Patriotism: Trash or Treasure?

rufio, There's too much diversity in the American work force. We have unions, nonunions, minimum wage, highly paid CEO's, and everything in between. During the past ten years, the rich got richer, and the poor got poorer. Stock options have made many millionaires, and some billionaires. If there's ever a time for desent, it's now, because many factory and high tech jobs are being offshored to third world countries. There wont be any mass exodus to other countries any time soon. The US is still the "richest" country on this planet.

Well, exactly. And everyone believes they're freer here. So they stay.

i don't think most immigrants would die for the US over their native country. i don't think most immigrants would fly an american flag over the flag of their native country.

yes there are plenty of exceptions but in general i don't think immigrants are more patriotic.

by the 2nd generation i think you get the whole spectrum. there are those who are just as, if not more patriotic, than the rest of america. but there are those that still stick to their roots.

by the 3rd generation they're almost fully assimilated so they are full-blown americans.

then there are the african-americans.
"No, I'm not an American. I'm one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism." - Malcolm X

my point is that i think racial identity comes before national identity.

You may be right ye110man. My military experience suggests otherwise, but since I was separated in 1967, it may be a whole new world. How would you explain the performance of Japanese/Americans from Hawaii in the second world war, though, especially in Italy. When answering, keep in mind that their peers in California were confined to concentration camps. C.i. can furnish all the details you want to hear on that subject.

btw, i am an immigrant and was planning to enlist before an accident that left me with an injure that disqualified me.

I don't think most Americans would die for their country.



In America this is true, America is almost obsessed with race. But interestingly racial identity and national identity are not mutually exclusive. In any case it's not possible to quantify patriotism. What we can agree on is that some immigrants are very patriotic and others aren't.

I know many, and of many immigrants to the US who earned their naturalization by serving in the military during the Vietnam police action.

I also know a few who fled at the start of the first Persian Gulf war because of the rumors that a draft was going to be initiated.

Fine sentiment
Also, "Last refuge of the scoundrel"
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Coming into this discussion late, I have to admit I have not read all the previous posts word-for-word, so perhaps something I'm about to say will be repetitious, merely an echo of what someone has alsready said. So be it.

First, Deb, I would argue your historical point that patrotism started with the city-state. Even hunter-gatherer societies, essentially nomadic, tend to have a concept of exclusivity of hunting grounds. The Plains Indians of North America, for example, had no concept of ownership of land but very strong ideas about who could use a prticular piece of land for hunting and trapping purposes, Your own Australian Aborigines had bewilderingly stringent rules about the sacredness of certain terrain and who could or could not have access to it. Read Chatwin's The Song Lines. I believe it is a common human trait to be attached to the turf that one's ancestors have dwelt in, or roamed over, for a considerable period of time.

Now, we have to differnetiate somewhat between the peoples of Eurasia and Africa and those of the rest of the world. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the USA and the entire South American continent are unique in that the administrators (rulers) of these landmasses are not 'native' to them. There is no such things as an ethnic Australian, American or Canadian, unless you mean the politically marginalized indigenous aboriginal inhabitants who have very little say in how their ancestral homelands are run. There is only citizenship. You are Australian by birth, I am an American by adoption. Yet ethnically we hark back to our European roots. Thus 'patriotism' means something else to me than it does to my cousins who live in Latvia and whose ancestors have lived there for several thousand years.

For George Bush to appeal to the patriotism of all Americans is disingenuous, at best. For a Latvian patriot of the second half of the 20th Century to work against the Russian overlords who had forcibly incorporated Latvia into the Soviet Union is something entirely different. We use the same word -- patriotism -- in two entirely different contexts.

I do agree with McTag that patriotism often is the last refuge of the scoundrel. But my heart goes out to the Koreans who would like to see their country reunified (one kind of patriotism) as well as to the Iraqis who would like to be able to exercise self-determination and get the invader off their soil (another kind of patriotism),

It's difficult to discuss this subject in a meanfingful manner inasmuch as our vocabulary is limited and lacks suitable synonims for the different kinds of patriotism. Bush's brand is more accurately described as gingoism, rather than patriotism.

And, yes, I consider myself a patriotic American.

I made the same point, MA, about the thing arising in our earliest social groups - I think it has stretched itself with great difficulty to cover a nation state.

You raise an interesting point re differences of meaning in different situations.

I have to go to bed, I have lots of stuff to write for work that I didn't finish tonight.

I shall revisit this topic briefly tomorrow.

Have fun discussing it!

BTW, Deb, happy 1st anniversary as an A2ker! (USA time, that is).

Following Andrew (and just and thus remembering that I missed Craven's, jespah's, Phoenix', EhBeht' Misti's ...) :

Congrats, Deb!

truth
I havn't been able to read all the posts here, but a loose scan suggests they are quite sophisticated, especially the opening one. We must--if we havn't already--distinguish between cultural chauvinism and patrotism. I would characterize Mexico as very culturally chauvinistic but not militarily patriotic, for good reasons, the former because of the joys their myths, food and arts provide, the latter because they virtually have no army. I do not think America has the best culture in the world. I am most comfortable with it, of course, because I have been enculturated into it, but I have experienced others that seem to me to be much more psychologically nutritious and humane, less commerical, consumer-oriented, less superficial. Do I fear the dangers in patriotism? Of course. I was going to say that I fear the patriotism of other countries, but on second thought, The Patriot Act is a real danger to me and all Americans who wish to think and express themselves independently. One of the troubles with our culture (and most others for that matter) is that while we praise individualism and free thought, most Americans are sheep. Because they do not think independently, never or rarely going against the grain, as it were, they have no fear of the patriot act and what it stands for.

It worries me a great deal, because of the support GWBush has enjoyed for the past three years. Our imperialistic military action against Iraq should have been seen as unprovoked aggression by most fair-minded peoples. How do we continue to rationalize the killing of over 7,000 Iraqis on the basis that Saddam's WMD's was a danger to us and the world, then change the justification that it was for the Iraqi People? That is very worrisome to me.

Dlowan:

Glad you finally started this thread and as I suspected it is getting a lot of play----I must read and analyze some more before I jump in-----it is a very interesting topic to be sure.

The normal thing to do is to be patriotic
The intellectual thing to do is to be very anti patriotic.
The philosophical thing to do is to not really care about something like patriotism and made made structures.

In my mind atleast, very clean cut, very distorted, very hypocritical.

Getting close to bedtime, so I'll be brief. I see patriotism as a relatively modern concept, certainly no more than 4 or 500 years old, and an outgrowth of the Absolutism of the 16th Century. Having not been indoctrinated since birth like many of my fellow Americans, I wasn't confronted with the pledge of alliegence, Thanksgiving, Columbus Day, 4 July, etc... until I was 11, therefore all of these things seem somewhat artificial to my way of thinking.
I see the current popular version of patriotism to be similar to mob mentality. It all seems to be based on a "my country can beat up your country any time we feel like it, we're number one, woo-hoo" jingoism, born out of a sense of inferiority. It certainly seems to be unhealthy, to say the least. The climate that discourages dissent is certainly troubling, although I remember similar sentiments were popular during the first Reagan presidency, "Morning in America," etc...
Lastly, "Patriotism" seems to have been coerced into the new "double speak" like "freedom" and "democracy," as terms that when used by the current regime seem to hold the opposite meaning.
My two cents.

NNY, are you saying that most educated people are anti-patriotic? Is education a bad thing when it comes to patriotism?

If so, does that mean the reverse is also true, that only idiots are patriotic?

Butrflynet

There's lot - IMHO - between patriotism and anti-patriotism!

Besides, and depending one's own description of both terms, I don't think that's bad to be anti-patriotic (at least here in Germany [and many parts of Europe], since 'patriotism' is closely connected with righ-wing, or even worse).

truth
Questions many of us do not want to consider:
Can a person be culturally chauvinistic but opposed to nationalism?
Is an American who resists patriotism ipso facto anti-American?
Is the notion of patriotism a manipulative device for enforcing group solidarity in time of war or imagined or anticipated war?
What's un-American about "my country right!"?
Why don't we admire a patriot of another country for killing us in the name of his nation when we do so for our own fallen military heroes?