PATRIOTISM DEBATE
http://www.time.com/time/magazine
Thursday, Jun. 26, 2008
Excerpt from "The New Patriotism" by Richard Stengel
Patriotism has always been the most abstract of American virtues--which may be why we fight so ferociously over the symbols that help us define it. Too often those symbols--flags, anthems, slogans--which are meant to unite us, end up dividing us.
To many people, the meaning of patriotism is simple: love of country. But love of a country that is dedicated to a proposition, not a king or a religion--a nation that is based on ideas, not blood--has always created a different kind of citizen. American patriotism expresses itself most truly in actions, not words. Our patriotism shapes our responsibilities as citizens, how we navigate in the world and, ultimately, what it means to be an American.
There is nothing more important than those ideals, and we are in the midst of a historic presidential race that will help redefine them for the 21st century. There have always been twin strains of patriotism in our history, two different definitions of American exceptionalism: a sense that our greatness is based on our provenance and what we have achieved, and a belief that our greatness lies in our promise and how we attempt to live up to our ideals.
Conservatives and liberals have been arguing about these two strains for years, and that debate has become the pivot of our politics. Republicans have contended that they are the true legatees of the nation's heritage and attack Democrats for being ashamed of America. Democrats in turn depict Republicans as chest-thumping nationalists who prevent America from living up to its ideals. Both of these are caricatures.
On the surface, defining patriotism is simple. It is love and devotion to country. The questions are why we love it and how we express our devotion. That's where the arguments begin.
The conservative answer is implicit in the title of John McCain's 1999 book, Faith of My Fathers. Why should we love America? In part, at least, because our forefathers did. Think about the lyrics to America ("My Country, 'Tis of Thee"): "Land where my fathers died,/ Land of the Pilgrims' pride." Most liberals don't consider those the best lines of the song. What about the Americans whose fathers died somewhere else? What about all the nasty stuff the Pilgrims did? But conservatives generally want to conserve, and that requires a reverence for the past. What McCain's title implies is that patriotism isn't a choice; it's an inheritance. Being born into a nation is like being born into a religion or a family. You may be called on to reaffirm the commitment as you reach adulthood--as McCain did by joining the military--but it is impressed upon you early on, by those who have come before.
That's why conservatives tend to believe that loving America today requires loving its past. Conservatives often fret about "politically correct" education, which forces America's students to dwell on its past sins. They're forever writing books like America: The Last Best Hope (by William J. Bennett) and America: A Patriotic Primer (by Lynne Cheney), which teach children that historically the U.S. was a pretty nifty place. These books are based on the belief that our national forefathers are a bit like our actual mothers and fathers: if we dishonor them, we dishonor ourselves. That's why conservatives got so upset when Michelle Obama said that "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country" (a comment she says was misinterpreted). In the eyes of conservatives, those comments suggested a lack of gratitude toward the nation that--as they saw it--has given her and the rest of us so much.
Conservatives know America isn't perfect, of course. But they grade on a curve. Partly that's because they generally take a dimmer view of human nature than do their counterparts on the left. When evaluating America, they're more likely to remember that for most of human history, tyranny has been the norm. By that standard, America looks pretty good. Conservatives worry that if Americans don't appreciate--and celebrate--their nation's past accomplishments, they'll assume the country can be easily and dramatically improved. And they'll end up making things worse. But if conservatives believe that America is, comparatively, a great country, they also believe that comparing America with other countries is beside the point. It's like your family: it doesn't matter whether it's objectively better than someone else's. You love it because it is yours.
Hoping for a Braver Future
If conservatives tend to see patriotism as an
inheritance from a glorious past, liberals often see it as the promise of a
future that redeems the past. It wasn't great in the past? It's not great
as it is? The liberal answer is, Not great enough. For liberals, America is
less a common culture than a set of ideals about democracy, equality and the
rule of law. American history is a chronicle of the distance between those
ideals and reality. And American patriotism is the struggle to narrow the
gap. Thus, patriotism isn't about honoring and replicating the past; it's
about surpassing it.
[L]iberals more often lionize people who display patriotism by calling
America on the carpet for violating its highest ideals. For liberals more
than for conservatives, there is something quintessentially patriotic about
Frederick Douglass's famous 1852 oration, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth
of July?," in which the great African-American abolitionist refused to
celebrate the anniversary of America's founding, telling a Rochester, N.Y.,
crowd that "above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of
millions whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more
intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them."
How to Be a Patriot
On inspection, the liberal and conservative brands of patriotism both have defects. In a country where today's nativists are yesterday's immigrants and where change is practically a national religion, conservative patriotism can seem anachronistic. To be Spanish or Russian or Japanese is to imagine that you share a common ancestry and common traditions that trace back into the mists of time. But in America, where most people hail from somewhere else, that kind of blood-and-soil patriotism makes no sense. There is something vaguely farcical about conservative panic over Mexican flags in Los Angeles when Irish flags have long festooned Boston's streets on St. Patrick's Day. Linking patriotism too closely to a reverence for inherited tradition contradicts one of America's most powerful traditions: that our future shouldn't be dictated by our past.
By defining Americanism too narrowly and backwardly, conservative patriotism risks becoming clubby. And by celebrating America too unabashedly--without sufficient regard for America's sins--it risks degenerating from patriotism into nationalism, a self-righteous, chest-thumping ideology that celebrates America at the expense of the rest of the world.
But if conservative patriotism can be too exclusionary, liberal patriotism risks not being exclusionary enough. If liberals love America purely because it embodies ideals like liberty, justice and equality, why shouldn't they love Canada--which from a liberal perspective often goes further toward realizing those principles--even more? And what do liberals do when those universal ideals collide with America's self-interest? Giving away the federal budget to Africa would probably increase the net sum of justice and equality on the planet, after all. But it would harm Americans and thus be unpatriotic.
Eminent thinkers, from Tolstoy to contemporary philosophers like Martha Nussbaum and George Kateb, have denounced patriotism on exactly those grounds: that it's wrong to prefer one's countrymen and -women to people in other lands. Patriotism, in Kateb's words, is illiberal; it "is an attack on the Enlightenment." There's a lot of truth in that. Liberals may love America in part because it aspires to certain ideals, but if they love it only because it aspires to those ideals, then what they really love is the ideals, not America. Conservatives are right. To some degree, patriotism must mean loving your country for the same reason you love your family: simply because it is yours.
When it comes to patriotism, conservatives and liberals need each other, because love of country requires both affirmation and criticism. It's a good thing that Americans fly the flag on July 4. In a country as diverse as ours, patriotic symbols are a powerful balm. And if people stopped flying the flag every time the government did something they didn't like, it would become an emblem not of national unity but of political division. On the other hand, waving a flag, like holding a Bible, is supposed to be a spur to action. When it becomes an end in itself, America needs people willing to follow in the footsteps of the prophets and remind us that complacent ritual can be the enemy of true devotion.
Patriotism should be proud but not blind, critical yet loving. And liberals and conservatives should agree that if patriotism entails no sacrifice, if it is all faith and no works, then something has gone wrong. The American who volunteers to fight in Iraq and the American who protests the war both express a truer patriotism than the American who treats it as a distant spectacle with no claim on his talents or conscience.
So is wearing the flag pin good or bad? It is both; it all depends on where and why. If you're going to a Young Americans for Freedom meeting, where people think patriotism means "my country right or wrong," leave it at home and tell them about Frederick Douglass, who wouldn't celebrate the Fourth of July while his fellow Americans were in bondage. And if you're going to a meeting of the cultural-studies department at Left-Wing U., where patriotism often means "my country wrong and wronger," slap it on, and tell them about Mike Christian, who lay half-dead in a North Vietnamese jail, stitching an American flag.
And if anyone gives you a hard time, tell him he doesn't know what true patriotism is.
Patriotism in Print For five great reads about patriotism, go to time.com/patriotism