In my ill-tempered post responding to Matthew Yglesias, I made the statement that
…I think they opposed the war because they believe they can have the benefits of modern liberal society without getting their hands dirty. They value moral purity and self-satisfaction above everything else – with the possible exception of creature comfort.
Two people recently wrote things that – to me – perfectly expressed this issue.Over at Crooked Timber, Daniel Davies has a post up about Remembrance Day:
On the 85th Armistice day, I remember with honour the memory of:
* Military casualties of the First World War
* Military casualties of the Second World War
* Casualties of conscripted labour in the Second World War (such as the “Bevin Boys” conscripted to work in coal mines in the UK, who had a casualty rate higher than most active service units)
* Casualties of the Second World War among the fire service, ARP, ambulance service and similar, many of whom were conscientious objectors to the war itself
* Military casualties of the Falklands WarIn their own ways, all of these people gave their lives in protecting the lives and liberty of Britons, for which we owe them the most profound thanks.
I also remember with the deepest sympathy and pity the men and women of our armed forces who gave their lives in the other military operations which the United Kingdom has carried out in the last century. They died for the most part in the service of dishonourable missions which were forced on them by governments which we elected, so we bear them an equally heavy debt, though much less glorious and more shameful.
This is the nearest I can come to a pacifist’s response to this day; I long since gave up wearing a white poppy in remembrance of the conscientious objectors in my own family, simply because it caused so much offence. I wholeheartedly apologise for any offence caused by this statement, without withdrawing any of it.
And then a comment on Rob Lyman’s great post here on “Tribal Patriotism”, poster ‘Anonymous Coward 8’ wrote this:
…
This prompts a question: If I vote against someone who wins, am I blameless?I voted against Clinton and I voted against Bush, and I think the war in Iraq weakens us with respect to terrorists (more cause for terrorists to attack the US, while wasting our strength disarming the disarmed). This administration seems uninterested in my opinion, or in the opinions of anyone outside of a very small circle, excluding the CIA, state department, hawkish bloggers, and conservative members of the military, legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government. If they want me to accept blame or responsibility for their actions, they’ll have to sell it a lot harder than as ‘patriotism’. Attacking Iraq seems like an act for the sake of action, or a diversion from the retribution against Al Qaida. It isn’t enough to be gifting freedom to the unfree while bartering away our bill of rights in the name of homeland security.
If you want me to share blame, you’ll have to share the planning and answer criticism. If not, it is your responsibility.
I think these two quotes perfectly embody one of the defects I see in liberalism today; the notion that one can, personally, have clean hands despite the acts of one’s people. You get to that position, I think, because you have a fundamentally cosmopolitan viewpoint – you are an individual whose connections are equally to all other individuals, and the connection you have to other Americans (or Britons) is really no stronger or less strong. The connection to the nation is therefore arbitrary and most of all, chosen, rather than accepted.
Schaar explicitly rejected this notion when he talked about patriotism:
“To be a patriot is to have a patrimony; or, perhaps more accurately, the patriot is one who is grateful for a legacy and recognizes that the legacy makes him a debtor. There is a whole way of being in the world, captured best by the word reverence, which defines life by its debts; one is what one owes, what one acknowledges as a rightful debt or obligation. The patriot moves within that mentality.”
And I do too.
I wrote a long time ago that
Part of political adulthood is the maturity to realize that we are none of us innocents. The clothes we wear, money we have, jobs we go to are a result of a long, bloody and messy history.I see my job as a liberal as making the future less bloody than the past.
But I accept the blood on my hands. I can’t enjoy the freedom and wealth of this society and somehow claim to be innocent. I don’t get to lecture people from a position of moral purity. No one spending U.S. dollars, or speaking with the freedom protected by U.S. laws gets to.
Both Davies and AC8 seem to think that they can.
They can’t. You don’t get to enjoy the material and political benefits without bearing the costs, and so somehow claim that one can be born into privilege and enjoy it without taking on its obligations is offensive.
And they shouldn’t if they want progressivism to succeed. It is exactly that position of obnoxious (and demonstrably false) moral superiority that violates Schaar’s (and my) prescription for an effective progressive movement. Remember?
“Finally, if political education is to effective it must grow from a spirit of humility on the part of the teachers, and they must overcome the tendencies toward self-righteousness and self-pity which set the tone of youth and student politics in the 1960’s. The teachers must acknowledge common origins and common burdens with the taught, stressing connection and membership, rather than distance and superiority. Only from these roots can trust and hopeful common action grow.”
Listen to those words, folks, because we on the left haven’t shown those things, and we’re getting our heads handed to us as a consequence.
Now we know why the Founders hated partisanship: from there it’s a small journey to treating your opponent as the Other. I don’t consider people on the other side of the spectrum to be the Other; but I’m starting to get the feeling that too many of them think that way of me.
Watch.
Your first quote from crooked timber doesn’t seem to support your case very well.
How does owing them an equal debt translate into claiming clean hands despite the action of ones people? Isn’t he actually saying his hands are dirty – that they are all the more dirty because the lives lost did not, in his opinion, serve his country?
He acknowledges the debt while believing the reason for payment was flawed.
Have I misunderstood your point?
Surely you don’t mean that one must agree with all the decisions of his government. Or that disagreeing with one’s government is the problem with liberalism today.
—
KevinG
KevinG speaks for me. Bad causes are not sanctified by loss of life, and if Crooked Timber feels this way about the pro-colonial British wars, or the occupation of Northern Ireland, I don’t see that as shirking responsibility.
To illustrate, what is the proper attitude towards veterans of the Wehrmacht, Japanese Imperial Army, or even Iraqi Republican Guards on their countries’ Veterans’ Days? I’m not being flip. You can’t deny that many fine young men and women died for evil causes. Does it matter that their governments were not formally democratic? Their wars were popular at first, so much so that they would have won a fair vote. Are bad countries prohibited from holding memorial days? What was the right thing to say at Bitburg?
Anonymous8 misstates the case: voting against Bush and protesting against his policies does not absolve an American of responsibility. The Israeli peace movement, with no shortage of war heroes, understands this well. But I repeat, bad causes are not sanctified by loss of life.
I think Daniel’s words are clear; He owes a debt to the individual persons who sacrificed, which is profoundly different from owing a debt to the society on whose behalf they sacrificed.
My point is that he – as a free citizen of the West – fully participates in the burden even the unjust wars place on him (and me). He is not superior to the young men who fought those wars, but his tone certainly suggests that he feels he is, which is amplified by the distinction between the “honour” he feels for some and “sympathy and pity” he feels for others.
There should be no prohibition on remembrance for those who fought – even for evil causes. In fact, I’d argue that we should especially focus on remembering them, and the causes they fought for – to make sure that we don’t make the same mistakes again.
A.L.
Re: the Crooked Timber post. The thing AL is objecting to is that some casualties are remembered with honour and others not. Those who died in the service of their country, on missions ordered by a duly elected and constitutional government, should be remembered with honour. Period.
To remember military casualties with pity and sympathy… just who the hell does this guy think he is?
Now, if he remembered ALL casualties with honour, AND said that he resolved as a citizen to assume his full responsibilities to ensure that others in future would not be asked to make such sacrifices for bad causes…. Then he’d be talking like a citizen, and not like, well, someone who treated moral purity and self-satisfaction as overriding values.
There should be no prohibition on remembrance for those who fought – even for evil causes. In fact, I’d argue that we should especially focus on remembering them, and the causes they fought for – to make sure that we don’t make the same mistakes again.
Please don’t misinterpret this, but that sounds uncomfortably close to the same type of logic that Reagan used to visit Bitburg. Just a thought.
Rob Lyman clarified his post a bit to distinguish blame and responsibility:
This isn’t about apportioning blame, it’s about taking responsibility. I was a tad unclear on that,
sorry.
I did vote for Bush, but that doesn’t mean I want someone to yell at me about steel tariffs. Nor do I
want foreigners to corner me and lecture me on Israel policy (which has actually happened, and
boy is it annoying). That’s “blame,” and it’s absurd to pin it on any one person (other than Bush, of
course, at whose desk the buck must necessarily stop).
Rob’s post looked like those who voted for the administration take the blame for their actions: “… If I vote for a politician whose
platform is unilateral disarmament, I am partly to blame for whatever military catastrophe results….”
Each day we spend living in this society is another vote for it and engender a bit more responsibility for its acts, past and present. And we pay: our civilians were targeted on 9/11/2001 because they were Americans.
However, I think for negligent and reckless acts on the part of the administration, our leaders don’t get to shirk their responsibilities in the name of patriotism. That “we are all sinners” doesn’t shift the blame away from those who negligently ignored the secret planning and criticism by members of the government.
Gurk — I’m late for something, and this is ill-formed. I’ll try again tommorow.
Randy –
I’d certainly have gone to Bitberg and laid a wreath. I might have said a few words that were pretty different than those Reagan spoke, however…don’t know how popular I would have been with the S.S. widows afterwards.
A.L.
AL,
I’m sure that you wouldn’t have gone there if Elie Wiesel had pleaded with you publicly not to go.
In any event, I lived in Kaiserslautern, Germany (famous now for its proximity to Landstuhl and Ramstein AFB) for two years in the 1970’s and used to go to the US AFB at Bitburg where I bought my first stereo and first photo equipment at the audio and photo clubs there. I never thought I would ever hear of it again other than the occasional Bitburger Pils sign.
AL, I incorporated some of your links in a post I just reworked, identifying Jewish chosenness as a form of patriotism as you defined it. (I’m not the first person to come up with this idea, but the juxtaposition of several recent blog essays inspired me , as they sometimes do.)
I have a feeling Elie Wiesel might have been cool with it had he heard what AL had in mind for the occasion.
Heck, Reagan should’ve offered to let Wiesel write his remarks, or at least worked with him to write them. If I were President, I’d jump at the opportunity to spend a couple hours brainstorming and writing with Elie Wiesel.
A.L.,
I’m late to the party and have only recently discovered and begun reading the excellent W.O.C.
I find that I have to respond to the comment suggesting that opposing the pre-emptive military strike on Iraq amounts to a desire for having the benefits of modern liberal society without getting one’s hands dirty.
I’m all over the political spectrum depending on the issue (more conservative than anyone in the White House when it comes to finances and budgetary matters). And I’m not a member of any political party, but my father and people who read me ravings conclude I’m a liberal, so there you go.
I also have been opposed to the Bush administration’s planned incursion of Iraq from the start. It seemed to me not to be in response to any terrorist threat or attempt to save an oppressed population from a horrible dictator. It seemed to me to be one large, coordinated piece of semi-camoflaged public relations designed to raise President Bush’s numbers in the polls.
It also seemed to be a sure-fire way to dilute our efforts at striking al Qaida in general and bin Laden in particular.
Time and the infrequent investigative reporting done by what’s left of our news media has only convinced me that my initial suppositions were correct.
I do give Bush credit for finally recognizing some of the flaws in his post-combat-period assumptions, as it appears he’s now dealing more realisticly with the issue of how to extract ourselves from this mess.
But in my opinion this was an enormous mistake to begin with, and people with reasonable foresight could have and should have seen the result would be unacceptable loss of life and ruinous economic consequences.
I don’t mind getting my hands dirty, but I also think that before you jump down into a ditch with a shovel, you should be clear about what it is you’re trying to dig up.
I’m sorry for the previous post.
With my originial post I asked Mr. Lyman if he held those who didn’t vote for the administration blameless.
In his comments Mr. Lyman, who voted for Bush, disavowed blame for Bush’s steel tariffs and Israel policy, and then proceeded to carve the duty of patriotism a little thinner as responsibility. I feel that each day we live in our society, we are a little more responsibile for the actions it takes. Each day living under the rules is a vote of confidence in them, which I think is your position, and one I agree with.
Mr. Lyman’s Moral Duty of Tribal Patriotism identifies protection of fellow citizens as a clear patriotic duty, but that does not justify all actions taken in the name of national security. American national security should be subordinate to a number of things, like American rights and freedoms. Acts taken in the name of national security should increase national security, not increase the potential for international terrorism by violently disarming the disarmed.
There is a wide range of interpretations of duty and responsibility in the name of patriotism. From Brittany Spearsian faith in presidential infallibility, to those who won’t pay income tax because it isn’t constitutional.
We do have a patriotic duty to respect all those who volunteer their lives to protect us. But the duty of patriotism does not extend to blind faith in the integrity of our administration. Our administration is to blame if “mistakes were made” in the run-up to the war, but each day that goes by makes us a little more responsible for their actions.
Real responsibility has to mean something. If, as citizens, our hands are dirtied by the actions of our government, and we are to some extent responsible, aren’t we legitimate targets for criticism? If Bush’s steel tariffs cost some foreigner his livelihood, aren’t Bush, Bush’s voters, and the rest of us to varying degrees responsible?
Taking it to a horrible limit: do our collective dirty hands in foreign policies such as Iran-Contra and the Iran-Iraq war make us a more legitimate target for international terrorist attacks than other countries?
Steve,
I’m going to bet that Elie Wiesel would have been content just to have the SS soldiers at Bitburg be ignored: no wreath , no claiming that they were also “victims” of the Nazis.
The selective service bureaucracy has become unnecessary because its sole purpose is to unfairly target only men for the military draft. This kind of sexist activity should can not be condoned by the US government. The military draft should be setup to draft on equal number of men and women.
The draft has become a hot issue in this year’s presidential race, with both John Kerry and George W. Bush denying that their administrations would call up men for an involuntary draft despite the reality of overextended reserve forces. Nevertheless, there has been little public mention of the Selective Service System (SSS), the arm of the Federal Government that would be responsible for call-ups.
Having weathered congressional attempts to remove SSS funding a few years ago, the agency remains an important force in many men’s lives, and maintains a database of names, addresses, Social Security Numbers, and ages, some of which is publicly accessible. Prospective employers, lenders, police, and other governmental agencies can easily use the database to verify whether or not men have registered for the draft. The SSS is not required to maintain confidentiality, and can legally share any information it obtains with outside agencies.
With the vast majority of Americans apparently against the idea of an involuntary army, why has neither candidate asked for the Selective Service System to be scrapped? What is its role in the lives of American men? Just what has the SSS been doing over the past decade?
During the 1990’s, the SSS pursued an aggressive policy to hide the cost of ensuring draft registration. By spreading expenses to local, state, other federal departments, as well as to private institutions, the SSS evaded critics from right and left who had increasingly depicted the SSS as an expensive anachronism. Alongside attempts to create partnerships with various institutions, the SSS zealously & successfully lobbied state legislatures and governors to pass laws restricting employment and social services for men who had not registered.
SSS Director Gil Coronado clearly knew that such state and similar Federal punitive legislation overwhelmingly affected the poor. In a press release dated May, 2000) Coronado stated, “our experience shows the young men most likely to miss the message (of the requirement to register and the consequences of not doing so) are those from poor and underrepresented populations.” By appearing concerned with men punished by the same punitive laws the agency promoted, Coronado cynically created collaborations with school districts, federal agencies, local government and non-governmental organizations, for the specific purpose of ensuring higher registration rates among poor men.
Particularly pernicious in 1999 was an INS/SSS partnership the SSS described as being aimed at increasing rates of registration among Latinos; immigrant men applying for permanent residence with the IRS would automatically be registered for the draft. Ironically, current liberal critics of the Bush administration have presented the draft as a way to equalize a military now overwhelmingly consisting of poor enlistees. In actuality, the SSS has promoted policies that use outside agency resources both to increase registration by poor people and to hide the costs of doing so.
SSS Annual reports from the late 1990’s present such partnerships as:
o SSS High School Registrar Program in which high school guidance counselor and/or teacher “volunteers” (during school hours) educate students “face-to-face” about the dangers of not registering. High schools in this program also distribute SSS literature and allow students to register at their high schools.
o The use of One Stop Career Centers funded by the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 to ensure registration. Students served by this program must be low-income and face other significant “challenges.” Employees volunteer as “uncompensated Selective Service Registrars” while on the job for other federally funded agencies.
The agency’s 2004 strategic plan includes the goal of increasing the use of other Federal agency points of service and databases to increase outreach and improve intelligence about noncompliance. It specifically focuses upon the need to “obtain high school drop-out and voter registration lists.”
Perhaps the most egregiously wasteful and longstanding collaboration consists of requirements that student loan officers at private and public universities vet all male federal student loan applicants for positive registration status through the publicly accessible database of SSS registrants. Applicants whose names cannot be found in the SSS database are sent a letter informing them that they must prove that they have applied for the draft before federal loans will be dispersed. As a result, some low-income prospective students find themselves unable to attend university.
These punitive measures had been enacted by Congress in the early 1980’s not simply for the purpose of increasing compliance, but also to cost-effectively weaken the draft-resistance movement and punish draft resistors, whose strategy versus the SSS had been to defy the draft by way of mass civil disobedience. Leaders of the draft resistance movement correctly thought that it would be prohibitively expensive for the government to prosecute tens of thousands of draft resistors protesting the Reagan administration’s aggressive pursuit of military strategies throughout the world. Central America was a particular concern, one that has been vindicated by evidence that U.S. allies assassinated tens of thousands of civilians in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras during the 1980’s. Public trials, it was thought, could be used as a sounding board against U.S. policies towards its southern neighbors. The Reagan administration support of dictatorships in the Pihilippines, indonesia, Chile, South Africa, and Korea was an embarassing reality and it was native left-wing pressure supported by solidarity movements in the U.S.that forced democratization and its acceptance by the president. Ironically, Reagan is now presented as the president who helped democratize Eastern Europe despite having given millions of dollars of military aid (and often direct support through “advisors/trainers” for governments who were resisting legal democratic movements. this is the environment in which many men decided they could not see themselves as part of a U.S. Army and thus never registered with the SSS.
In response, Congress passed punitive measures called the Solomon Amendments that would prohibit draft resistors from receiving federal student aid without the need for costly and potentially embarrassing jury trials. Instead of having to prove its case to juries that might acquit defendants on moral or political grounds, the Solomon Amendments strategically placed the burden of proof on students and prospective Federal employees. Men who turned 18 in the 1980’s and did not register for the draft remain in eligible for Federal student loans and employment despite the fact that they are now beyond draft age.
See my blog for more.