it off.
Patriotism is a good thing. I’ll accept that American patriotism is as good as it gets, and that’s saying a lot. But further than that I won’t go, and further than that I don’t think you ought to go.
Treefrog,
The military unit you cite was indeed patriotic, but I believe we’re discussing cranking up the patriotism among American civilians. What is the benefit of doing that?
Try reading more than the first paragraph. I know, I know, it’s a lot of words, but you can do it.
As for Europe “coming apart”…that’s been predicted for over a thousand years, but its still there.
Yes, the Europe of 1007 is just like the Europe of today…all the familiar nations still there…like Spain…er…Germany? nope… France? not really… Belgium…Holland…Italy…England (well if you squint funny)…
Thanks for illustrating my point so nicely.
Kashford #22 – I actually agree with you in part (hence the ‘liberal’ moniker); in general I think the dialectic between the two positions is a healthy and good one. Which is one reason why it’s insulting and wrong for liberals to compare themselves to wise parents. The other is that the keystone to our politics is that everyone’s opinions have equal standing, and so the authority you want to claim as a ‘parent’ just doesn’t exist.
Treefrog #24 – You’re absolutely right…the melding of rights and responsibilities into a polity is what we’re talking about not an abstract set of values.
alphie #25 – sorry, didn’t note the question until here. Social cohesion and the political unity we see here in the US are the product of political legitimacy – the perception by the governed that the government is legitimate. What we see in Iraq, for example, is what things look like where there is little or none.
Patriotism is one string root of legitimacy, and Schaar’s essay (which I encourage everyone to read) explains very well why some of the traditional “land and blood” patriotisms aren’t available to us as Americans – and why that’s a good thing.
If you think patriotism = being a fan of USA Hockey, you flat don’t understand it.
More later…
A.L.
#34 from Marcus Vitruvius: “It’s not too far a stretch to say that the whole philosophical point of nationalism is precisely that nationalism itself should not make that determination, but that each nation would define it differently– nationalism in the English liberal tradtion (or civic nationalism) does imply representative government, while nationalism in the Islamic tradition would mean the submission of the man to the nation, and therefore the religion.”
Yes it is too far a stretch. Far too far a stretch. That is not “the whole philosophical point” of any patriotism known; and to invent your own least common denominator nationalism, the primary characteristic of which is a point on which it would sharply conflict with any real nationalism, and say that it what nationalism is, is to go altogether wild.
–
#34 from Marcus Vitruvius: “There’s a lot to be said for and against various kinds of nationalism, but please, please, please, don’t try to re-define already well-defined terms just to suit yourself.
That’s just crass.”
Indeed.
David – yes, those are both ‘possible’ lines of thought, but I subscribe to neither of them.
Longer explanation – traditional patriotism – English patriotism, for example, depends on a ‘blut und volk’ (blood and family) kind of thinking – hence ‘the wogs begin at Calais’.
Churchill is literally seen as a descendant of Arthur; not a biological descendant, but as the leader of a people who share a common ancestry.
That’s typical patriotism or nationalism; tribal loyalty refocused on a nation-state. As noted, when I lived in France I knew I’d never be French.
That kind of patriotism isn’t available to Americans – both because our history as a common people is too short, and because we brought all our different ancestral legends with us.
That kind of patriotism is collapsing, in fact, around the world as the mythologies become shared and blurred by mobility and media.
American patriotism is different – because it had to be – and in the face of the forces that are eroding blut und volk patriotism, has a real chance to survive.
As noted, that’s a good thing, because polities require legitimacy to survive. And patriotism is one strong root of that legitimacy.
So, back to you…
A.L.
Just read the comments over at the opinionator blog.
I’m reminded of nothing so much as a bunch of cynical asses who see a happily married couple being mildly affectionate in public and turn up their noses proclaiming how superior they are for never showing such base emotions, and anyway he’s probably cheating on her, and they probably even have KIDS which as we know are destroying the planet…
I found the irony in finding someone else’s visceral public emotional reactions as being tacky by posting a visceral public emotional reaction, amusing.
The piece of the puzzle missing is basic psychology. It’s highly atypical for a human to be able to possess loyalty in the absence of at least some pride in the object of that loyalty.
If you display no pride in something and instead display disdain or revulsion to it, it becomes natural to doubt your ability to maintain loyalty to it.
Not showing visible patriotism doesn’t mean I doubt that you possess patriotism, running around sneering at other people for showing their patriotism, on the other hand, would make me question your patriotism if I didn’t believe it more correctly represents a closed minded immaturity.
I’m not quite sure why so many people find it so hard to understand that many people not only like, but need to show their pride in the object of their loyalty.
David Blue, #44:
You have a point, but not as strong a point as you might like. Nationalism as a suite of philosophies, as I’ve said, defines the relationship of nationalities to the organization of state actors, on the basis that a nationality deserves a state as a means of determination for the nation (not, as Jim Rockford was saying, as a means of determination for the individual.)
Yes, there will be some forms that go far beyond that, such as aggressive ethnic and religious forms of nationalism which will further try to order all the other nations firmly under their bootheel, or try to absorb the other nations, or in some other way add to the basic premise.
But strains of nationalism which are not aggressive, and which admit to the idea of multiple nation-states living in more or less peaceful relations aren’t going to be hell-bent for leather to determine the particular governmental forms of other nation-states… at least, not as a result of their own nationalism. They may do so for perfectly valid other reasons, though, such as security interests or trade interests. Even civic nationalism, which has an evangelistic strain to it, also has an opposite strain insisting that national self-determination implies the right to choose something other than a representative democracy.
It takes a bit of mental gymnastics to insist that nations have the right of self-determination, and to insist that said self-determination needs to take a particular form. It can be done, but it takes the addition of something more than simple nationalism.
A.L. –
Who would you admire most, a Frenchman who:
1. Joined the Resistance and fought against Nazi occupiers just because he loved la belle France.
2. Collaborated with them because nationalism is outdated, the Germans were the new power in Europe, and because he felt (as many so-called Americans do) that “There’s nothing special about my country.”
3. Followed the French Communist Party line and called for peace with the Nazis, until the Nazis attacked Stalin’s favorite country, at which point he became a born-again patriot.
The winner here would appear to be the old-fashioned rouge-neck jingoist/nationalist/patriot. Should we be happy if there are no such people left in other countries?
There are such people left in Iraq, who are fighting and dying to establishment a free, independent government. Yet the whores of Al Qaeda get the “nationalist” label from our ever-reliable friends on the left, and “nationalist” suddenly becomes a good thing when applied to these utter murdering scum. This is so typical we can’t even muster sufficient outrage anymore.
I wouldn’t trust a man who didn’t love his country. Even a complete piece-of-crap country. Such a man might be dangerous if he loves the wrong country, but men who hate their country usually love something even more despicable.
Congrats on your article in Pragati, Joe. Small world, it took me a while to figure out why your name sounded familiar.
A.L.,
I guess I’m having trouble grasping what kind of “patriotism” you are talking about.
I think you’re ignoring one important fact;
The “Red States” receive huge subsidies from the “Blue States” thanks to government transfers.
It’s no surprise that the cries for increased patriotism originate mostly from the “Red States”…they are the ones who are making out best on the “deal” America offers its citizens, and have the greatest interest in keeping it going.
#47 from Marcus Vitruvius:
You have no idea what sized point I wanted to make, so this is just a nebulous goalpost that you can move anywhere.
#47 from Marcus Vitruvius:
Not necessarily as an over-riding element though, as it can define the nation in relation to other things such as other nations or transnational forces. But this is nothing, one way or another.
#47 from Marcus Vitruvius:
“The basic premise” is just something you made up yourself, which I called you on. That’s my point and I don’t need another. So I have nothing to add.
#45 from Armed Liberal: “David – yes, those are both ‘possible’ lines of thought, but I subscribe to neither of them.”
OK. I stand corrected.
#45 from Armed Liberal: “Longer explanation – traditional patriotism – English patriotism, for example, depends on a ‘blut und volk’ (blood and family) kind of thinking – hence ‘the wogs begin at Calais’.”
#45 from Armed Liberal: “American patriotism is different – because it had to be – and in the face of the forces that are eroding blut und volk patriotism, has a real chance to survive.”
You Godwined your own thread, which is weak, and you used your Nazi implications to denigrate people – specifically including Winston Churchill – who were fighting the Nazis when the Americans were doing no such thing, which is beneath pathetic, it’s lower than a snake’s duodenum. Between Ambassador Joe Kennedy’s attitude to the Nazis and Winston Churchill’s, I’ll take Sir Winston’s, thanks.
Smear non-American patriotism all you will, it’s often a grand thing, paricularly that of the English-speaking peoples. And I’ll second Glen Wishard’s points, in particular: the alternatives are generally much worse.
As for the inevitability of the collapse of all patriotism except American patriotism, this is just the Left’s usual “inevitable-ism”: a denigration of old and good values and a demand that they be given up because their defeat is inevitable.
Whether it’s the aroused international proletariat that according to Marxism will inevitably triumph or something else, the basic point is always the same and always empty. Sure if you believe this nonsense and quit, then your failure is inevitable, but if you stand your ground it’s all just yammering.
Lucius: “So now I’m in deep trouble. I mean, one more jolt of this death ray and I’m an epitaph. Somehow I found cover. And what does Baron Von Ruthless do?”
Bob: “He starts monologuing.”
Lucius: “He starts monologuing.”
Lucius: “He starts this like prepared speech about how feeble I am compared to him, how inevitable my defeat is, how the world will soon be his, yadda yadda yadda…”
Bob: “Yammering.”
Lucius: “Yammering.”
– The Incredibles (2004)
Yammering.
I’ll believe a world with no more nationalism when I see it, and until then a promise that everybody’s patriotism except the American kind is doomed is worth less than a Baron Von Ruthless monolog.
Oh, and “volk” =/= “family”.
#48 from Glen Wishard: “There are such people left in Iraq, who are fighting and dying to establishment a free, independent government. Yet the whores of Al Qaeda get the “nationalist” label from our ever-reliable friends on the left, and “nationalist” suddenly becomes a good thing when applied to these utter murdering scum.”
I’d missed the contradiction. It’s obvious though when someone points it out.
What is not recognized is that “internationalism” as a universal political principle is just as prone to extremism as nationalism, and in practice is elitist, authoritarian, anti-democratic, and ultimately murderous.
Ah, yes…How quickly we all forget the countless internationalist genocides and the despots who exploited extremist internationalism to perpetrate them. Will no one stand against the horrors of the internationalist pogroms?
Seriously, what kind of loon claims with a straight face that “internationalism” (whatever the hell that means) is just as prone to extremism as nationalism.
OK, let’s try again…
Glenn, obviously #1 – but the question isn’t whether he loves France, but why. French people love France because it is the home to the French people (that’s not circular, really), the French language and culture, and the shared history that they trace back to – well, Asterix. They don’t love the French Constitution, or system of government – and even if I did, and spoke impeccible french, and learned french history inside and out, I could never be French. My great grand-kids, maybe.
And this isn’t some Marxian ‘nationalism will perish under the boots of the proletariat and world socialism’; this is basic anthropology – what happens to individual cultures when they become porous? What ancestral myths do people believe in when their parents are from two wildly different cultures?
In large part, the conflict we’re in is driven, I believe by the reaction within Islam and the Arab world to the slow dissolution of their culture in the face of globalization. That ought not to be very controversial at this point. Well, similar issues – less violently – face other national cultures that are based on a kind of nation = tribe belief.
David, “blut und volk” is a term I recall as fairly widely used in political theory in talking about legitimacy and community. I don’t mean any Nazi implications; so please don’t take points about Hitler until I actually mention him. Go ahead and substitute Shaar’s “instinctive patriotism” and reread what I wrote…
DMonteith – well, the people who hold internationalist beliefs – the Communists, as a good example, seem to have a pretty good track record on the whole killing thing.
And I’ll suggest that our current internationalists, over at the UN, seem remarkably indifferent to mass death.
A.L.
DMonteith:
Everything is prone to extremes. That is the nature of real politics. The farther you go in one direction, the more you assume that you are right (and everyone else, by definition, is wrong) the more apt you are to take matters into your own hands.
Internationalism is relatively new phenomenon (historically speaking) and doesn’t have the same bloody history that nationalism has had (at times). But that’s true of almost any -ism. Give internationalism enough time, and it will have violent radicals too.
On the other hand, consider the buildop over Iraq & Iran. Some of the debate has centered on the idea that removing these tyrants could stabilize a radical/unpredictable section of the world. Although we taunt the idea of ending terrorism their really is much more to gain internationally than nationally.
Therefore the Bush administartion could be seen as an “internationalist” administration. (Afterall, Bush has spent way more time on international policy than on national policy)
I would be more sympathetic to the “America, Right or Wrong” crowd if I felt that they actually supported America when they thought it was wrong. But almost nobody actually does this. The classic recent example is Bosnia/Kosovo when McCain, Orrin Hatch, and a host of other Republicans, who now say that it is unpatriotic to oppose the Iraq war, vigorously opposed military intervention in the Balkans. Judging by their current standards, they were traitors back then. “America, Right or Wrong” is just a stick used to beat up on people you disagree with when you’re in power and to ignore when you don’t call the shots. These cynical and hypocritical calls for unthinking patriotism for political gain gives patriotism a bad name.
DMonteith – well, the people who hold internationalist beliefs – the Communists, as a good example, seem to have a pretty good track record on the whole killing thing.
Well, if you think Stalin or Mao weren’t nationalists, or at least didn’t exploit nationalist sentiment, then I’m not sure that we can engage in profitable discussion.
As to our future internationalist terrorists, I’ll worry about that if it ever comes to pass. Right now, though, the extremist internationalist sentiment seems to run more towards having another meeting than towards blowing stuff up.
And I’m really not buying the George Bush-Internationalist theory, notwithstanding the Wilsonian mish-mash of his second inaugural. With both Bush and Stalin/Mao it’s important to distinguish between rhetoric and actions.
#55 from Armed Liberal: “They don’t love the French Constitution, or system of government – and even if I did, and spoke impeccible french, and learned french history inside and out, I could never be French. My great grand-kids, maybe.”
If so, this might have something to do with them being insufferably French rather than with the nature of patriotism or nationalism.
You could move to Australia, which has a solid tradition-based patriotism and nationalism, not bother to change your accent, and in a very short time be accepted as totally Australian. No doors to wealth or power would be closed to you. Lots of people have done this, including David Hackworth, it’s not an issue.
#55 from Armed Liberal: “And this isn’t some Marxian ‘nationalism will perish under the boots of the proletariat and world socialism’; this is basic anthropology – what happens to individual cultures when they become porous? What ancestral myths do people believe in when their parents are from two wildly different cultures?”
This isn’t basic anthropology, it’s wild speculation with an empty pretense of certainty. The data is not in.
You’re not analyzing even to the extent of distinguishing between the kind of patriotism known to the Romans, with their three level religion of family, tribe and state, when yes, ancestral myths ultimately are decisive, and modern and especially Anglosphere state-nationhood, where one key factor is the common interest of cultural / educated stakeholders in a language community. Is that about to go away, are we about to dump all the technologies that make language such an important ticket? I think not. And that’s just one factor.
A thought:
There are actions that we as individuals may want to take, but can not. For example, we see genocide occurring in Darfur and want to do something to stop it. But I can’t just hop on a plane, buy a gun and pull a Rambo. So, I petition my government to do something about it. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t.
That’s just an example, there are many examples of things we can not individually achieve, but could possibly achieve through our government.
So, here’s the rub with patriotism: without patriotism, the chances of a country pulling together and executing these actions which we desire is much smaller. I’m not talking about paint-your-face-with-the-flag type of patriotism. I’m just talking about the kind of resolve that one has from being part of something bigger than one’s self and supporting that entity’s actions in order to maximize the chance of them succeeding.
So in a sense, by being anti-patriotic, one undermines the chances of these sorts of actions from taking place. Now, your country doesn’t always do what you would like. But theoretically your desires are taken into account and your government is acting on your behalf for what they believe is a benefit towards you. Anti-patriots undermine their own interests, and those of their compatriots too.
So this is the problem I see with those who are un-patriotic or indeed anti-patriotic (i.e. actively working against the actions of one’s own country).
Anti-patriotism can be a good thing. Those Germans who smuggled Jews out of the country in the 40s did a great thing. I can respect people who protest our government’s actions, even those I think are correct, if they do it in a thoughtful and mature manner. They are exercising their rights. But if they actively undermine actions which are taken on my behalf, when I feel they have no moral justification to do so, that hurts both of us and I think it’s a legitimate problem.
#55 from Armed Liberal: “In large part, the conflict we’re in is driven, I believe by the reaction within Islam and the Arab world to the slow dissolution of their culture in the face of globalization. That ought not to be very controversial at this point.”
That ought not to be very controversial at this point – because it ought to be universally accepted that this is wrong, and that the global / local tensions that all sorts of peoples are facing up to without resorting to jihad terror or anything like it are not the key drivers of Islamic terror, rather Islam is. In other words, it doesn’t take much to pose big and talk as though everybody ought to agree with you – and it doesn’t prove anything, except to people who already agree with all the claims you’re making.
In a bad mood today, David?
No, I’ll pretty flatly disagree. I’ll go dig up cites, but from my own reading of Qutb, I’ll suggest that the Islamist (as opposed to Islamic) movement is really a culture-specific reaction to losing control of their own societies to Western culture. The most benign interpretation of Islamist thought is that they just want to isolate the ummah from the West and get rid of all those pernicious Western memes that keep creeping in, while keeping things like Western medicine.
I’m wide open to cites or arguments that there is another root to it; I can always learn things.
A.L.
David Blue and A.L., your argument puzzles me. I can’t see where A.L.’s original point has to necessarily exclude the nationalism exhibited by other immigrant nations such as Canada or Australia, or even that of the half-American Churchill or his insightful predecessor Kipling.
Oh, I meant to add–Chesterton had a similar take to Lincoln’s.
DMonteith:
You’re employing the same fallacy here that people use to argue that “War is caused by religion.” You’re saying that if X is present then it must be the cause of Y. And since X can be found everywhere in some form, then Y can always be blamed on X.
You seem to admit that you don’t understand what is meant by “internationalism”, so let me give you an example of extreme internationalism.
In 1919 the Communist International (Comintern) was founded, with the goal of uniting the entire world under a seamless communist regime within a single generation – and they were totally serious. You can call this whatever you like, but this is what Lenin, Stalin, and Mao believed in.
Someone once asked Trotsky why, as a Jew, he didn’t speak up for the plight of Russian Jews. Trotsky flew into a rage and shouted, “I am not a Jew, I am an INTERNATIONALIST!”
Lenin is considered the perfect example of an internationalist. He had no feelings for Russia at all, and despised its culture. Unlike some other Bolsheviks, Lenin did not exhibit racist or anti-Semitic feelings. He truly regarded all nations as irrelevant and all people as equal. Yet, next to Stalin, Lenin was the most bloodthirsty of all the Bolsheviks. His answer to every problem was more Cheka and more firing squads.
They didn’t get the whole world, but they raised serious hell. Comintern agents worked with German nationalists against their common foe, the hated Social Democrats, and helped to pave the way for Hitler – Hitler the nationalist, whose idea of a nation began with Germany, then Germany + Austria, then a united Nazi Europe.
This is kind of what I was talking about.
First – the left did not invent internationalism and do not have a monopoly on it. The British fascist leader Oswald Mosley preached a unified Pan-European government based on “scientific” principles. And of course we have our modern Islamists, who likewise want to subordinate or abolish all nations.
Finally, when I said internationalism is prone to extremism, I wasn’t just talking about violence and genocide. Uniting the entire world under a blue-flag bureaucracy that is incompetent to run the world and unable to protect the people who live on it is also extreme.
#63 from Armed Liberal:
No, it is not a matter of a bad mood, and anyway is another day. The point is, we seriously disagree, on patriotism, which is a serious topic.
Finally, when I said internationalism is prone to extremism, I wasn’t just talking about violence and genocide. Uniting the entire world under a blue-flag bureaucracy that is incompetent to run the world and unable to protect the people who live on it is also extreme.
Umm…okay. If you wish to equate risibly implausible fears of UN world domination (oh, the bureaucracy!!)with the actual documented atrocities of extremist nationalism go right ahead. I just don’t think many people will take you very seriously and I don’t intend to either.
You also do yourself no favors when you conflate Communist fantasies of world domination with modern international institutions such as the UN, the EU the WTO etc. By doing so you commit the very fallacy that you claim that I make. You could just as easily be saying “the sky is made out of cobalt…after all, they’re both blue!” Trotsky was referring to the “international” seizure of the means of production by the proletariat and the UN is an “international” diplomatic body. See! They’re both internationalist!!! The big problem with Trotsky and Lenin was Communism, not internationalism. As for Stalin and Mao, I don’t think they gave a rat’s ass about internationalism or even communism for that matter except as means to the end of further consolidating their own power. They did, however, both utilize the invasion of their respective countries by Germany and Japan, and the natural nationalist reactions to those invasions, to consolidate their grip on power.
Which is all just a longer version of my original post: it just doesn’t make sense to fear extreme “internationalism” even a tenth as much as extreme nationalism.
And by the way, just how the hell would the UN “run the world” anyway? And why would it want to? We can’t even run Iraq and I would think that the entire planet would present the UN with more trouble than Iraq has presented us.
#64 from Kirk Parker: “David Blue and A.L., your argument puzzles me.”
Kirk Parker, I wouldn’t know how to explain it beyond what we’ve said. That’s not a put-down or anything, I’m just out of fresh ideas for useful communication in this thread.
Not sure what happened to the third paragraph there. It should read (with missing text italicized):
You also do yourself no favors when you conflate Communist fantasies of world domination with modern international institutions such as the UN, the EU the WTO etc. By doing so you commit the very fallacy that you claim that I make. You could just as easily be saying “the sky is made out of cobalt…after all, they’re both blue!
Trotsky was advocating an “international” seizure of the means of production by the proletariat and the UN is an “international” diplomatic body.
They’re both internationalist!!! The big problem with Trotsky and Lenin was Communism, not internationalism. As for Stalin and Mao, I don’t think they gave a rat’s ass about internationalism or even communism for that matter except as means to the end of further consolidating their own power. They did, however, both utilize the invasion of their respective countries by Germany and Japan, and the natural nationalist reactions to those invasions, to consolidate their grip on power.
When did nationalism become synonymous with ultra-nationalism?