Over at the Corner, Ramesh Ponnuru asks:
Are you maintaining that to be an American patriot you have to believe that the U.S. is superior to all other countries? I loved my mother not because I truly believed that she was in some objective sense “the greatest mother in the world”…although I think I may have gotten her a coffee mug to that effect…but because she was mine. Can’t we love our country the same way?
Well, no, not really. here we step into the question of American Exceptionalism, in which people like me suggest that American patriotism is fundamentally of a different class than all other patriotisms, because (I repeat tiresomely) it is not founded on a place, nor on a heritage, but on a set of ideas, to which any may freely subscribe.
I’ll suggest that there are two components to American patriotism – one much like any other, which involves ‘purple mountains majesty’ and great Americans who contributed to making the place what it is today – and other, wholly unique, which goes to the undeletable, permanent notion that we are none of us subjects, and instead all citizens. Other nations have reached for this, and contributed to our understanding of it. In the future, I trust that others will carry it forward from us.
But today, it is fundamentally ours and it ought to be that set of ideas that we all celebrate on the 4th and that we are all learning from every day.
Looking in from outside, I agree with you, A.L. American exceptionalism is real and demonstrable. That exceptionalism is based on the fact that America is the country of ordinary people, in which elites do not have the last word on important matters. It is documented in the many categories of achievement in which America leads the world, in the fact that an American army sergeant has more decision making power than a general in many other armies, in the development of technologies such as the internet that empower ordinary people, and even in fashions that change with the seasons. As you say, it originates in the ideas of the founding fathers, to which anyone may freely subscribe. I freely do so.
bq. an American army sergeant has more decision making power than a general in many other armies
Related to that, the O-6 (colonel) stationed far above him isn’t inclined to be the guy who hangs onto the only copy of the jet fighter or tank repair manual in order to have a monopoly on that information. To us, that’s just loony. In some parts of the world, it’s how things are expected to be done by anyone with an ounce of sense.
We acknowledge that knowledge is power, but we’re not paranoid about it. At least when we’re living up to our ideals.
American exceptionalism is 150 years old this week. It was defined by Abraham Lincoln, speaking in Chicago 10 July 1858:
bq. We have besides these, men descended by blood from our ancestors—among us, perhaps half our people, who are not descendants at all of these men; they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;†and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that *it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration; and so they are.* That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.
[Layout touched up slightly. –NM]
For me, ‘American Exceptionalism’ doesn’t mean that America is better or the best or any thing of that sort. It’s not an assertion of superiority except in particular ways. Rather, it is the recognition of America’s distinctiveness and uniqueness, both for good and for ill.
America has been and remains a statistical anomoly. It is the salient point in almost any graph. There are other countries which I can claim to be exceptional as nations in various positive ways – Mexico, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, and Israel come to mind – but I’m not sure any of them quite stand out as different in quite the way the USA does.
Sometimes I think that the Left, which most condemns the idea of American Exceptionalism, gets it better than even the right because the Left continually uses American Exceptionalism when it serves their purpose. Noone is quicker than a leftist in pointing out how exceptional America is when they think that the comparison is unfavorable. No one musters statistical proof of American exceptionalism faster than a leftist who wants to make a point about American religious sentiment or American gun violence. In fact, amongst a good portion of the left it is considered a given that Americans are the most stupid, most evil, most greedy etc. people on the planet. They don’t really disagree with the notion of American exceptionalism, they just think it is wholly a negative thing.
Like I said, I don’t think American exceptionalism necessarily makes us better than anyone else except in particular ways. Perhaps in other ways it makes us worse than average. But one thing it certain does do is make us Americans. What enrages me about the left in America is not so much that they entertain pernicious ideas about the mental and moral character of thier all too often unknown neighbors or that they are willing to accept negative sterotypes without question when it suits them, but that thier solution to whatever problems we face (real or imagined) is always to advise us to be more like someone else’s country rather than plotting our own course and finding our own solutions which work with our particular culture and circumstance.
Thier is a certain class of leftist hipster which continually makes evident that they hate America and everything about it that makes us uniquely American, and which further indicates that they would greatly prefer a destroyed America, a humilitated America, an America that had never existed, or an America changed beyond recognition to the America that they have.
I question thier patriotism. In particular, I question thier patriotism because not only are they open in thier hatred for America, but they are open in thier hatred for patriotism. Just as they will only happily claim to believe in and love America if they can redefine what America means and is to suit themselves, they will only happily claim to be patriotic if they can redefine what it means to be patriotic.
Earlier, thier was a thread about how fine the world might have turned out if only in 1775 cooler, less radical, heads might have prevailed and the American colonists and British crown had reached some negotiated settlement. Perhaps it would have. I have a big problem in basing ones argument on might have beens. I have no reason to believe it certainly would have made a better world, and some suspicions that it would have not.
Part of me worries that a wholly undivided Anglo-sphere would have wielded to great and terrible of a power, and would have been even more arrogant in its ascendancy than it proved to be. I think perhaps a wholly undivided Anglo-sphere would have been something like the One Ring of Power, and it would have even in the hands of Gandalf with the very best of motivations proved a terrible tyranny far beyond the worst exagerrations of anti-colonialists and the worst realities of the often sorrid times.
But even more than that possibility, what truly worries me about a world where July 4, 1776 is a day of no special note is that it would be a world without American exceptionalism dragging the world and inspiring the world to be different. In short, I think it would be a world without ‘a city on a hill’. Perhaps England would stand in this role. Perhaps it wouldn’t. But I’m not at all convinced that someone would have had not thier been a nation formed out of a radical notion of individual liberty, nor that such a notion would have been enduring had it not been forged in blood.
And, as a personal note, reading the history of America during those days, I can’t help but see the hand of Providence directing affairs. It is virtually inconcievable that the revolution was not crushed in its infancy, and there were so many moments where it seemed merely hours away from that fate where it not for some strange coincidence which snatched victory from the hands of the British or dropped into the hands of the rebels. In short, as a person of faith, it seems to me that it was His will that it happened as it did, and that is enough for me to not worry over much about what might have been.
AL: people like me suggest that American patriotism is fundamentally of a different class than all other patriotisms, because (I repeat tiresomely) it is not founded on a place, nor on a heritage, but on a set of ideas, to which any may freely subscribe.
No matter how often you repeat that, you won’t make it true. No doubt American patriotism is unique in some ways, since every form of patriotism must have distinctive features. But the particular feature you mention isn’t unique by any means. It’s not hard to think of an ideology to which any may freely subscribe, which forms the basis of a kind of patriotism.
The Irish words “sinn fein” (usually translated as “ourselves alone”) were adopted to describe a set of ideas to which even Englishmen like Erskine Childers could subscribe. That set of ideas formed the basis for Irish patriotism as taught to me in school. (It didn’t take very well; I’m with Samuel Johnson in this matter.)
The French slogan “liberty, equality, fraternity” was adopted to describe a set of ideas to which even Americans like Thomas Paine could subscribe. That set of ideas is the foundation of French patriotism. The French national holday commemorates the fall of the Bastille. The national anthem is a revolutionary hymn. At this point I’m sure some American reader will be moved to retort, without a hint of irony, that the French don’t actually live up to their revolutionary ideals! I look forward to such responses. It’s comments of just that sort that make WoC so entertaining.
There is a far older set of ideas, to which any may freely subscribe. It is often discussed here. It is founded on the notion that there is only one God and Mohammed is His prophet. Islam bound the Arabs together and made them a formidable power for many centuries. I really don’t see how it can be denied that they were motivated by a kind of patriotism, which was not founded on a place, nor on a heritage, but on a set of ideas, to which any may freely subscribe. (Unsubscribing was frequently regarded as a capital offence, but then Childers and Paine were also condemned to death by their adopted brothers-in-arms.)
I repeat (not tiresomely I hope) that I don’t doubt that American patriotism is unique in some ways. But you haven’t identified those ways at all well.
_The French slogan “liberty, equality, fraternity” was adopted to describe a set of ideas to which even Americans like Thomas Paine could subscribe. That set of ideas is the foundation of French patriotism._
True, perhaps, but you miss the point. I ascribe broadly to the French “idea.” I speak French well enough to be mistaken (sometimes) for a native speaker and might even (with some difficulty) become a citizen of France. In no way, however, would I ever be regarded — by the French, and especially the ENAiaque nobility — as _un français pur-laine._
_That’s_ the point: in America, if you “get” the idea embodied in this land of unbelievable opportunity you’re one of us.
Far more Irish (numerically) “got” it about America than were left in Ireland to believe _sinn fein._ They did not go to Canada, or Australia … they came to America. Now everybody’s Irish on the 17th of March.
In case you missed it, a lot of Mexicans have been “getting it” about America for generations. Roughly half the ‘hispanics’ in America are unilingual … English … and quite noticeably everybody’s beginning to be Mexican on the 5th of May.
Over the long term, that is America’s greatest strength. Our people come from absolutely everywhere, drawn by the power of a political idea.
American exceptionalism came into existence when the people, not the founding fathers, made a principled stand by refusing to accept the constitution and demanded that they be presented with a Bill of Rights.
That act, more than any other, made America exceptional and nothing that we have done since has superceded it. I have lived in 5 countries and nothing is more astonishing to others than this core belief in every American that they have rights that they will defend even against their own government.
Simply put, as Americans, we are exceptional because we believe we have rights that cannot be abrogated.
It defies belief that every American cannot simply state their ten basic rights and that these rights are not recited at every public and family gathering on the 4th. They are the Ten Commandments of American Exceptionalism.
For what it is worth, I also believe that anyone spouting Patriotism without a knowledge of and profound belief in the Bill of Rights is essentially embracing jingoism, a very pernicious evil.
Bart Hall: in America, if you “get” the idea embodied in this land of unbelievable opportunity you’re one of us.
It’s funny that you should use that particular phrase. When I went to France expressly to study French, one of the locals said to me: “So you want to become one of us!” I was a bit taken aback, since I had no such ambition. Still, it was obvious that the speaker meant to imply that if you care enough about France to learn the language then you can become part of the nation if that’s your desire. Of course he wasn’t one of “the ENAiaque nobility”, but then the Enarchs aren’t France, any more than the country club set are America. If a man with a name like Sarkozy can become President of France, there’s no reason that I can see why a Monsieur Hall should find himself excluded. Also, you are quite mistaken if you think the Irish didn’t go to Canada or Australia. We went practically everywhere. Some even went to France. You may have heard tell of a brandy called Hennessy and I’m sure you’ve heard of Samuel Beckett – “a great French writer” as my French teacher explained; I couldn’t bring myself to set her straight about that.
But that’s by-the-way. When you say that you ascribe broadly to the French “idea”, you reinforce the point I am making in response to AL: French patriotism is founded on “a set of ideas, to which any may freely subscribe” so he is quite wrong to suppose that America is unique in that respect. Granted, the French idea is different from the American idea and I won’t argue against (or for) the claim that the American idea is intrinsically superior, or that it is better implemented. Even if that is granted it doesn’t alter the fact that AL’s claim is just plain wrong. Patriotism frequently has an ideological component which is not bound to any particular place or heritage.
Kevin, I lived in France, was married to a French woman, speak pretty fluent French, and it was perfectly clear to me that if I lived there for 40 years, I’d never be French.
A.L.
I believe you, AL. But that’s a statement about you, not about France, or patriotism, or the claim you made in your post, which you aren’t even trying to defend.
Um, Kevin I don’t see any arguments against the claims I made in the post that I need to seriously defend it against…am I missing something?
You suggest that the ideology of the Republic defines membership in the French community, and I’ll happily state that if you believe that, you’re ignorant of French life and culture. To be french is far more complex than simply to accept the precepts of the Republic (precepts which Jefferson helped craft, BTW), and I’d suggest talking to more French people about that. As an empirical measure, I’d suggest looking at the experience of the Arab immigrants to France – as opposed to the Arab immigrants to the United States, and I’d suggest that you look at the commentators who have noted that Obama couldn’t get elected to high office in France because of his ethnicity. that’s partly simple racism – his skin color matters more there than here – and also because he will forever be an etranger.
A.L.
I’ve been off the grid a little while, but been paying attention to the patriotism thing. slate had an article on the political emphasis of “patriotism”:http://www.slate.com/id/2194695/entry/2194697/ that is also worth reading. Don’t wholly agree, but good nonetheless.
For me, America is great for 3 reasons:
1)dedication to liberty & equal representation
2)entrepreneurial spirit
3)emphasis on justice over tyranny
As Tocqueville said “America is great because it is good. IF America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
To make a long post short, I see us struggling in each of these ways. We are still good, we are still great, but we are conflicted between what we say as a nation and how we act as a nation. Between what we should do, and what we emphasize to our leaders, our children and our families. Being a patriot to me means that you dedicate yourself back to your society, by being involved in politics, the local community, the military (and/or others) and emphasizing the American struggle for greatness.
On a last note, I have to say, I wish more Americans has as much love for their country as they do their sports teams. How many people (do you know) read the constitution the same way we read our fantasy teams? How many people follow judicial arguments the same way they follow minor changes in NFL protocol? How many people seek out their representation and demand understanding and change the same way we demand pictures of the brangelina twins?
Not enough of us do that. If we can’t do this as an nation, we will cease to be great.
Celebrim:
These hateful “leftist hipsters”, do you know any of them personally? Is this a self-selected description of theirs, or is it your choice of term? I’ve known, and been, a self-described leftist (small ‘l’) ; I know of nobody who straight-facedly describes themselves as a “hipster”, any more than, as nearly as I can tell, nobody seriously described themselves as “beatniks”.
Are they your close friends, with whom you’ve talked poltical philosophy, at length? Otherwise, how do you know what they think, on a day-to-day basis about this stuff, which is mostly not the subject of light chit-chat?
BTW, most of the people I’ve known who qualify as (what I think you may mean by) “_hipsters_” tend to have a extraordinarily complicated relationship with America, regarding it as wonderful and “awful”, in the literal sense. If you think these folks uniformly “hate America”, you not ohnly aren’t talking to ’em, you haven’t really seriously read the ob
AL: am I missing something? You suggest that the ideology of the Republic defines membership in the French community, and I’ll happily state that if you believe that, you’re ignorant of French life and culture.
Yes, you’re missing something – the thing you always seem to miss: that you should read what the other guy writes before you respond. I wrote: “I’m sure some American reader will be moved to retort, without a hint of irony, that the French don’t actually live up to their revolutionary ideals!” So, far from saying that in practice the ideology of the Republic defines membership in the French community (as the French notion of patriotism requires) I explicitly noted that the French don’t live up to their patriotic ideals. The reference to irony was there because it is my perception – which you are welcome to attribute to my ignorance – that Americans also fall short of their ideals now and then. (As do the Brits, the Irish and everyone else.)
Whoops; hit the send before I meant to…
. . . seriously read the obvious “ur-texts” of American “hipsterism”, which would have to be, I’d say, Ginsberg, “Kerouac”:http://emptybottle.org/glass/2007/01/i-think-of-dean-moriarty.php/, Snyder, and Kesey, and maybe Ferlinghetti.
…and to bring my own view of the culture wars down, is it possible that these hypothetical “hipsters” don’t “hate patriotism” but instead hate, and are offended by someone else’s _exclusive and public claim_ to the use of the term, are offended by the idea that whether one wears a flag pin is a useful measure of anything like patriotism, whether saying the Pledge in public is inherently more “patriotic” than understanding why nobody in America can or should be compelled to say it, or whether an artistic or aesthetic choice is ever a meaningful measure or expression of patriotism? (…and i’ve got a plausible argument, if you wan to hear it, that anyone who claims that their affection for modern “big hat” flag-waving country-pop is more inherently patriotic than a deep and encyclopedic knowledge of the music of Louis Armstrong has a big ol’ Stetson full of horse exhaust)….
anyhow, enough ranting for a Monday morning…
r gould-saltman
Kevin the issue has nothing to do with whether the French live up – in practice – to the ideals of the Republic. the issue has to do with whether the French identify themselves as French primarily by virtue of their attachment to these ideals, or because of other traits.
Now, conceptually, one could argue that their failure to identify others as French who accept the Republican ideals is a failure to live up the Republic-driven ideals – but we’re heading down a rabbit hole there.
There’s a simple and empirical discussion we can have, which goes to assimilation – why do the French do such a bad job and the Americans such a good one? I have a hypothesis – that it’s because you become American by accepting our ideals, and that doesn’t work in France. What’s your counter hypothesis?
A.L.
R Gould-Saltman: I try hard to not write about things that I have no experience or knowledge of, so yes, I’ve known a few of them. As for the term ‘hipster’, I certainly didn’t mean to invoke a particular era of ‘cool’ like, for example, the beats or the hippies. Rather, I was – for lack of more precise terminology – applying the term to that set of leftists which is usually fairly young and which appears to hold opinions primarily because they are fashionable. This is the group which appears to hold radical leftist ideas primarily because Hollywood or ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine holds such opinions, who wear Che T-shirts, read Chomsky, say that they admire Derrida, adore Michael Moore, and seem to find nothing more truthful than Stephen Colbert. With that tends to come a bundle of opinions and reflexes that are in my experience practically inseparable. One tends to imply the rest with very little individual variation.
A lightweight pop-culture reference to this belief system would be ‘Rory Gilmore’, as witnessed by the sort of persons she admires and the sort of posters that rotate on her walls.
College campuses are absolutely littered with this sort.
I never light chit chat about anything. Blame it on my near Aspberger’s syndrome social skills (or lack thereof) or on some other quirk of my personality, but I don’t do small talk. I don’t claim to have alot of friends amongst representatives of this group, because I find them unbearably pretentious and couldn’t fit into the group even if I tried because I don’t use and respond to the buzzwords appropriately to meet the requirements of membership, but I have had a good many deep conversations with representative members from which I form the sterotype. And as with many cliques, members try to live up to the sterotype in some fashion so as to gain acceptance, its not a particularly innaccurate sterotype as sterotypes go.
Which is odd because if you asked the average resident of Mexico City what the relevance of that day was they’d shrug. Then again in my experience most Americans mistakenly believe it’s to celebrate Mexico’s independence.
I don’t see how we are all beginning to be Mexican by celebrating what is essentially an American holiday.
Davebo, I think the same has historically been true of St. Patrick’s Day. Am I right Kevin Donoghue?
BTW/ I live in a neighborhood that is full of flags; mainly the US flag, but also the flags of Ireland, Mexico, Germany and Italy, particularly on specific holidays. When I discovered I had a Manx ancestor and started looking into the “Manx flag,”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_Isle_of_Man I discovered that the strange flag on the corner was “Sicilian.”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Sicily
Which is a long way of suggesting that to be American is to like flags.
“Which is a long way of suggesting that to be American is to like flags.”
Heh.
Also, to be American is to like to have non-threatening Holidays that fit in otherwise blank stretches of the community calendar, so as to have a ready made theme for parties, sales, and community festivals occuring in that period.
Plus, a ready made excuse to drink beer is also nice.
AL: There’s a simple and empirical discussion we can have, which goes to assimilation….
Your post isn’t about assimilation. It’s about patriotism. One can be a patriot yet not be accepted as “one of us” by society. Maybe Americans think of Schwarzenegger as an American even though he was born in Austria. Maybe the French think of Sarkozy as a Hungarian even though he was born in France. For the sake of argument let’s suppose that’s the case. It doesn’t stop Sarkozy from being patriotic about France. Let’s take the most extreme example I can think of, so as to make the distinction quite clear. Dreyfus was a good French patriot all his life. He was not assimilated into French society until rather late in the day; for some values of “society” he was never assimilated at all.
Now, your claim is that the American brand of patriotism is unique, because “it is not founded on a place, nor on a heritage, but on a set of ideas, to which any may freely subscribe.”
That’s an empirical claim and my contention is that it is false. I gave three counter-examples above (Ireland since 1916, France since 1789 and medieval Arabia) and I needn’t have stopped there. The English brand of patriotism is saturated with the notion that the sceptred isle is worth defending not just for its own sake but because it represents certain ideals and traditions, which would have been worth preserving even if the Armada or the Luftwaffe had prevailed.
PD Shaw,
St Patrick’s Day is the Irish national holday, but if what you mean is that it’s celebrated more enthusiastically in America than it is over here you may well be right. And with that I’m off to the pub (not that I regard 7/7 as a day to celebrate; quite the contrary). I’ll check back tomorrow to see if I’ve convinced AL. 😉
Uh, Kevin – how would you measure patriotism? What measures could we both agree on as non-anecdotal?
I’ll suggest that assimilation – or different measures of assimilation – are a good proxy. If you’ve got a better one, I’d love to hear about it.
A.L.
_”Uh, Kevin – how would you measure patriotism?”_
Lapel pins per second.
Full-auto or semi-auto?
A.L.
#19 from Davebo at 8:16 pm on Jul 07, 2008
Agreed
I have lived in Mexico for years and the celbration of Cinco de Mayo in the States is about as relavant to patriotism as Jimmmy Buffet singing the Praises of Margaritaville. It is little more than another excuse for a bunch of Gringos to get drunk
_”Full-auto or semi-auto?”_
If can fit under a dozen lapel pins in your pocket without reloading- that is reasonable. But any more and you are in John Birch territory.
Most Mexicans have no idea what May 5 is about. It is not their Independence Day. As for patriotism I believe the assertion about patriotism and one’s mother is that you love your mother despite her flaws.
On the Left we see a hatred of America paraded on a daily basis because it doesn’t measure up to their utopian ideals. No matter that the US better embodies the ideas and goals the Founding Fathers hoped for better than any other nation. Most people recognize the flaws but respect the men who sacrficied and struggle to gain these goals. The Left does not.
Doubt it? Look at Code Pinks antics or the attitudes in places like Amherst, San Francisco or New York and remind me that the Left are patriots.
AL: how would you measure patriotism?
You’ve got yourself into a right tangle now. Your contention is that “American patriotism is fundamentally of a different class than all other patriotisms” and now you are asking me how to measure it against things which, you say, aren’t even in the same class?
At this point it’s quite unclear to me what you are trying to say. The statement that A and B belong to fundamentally different classes, but we can measure them on a common scale, makes about as much sense as the claim that colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
Of course if I reject your notion that patriotisms come in distinct classes, with America having one all to itself, then it’s possible to at least attempt an answer to your question. If soldiers in one unit fight to the last round, while those in another run like hell as soon as they make contact with the enemy, then it makes sense to say that one unit is more patriotic than the other. It may not be true – they may be better trained, to mention just one of many possible confounding variables. I’ve no good suggestions as to how the matter might be studied. But I will say that your suggestion that we use assimiliation as a proxy makes no sense at all. Very few people fought for Britain as courageously as the Gurkhas, who were certainly not assimilated into British society.
However that’s a bit beside the point, since the question you ask makes nonsense of the proposition you are trying (after a fashion) to defend.
“American patriotism is fundamentally of a different class than all other patriotisms, because (I repeat tiresomely) it is not founded on a place, nor on a heritage, but on a set of ideas, to which any may freely subscribe.”
Could you explain this a bit further. Are you claiming exclusive American ownership of the “wholly unique, which goes to the undeletable, permanent notion that we are none of us subjects, and instead all citizens.”
Leaving aside the claims of other countries to have had some role in developing this idea (as you briefly acknowledge) who is “we” here?
Are you saying that everyone in the world is or ought to be an American patriot, even though the vast majority (including millions resident in the US) are ineligible for US citizenship, even if they subscribe unreservedly to the values embodied by the US.
Or does “we” refer only to American citizens? If so, what becomes of the claim that “any may freely subscribe”
A.L. may have overstated the case, but I think his core claim is true. We owe to the Founding Fathers a patriotism that is not borne of large-scale ethnic tribalism, and even if other countries catch up, this idea was as I understand it a first. I’ve read that the Northwest Ordinance under the Articles of Confederation was that first government document that anticipated addition of new territories with rights equal to those existing (in contrast to colonies). Similarly, while the path of immigrants in the United States has often been rocky, depending on domestic political conditions, it was the first country that I know of to expect and depend on regular immigration and naturalization as a form of growth. Just as our British cousins will always be able to point to their legal system (the basis of ours) with pride, we have “the consent of the governed” as a permanent marker.
It is, of course, possible to exaggerate how special these ideas are in the modern world. I admired much about the late Rep. Tom Lantos, but I saw after he claimed that “Only in America” could a penniless Holocaust survivor immigrant such as himself rise to an important political position that stories much like his had taken place in Canada, Australia (or was it in NZ?), and probably elsewhere.
Speaking now as a leftist hipster, what we oppose is not this form of American Exceptionalism, but the Bush perversion I call American Antinomianism. You know, the Geneva Conventions and the ICAT apply to them and not to us; Milosevic to the Hague, but not John Yoo, etc. Even to suggest application of the Goose/Gander Principle has become unpatriotic.
“Milosevic to the Hague, but not John Yoo”
That you would draw the comparison is precisely why I continue to support what you call American Antinomianism.
The fundamental tenent of which is, “Because we are Americans, we won’t get a fair shake from the world.” The secondary tenent tends to be, “If there is a problem, we’ll take care of it.”
It’s hardly an idea new to Bush, but I think that you would conclude that it is says a lot more about you than Bush.
The US is not a party to the ICC and there are very good reasons to suspect that the court is primarily used as a political tool.
I don’t argue that the goose is good for the gander. I don’t expect anyone to get a fair trial at the ICC (or the ICJ for that matter). It’s not good for the goose either.
Ah, Celebrim, I see the problem. You apparently have almost no contact with real leftists, or real hipsters; you have lots of contact with poseurs.
Posing’s a frequent behavior by adolescents, whether “anarchists” and”libertarians” “jocks” and “hippies” “rockers” and “mods”, or “greasers” and “surfers”; most of them grow out of it soon.
Someone who gets their “radical leftist ideas” from _Rolling Stone_ (who the hell READS Rolling Stone any more?) or “Hollywood”, likely _has_ no real radical leftist ideas, any more than someone whose political discourse consists of calls into Limbaugh and Leikis to make jokes about Hillary Clinton’s appearance, and who treasures, as his most profound poltical statement, his 1980’s “Ayatollah is an Ass-a-Hole-Ah” t-shirt, has any apparent real rightist ideas.
Part of what I suspect irks you, from the right, and irks me, from the left, is the substitution of political and culture-wars *branding* for serious political and cultural *ideas*.
While the e-marketplace of ideas reveals to me that there are folks out there struggling against the tendency, the tendency, (at the risk of sounding like a Situationist) is a defining characteristic of late period capitalism; it’s a comodification of dissent, which followed hard upon the commodification of transgression. (i.e., WS Burroughs as an icon to sell sneakers…) Madison Avenue (to use another of those location metaphors) is very good at selling stuff.
You’re sold on your ability to discern someone’s “patriotism” from what poster art they like and whether they’ve read Noam Chomsky. I’ve read Chomsky and Marx (and I don’t mean just the “Manifesto”, I mean all three volumes of Capital and the Philosophic Manuscripts); I’ve also read Augustine, Mill, Spooner, Benjamin Tucker and Hayek. Make of that what you will.
r Gould-Saltman, rootless cosmopolitan, sometime Buddhist bourgeois bohemian, and former leftist hipster. If I leave my beard on, buy a beret and shades, and move over from congas to bongos, can I be a beatnik?
“Part of what I suspect irks you, from the right, and irks me, from the left, is the substitution of political and culture-wars branding for serious political and cultural ideas.”
Absolutely.
“You’re sold on your ability to discern someone’s “patriotism” from what poster art they like and whether they’ve read Noam Chomsky.”
Not at all. I’m sold on my ability to define a certain class which brands itself in a certain way as non-patriotic because they openly espouse antipathy for all things patriotic and all things American. I’m sold that certain sorts of branding corresponds to a certain sort of product because I’ve observed alot of people setting out to brand themselves. I fully agree with you that many of these so called leftists (and thier corresponding set on the right) are almost empty of ideas, and I’m even willing to concede that on the whole they don’t hold these ideas as strongly as their passionate behavior might lead you to think. As an example, alot of them think that they are pacifists, but none of them that I’ve question thought that thier pacifist ideology was called into question by thier support of decidedly non-pacifistic law enforcement agencies. I’m inclined to think about the same of thier commitment to ‘social justice’, ‘the environment’, or whatever else is fashionable at the moment.
Most of the time, it seems like an attempt to get laid, and mostly it seems to pass after they do. (I suppose you could argue that becoming a Young Republican is an equivalent attempt to get laid, but it seems unlikely.)
However, a few of these leftist poseurs, as you would have them, never do grow up and become the sort of middle aged women that sets up tables on University Campuses and covers it with books about Fidel Castro and similar communist literature, creates paper mache masks and dances in the street while exposing her breasts because somehow doing so proves to herself that she’s a ‘feminist’. And so forth, and so on. See littlegreenfootballs for photographic record, but you hardly need to go to Berkeley to encounter this sort of thing.
I’ve read Noam Chomsky. I think he’s provided invaluable insights into the nature of language which are among other things extremely important to computer science. Whether you’ve read Chomsky or Marx has little to do with it. It’s how you respond to and relate to what you’ve read that is important. Reading Marx doesn’t make you a Marxist any more than reading the Gospel of St. John makes you a Christian.
Of course, this rule doesn’t apply to Iraqis, Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, or in theory anyone else. Basically we adopt as our national morality the personal principles of Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and those members of the Catholic Church who took care of pedophile priests so well.
As Lily Tomlin used to say, How Convenient.
Right now in the world American Exceptionalism is being drowned by American Antinomianism, and if you lived anywhere besides the USA, you would probably see that as the right call.
bq. As Lily Tomlin used to say, How Convenient.
I think that was Dana Carvey. Carry on.
Well, no, not really. here we step into the question of American Exceptionalism, in which people like me suggest that American patriotism is fundamentally of a different class than all other patriotisms, because (I repeat tiresomely) it is not founded on a place, nor on a heritage, but on a set of ideas, to which any may freely subscribe.
Again – like the USSR.
I believe Nortius is correct.
Senior moment.
Ponnuru is right: you can love your country like you love your mother (out of mere affection). Being an American patriot does not require that you embrace the notion of American Exceptionalism.
Of course, you can, and be a patriot for this reason. I’m sure some do. I wonder whether some of these folks aren’t post-hoc rationalizers (“I love my coutry — let me find a reason why you should, too”), but for the most part I think that American patriots can also be of this ilk, just not exclusively so.
And then there is the love that comes from an immigrant to an adopted homeland, in which the affection is probably of neither type; it might be an affection toward a welcoming society that gave him/her an opportunity. THat’s a different kind of patriotism.
I’m sure there are ohers.
But why can’t some other peoples elsewhere make similar arguments for their countries? And how much of this question is even answerable without stepping into the shoes of, say, the French, or the Chinese, or the Icelanders?
[Commenter name corrected. –NM]
Hmmm. Milosevich was the head of state, the person who actually ordered and / or approved war crimes. Yoo was someone who wrote legal opinions. AJL thinks these are criminally equivalent acts, and is upset that Yoo wasn’t sent to the Hague for, effectively, thought crimes (i.e., expressing the wrong opinion). I think I will have to take the other side on that.
P.S. AJL also gets what he calls the “antinomianism” argument completely wrong. The actual claim is that none of those things (especially the Geneva Conventions) apply, de facto, to anyone other than the USA, so why should we be the only ones to obey them? Clearly compliance of the USA is a major political topic in the USA. Can AJL provide an example of any other nation where its compliance (and not the USA’s) is a major political issue?
I don’t know if I agree, but it doesn’t help to misrepresent that position.
AOG: I’m less bothered by that aspect of AJL’s argument than I am by the fact that the legal constraints he think we should abide by under the auspices of international authority who themselves claim the same immunity from prosecution (real and as a practical matter) whenever they engage in military operations.
Or in otherwords, what do you think is the liklihood that UN ‘peace keeping’ troops will be brought up on war crime charges for the various war crimes that they have committed?
Surely if international justice has authority over anything, it ought to be over the operations conducted under the auspices of international justice. But, in fact, it is those very operations which are subject to the least oversight and endowed with the highest levels of immunity.
So no, I’m not going to get very exercised by our ‘antinomianism’, given the antinomianism of the ICJ, UN and ICC.
Like I said, I don’t think its good for the goose either. And likewise, we are far more likely to wrestle with questions of our own criminal conduct and prosecute same than the UN or any other international authority is likely to wrestle with its own.
I will, again, shamelessly tout the works of S.M. Lipset, especially the following three books:
American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword
The First New Nation
and
Continental Divide
but you can probably read almost anything by Lipset and it’ll help you “get it.” That includes such particularistic works as Jews and the New American Scene which he wrote with Earl Raab.
And I’d also venture to say that if you don’t know of this literature you’re not really qualified to comment on the topic. (And I mean you, Chris.) There isn’t another author (including his frequent coauthor, Ladd) who so effectively brings together all of the threads of American Exceptionalism.
Given the parameters laid out extensively and convincingly in nearly all the American Exceptionalism literature from Tocqueville through Louis Hartz and Friedrich Engels to Martin Lipset and Larry Diamond, name one. Just one.
Demosophist:
I disagree with your argument from authority; all you have done is point to books, say “Read these books, and they are correct,” and end it there. This is not an argument.
In any event, I will admit in the spirit of candor and honesty — and at the risk of undermining the first sentence of this post — that I have not read the specific books you mentioned. I have read Tocqueville and Hartz, though. Let me pick on Hartz for a second (for those not in the know, the relevant book is _The Liberal Tradition in America_).
If you imagine theories of the founding the U.S. as a set of circles in a venn diagram, _The Liberal Tradition_ would probably overlap slightly with Gordon Wood’s _The Creation of the American Republic_ and not at all with Charles Beards’ _An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States_. These three books, it seems to me, epitomize very different views of the founding and, thus, of the meaning of American Democracy.
No doubt, if you accept Hartz’ view — which supplanted Beards’ notion for a time among some historians, until Wood (working from Bailyn’s _The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution_) pretty much supplanted both of them (I’ll return to this) — then you are left with a very persuasive account of why, due to its unique founding (no feudalism, Enlightment traditions), the U.S. polity is one defined by a liberal consensus (liberal in the sense of classical liberalism) and agreement about the essentials of the nature of government, man, and the relationship between the two. (The country’s polity is, if I recall, a “national accpetance of the Lockean creed” in which we have never had to negotiate on liberalism’s terms; we were born, Athena-like, from the head of Locke’s Social Contract.)
I will grant that if you take _this_ view and accept Hartz’s account, then I would be hard pressed to point you to another country that defines its country in these sorts of political terms.
I have two responses to this: (1) I’m not sure Hartz is right, and (2) I’m not sure whether Hartz is right or not is ultimately relevant to this discussion.
On point (1), the problem with Hartz’s view is that , as one critic put it, it was “Locke et praetera nihil” (Locke and nothing else). But with the publication of the _Origins_ and the _Creation_ (and, to a lesser extent, Pocock’s _The Machiavellian Moment_), the doctrine became (same critic) “omnia praeter Lockem” (everything except Locke). Not to get into it in too detailed a fashion (I’m a lawyer, not an historian), the bottom line is that Hartz’s easy thesis of liberalism at the creation proceeding uninterrupted gave way to a more complex view in which liberalism really was one idea, or set of ideas, in a mix of any others, and thus the American polity would constently be negotiating the terms of its order.
If that’s true, then the idea of “Exceptionalism” whithers away; our polity is no longer one that began fully-formed as accepting the classical liberal tradition, but was a policy that, from the outset and continuously, was debating different ideas of just government and the relationship between government and man.
If that’s true, what claim do we really have to “Exceptionalism”? Since I have not read Lipset, if he answers this question, please enlighten me.
In any event, I don’t think it matters (point (2)). Our pointing to “Exceptionalism” is just another way of saying “Other countries think they’re special; but we _really really are!__ We can point to our political tradition (whether we accept Hartz’s thesis or not); other countries might not point to their political traditions (France might) but to some other aspect of their greatness that sets them apart; their age and culture and contributions to Western civilization (China, Italy, England, etc.), their place in a certain religious world view (Saudi Arabia, perhaps, or Israel), etc. It seems to me that by saying the U.S. is unique because of its political tradition and no other country can claim that is analogous to saying that a religion is truly superior because of its particular theological tradition. It’s theological traditions might be truly unique, but that certainly does not persuade one that it is therefore the better religion.
#37
Couldn’t agree with you more. But you’re never win over the code pink crowd or the aging hippies. They really hate America and the concepts it stands for. Therefore America as a unique place can never be acknowledged.
What I find laughable is someone equating Canada with the US or praising that old fascist Tom Lantos who is best remembered for urging people to do the honorable thing by commiting suicide rather bring disrepute on the dhimmierats.
Chris H – I don’t take any of this as arguing from authority – let’s be real about what this is – a (hopefully) engaging bar conversation between a bunch of interesting and smart people.
The references I toss in (when I’m not being snarky) are a kind of shorthand for an idea much bigger than I’m going to make in the context of a blog comment, or even a blog post.
While I wholly aspire to people taking the conversation seriously, I’d equally hope that none of us take ourselves too seriously…
Will respond substantively when I have a little more time.
A.L.
AL:
The nice thing about writing down comments (as opposed to sounding them out over a few beers) is that you have more time to think about them. If it turns out that we’re spending too much time talking past each other, well, there are other ways to pass the time, and no hard feelings.
People like Thomas Jackson remind me of MAD Magazine’s definition of a superpatriot: He loves his country; he just hates most of the people in it.
Chris H,
That blog of yours has got off to an excellent start. I hope you will keep it up.
I think you’ve shone the spotlight on the real weakness in AL’s argument. Meanwhile John Holbo has done the same for Jonah Goldberg.
Kevin – and I’ll suggest that both miss the point by light-years…if I don’t get some time to respond today, I’ll have time on the plane tomorrow…
A.L.