{"id":1528,"date":"2007-10-04T17:30:56","date_gmt":"2007-10-04T17:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2007-10-06T18:50:16","modified_gmt":"2007-10-06T18:50:16","slug":"youve_got_to_be_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1528","title":{"rendered":"You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yglesias has his response on patriotism<\/a> up at the Atlantic, and I’m wondering if he can get some of his Harvard money back.<\/p>\n

Patriotism is – wait for it – just like being a Knicks fan. There are good Knicks fans, and bad ones.<\/p>\n

The attitude toward America that conservatives like to champion is like this latter batch of Knicks fans — not people animated by a special concern for our fellow-citizens and a special appreciation for our country’s virtues, but by a deep emotional investment in a certain kind of national hagiography and myth-making.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The patriotism = fanboy equivalence is one that’s often made by people who don’t believe – or know – much in patriotism. It makes patriotism cute, and kind of demeans it is a backhanded way. because you, know, my wife is still a Cubs fan even twenty years after she left Chicago, so isn’t that just cute? <\/p>\n

But the most obsessive Cubs fans don’t get linked to a polity of other Cubbies fans with whom they have to share power.<\/p>\n

The mechanisms by which our – or any – political structure are maintained within our culture are kinda significant if we want those structures to survive. Habermas has the best (if most awkwardly written) description of this process, I think, in ‘Legitimation Crisis<\/a>‘ – I’ll try and do a post on this over the weekend.<\/p>\n

Yglesias goes on to recommend Anatol Lievin’s book on American nationalism – which, based on the Publisher’s Weekly review, seems shockingly predictable:<\/p>\n

In this provocative and scholarly work, Lieven, senior associate at Washington’s Carnegie Endowment, argues that normative American patriot ism …an optimistic “civic creed” rooted in respect for America’s institutions, individual freedoms and constitutional law – contains a monster in the basement: a jingoistic, militaristic, Jacksonian nationalism that sees America as the bearer of a messianic mission to lead a Manichean struggle against the savages.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

plus,as a bonus…<\/p>\n

Lieven’s provocative final chapter argues that much of U.S. support for Israel is rooted not in the “civic creed” (e.g., support for a fellow liberal democracy) but in a nationalism that sees the Israelis as heroic cowboys and the Palestinians as savages who must be driven from their land, as Jackson did the Cherokees. Throughout, Lieven takes to task the American liberal intelligentsia for abandoning universalist principles in favor of ethnic chauvinism and nationalist fervor.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…I can’t wait<\/i> to read it…<\/p>\n

Welcome Instapundit<\/a> 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<\/a>‘, ‘You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me<\/a>‘, ‘Patriotism Rears Its Head Yet Again<\/a>‘, and ‘Rorty on Patriotism<\/a>‘<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Patriotism is just like being a Knicks fan – Yglesias.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}