{"id":1805,"date":"2008-07-12T23:55:28","date_gmt":"2008-07-12T23:55:28","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2008-07-12T23:57:35","modified_gmt":"2008-07-12T23:57:35","slug":"responding_to_c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1805","title":{"rendered":"Responding To Chris H On Patriotism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commenter (and now blogger) Chris H made two v. substantive points in our discussion of patriotism – one conceptual one on his blog<\/a>, and one historic one in a comment here<\/a>. While I don’t agree, they’re both good, tough challenges to the position I’m trying to take and as such I felt they were worth addressing in a post – probably a longer one than I have time for here, but at least this will serve as a kicking off place.<\/p>\n

Here’s the core point (I think) in his blog post:<\/p>\n

First, Kirchick, Hemingway, and AL don’t really seem to understand Yglesias’ argument<\/a>; it’s not that patriotism is “bad”; it’s that the patriot can’t really talk to the non-patriot in a way that’s going to persuade the non-patriot to his point of view (to use an example, the American flag-waver won’t convince the Chinese flag-waver to drop his flag and start waving the stars and stripes). This has to do with the nature of patriotism, not with the nature of patriotism’s object. If patriotism is a sentiment of solidarity, enthusiasm, and affection, then the analogy to sports fandom is apt. But it’s misreading Yglesias to think that he’s accordingly equating a country with a sports’ team. He’s not.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Look, if all nationalities are fundamentally the same, then de gustibus<\/i> is the only basis on which we talk about them, and I can certainly make the claim that, having never seen the sun set over the Adriatic, I cannot appreciate Croatia the way that I appreciate California.<\/p>\n

And certainly when we talk about places – about Croatia, California, or Calabria – we’re talking about an admixture of things – culture, language, lifestyle, geography, etc. And each of those is a part of the centrality of place<\/i> which can be extended to the particularity of nation.<\/p>\n

And when we do so, we’re talking about nationalism – my nation vs. your nation. And it is certainly possible and appropriate for people to feel patriotism to their nation – let’s go back to Schaar’s useful definition<\/a>:<\/p>\n

At its core, patriotism means love of one’s homeplace, and of the familiar things and scenes associated with the homeplace. In this sense, patriotism is one of the basic human sentiments. If not a natural tendency in the species, it is at least a proclivity produced by realities basic to human life, for territoriality, along with family, has always been a primary associative bond. We become devoted to the people, places and ways that nurture us, and what is familiar and nurturing seems also natural and right. This is the root of patriotism. Furthermore, we are a all subject to the immense power of habit, and patriotism has habit in its service. Even if we leave the homeplace for a larger world, finding delight in its variety and novelty, we delight as much in returning to familiar things. The theme-of-homecoming is the central motif of patriotic discourse, as old and as deep as the return of Odysseus from Troy, and the feeling is always the same: <\/p>\n

<\/i>When we saw the top of the mountain from Albuquerque we wondered if it was our mountain, and we felt like talking to the ground, we loved it so and some of the old men and women cried with joy when they reached their homes. (2.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The other side of the case is the melancholy figure of the lone wanderer, or of the Stoic whose “my home is everywhere” meant he had a home nowhere.<\/p>\n

\nTo 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<\/b>. 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. The gift of land, people, language, gods memories, and customs, which is the patrimony of the patriot, defines what he or she is. Patrimony is mixed with person; the two are barely separable. The very tone and rhythm of a life, the shapes of perception, the texture of its homes and fears come from membership in a territorially rooted group. <\/p>\n

The conscious patriot is one who feels deeply indebted for these gifts, grateful to the people and places through which they come, and determined to defend the legacy against enemies and pass it unspoiled to those who will come after<\/b>.<\/i><\/p>\n

\n(emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, it’s equally possible for a pole to be obligated to her patrimony as it for an American or for a Canadian or for a Nigerian.<\/p>\n

And if that was all that we were talking about then yes, Yglesias would be right and yes, it would be impossible to explain American patriotism to a Nigerian except as the American case of what the Nigerian feels about his own people and homeland.<\/p>\n

But…<\/p>\n

…the patrimony we have as Americans is not just a place, a culture, and economy or the artifacts of our history. It is not the gravestones of our fathers and mothers.<\/p>\n

We have inherited a system – a system of beliefs and a system of government that was revolutionary at the time – although firmly embedded in the philosophy of the moment, and firmly tied to previous historical examples (Athens, Rome, Switzerland, the Netherlands). Now it is arguable that every nation similarly inherits ‘a system’. But I think there is an argument to make that most of these systems are more alike than different, and that the American ‘system’ is unique<\/b>, is different enough to have been in a category by itself when it was derived.<\/p>\n

People may differ on that, and I think it’s a useful razor for dividing those who believe – as I do – in American exceptionalism from those who do not.<\/p>\n

Because if you don’t you can certainly see it in the context of wider enlightenment theories and make the claim that it was a part of an undifferentiated Enlightenment push for human rights throughout Europe.<\/p>\n

And yet, if you believe that, how is it that the creaky system set up by the founders has lasted so much longer than any national political arrangement in Europe? How is it that the nature of American politics is so different?<\/p>\n

I’ll suggest that that nature is so different because our national identity is not embodied in a person – in the Queen of England – nor in a culture, as defined by L’Acad\u00c3\u00a9mie fran\u00c3\u00a7aise – but in a set of ideas and documents? Why does an incoming president or a new Army recruit swear their allegiance to the Constitution, not the Queen, the French people. Watch the video of Sarkozy’s inauguration<\/a> (warning, boring and in French). There’s no timecode in it, but fairly early on in the speech given to Sarkozy: “…for the duration of your term, you incarnate France, symbolize the Republic, and represent the whole of the French people…” Sarkozy’s loyalty is thus to a nation, the ideal of a Republic, and to the French people. Nowhere is there any such loyalty to the French constitution (the 5th one) or the concepts of the French polity – except the airy ones of “libertie, egalitie, fraternitie”.<\/p>\n

It is both the content of our Constitution and out attachment to it and the Declaration of Independence as embodying America that matter so much. Because if you took a handful of Americans and moved them to the moon, those documents would still have power – as I believe they have power beyond our national borders.<\/p>\n

And there’s where we get ourselves in trouble. Because as much as those documents have power to people who are not American, we are still a nation, with all the issues that brings. And so we get ourselves caught between the universality of the values in our core beliefs and the specificity of membership in the polity that lives by them.<\/p>\n

A lot of things get trapped in the fold, and I hope to write more about them in a bit.<\/p>\n

Chris also posted a ” target=”browser”>smart comment on the American history<\/a> of these ideas…(although it reminded me a lot of a hysterical speech from ‘Good Will Hunting’).<\/p>\n

I actually haven’t read Hartz, and hope to grab a copy from the library or bookstore tonight. I’m familiar enough with the other works however, to make a preliminary stab at a counterargument.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\nIf 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. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, I think that it’s pretty much the accepted view among the historians I’ve studied with (Schaar, Page Smith) that while Locke was probably the largest intellectual star that the Founders sailed by, he was by no means the only one. And that your construction of “…the American polity would constently be negotiating the terms of its order.<\/i>” is wholly appropriate – the Founders were themselves not of a unitary mind on many issues, and the documents we revere today were the consequence of much naked horsetrading, violent argument, and subtle negotiation – they were, and are, essentially political documents, not ideological ones.<\/p>\n

Which I do not believe in any way vitiates either the revolutionary nature of the political project they spring from and embodied, nor the exceptional quality of that project. Why did it need to be wholly Lockean, or even wholly sprung from Enlightenment sources to be novel? It is certainly the case that the Founders were deeply familiar with, and argued deeply about Roman republicanism as well as Athenian democracy in constructing their scaffolding. How does that make their work any less a product of the Enlightenment? <\/p>\n

And if not a product of the Enlightenment, how does it make their project any less unique?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commenter (and new blogger) Chris H makes some strong arguments in our discussion of patriotism. <\/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\/1805"}],"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=1805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}