Patriotism: Trash or Treasure?

Me too. I also liked the wording in "enforce a new sense of pride in being Japanese." As if you could "enforce a sense of" anything.

Where there be patriotism , I note a recurring not so leit motiv of barbarian menace du jour is not far away....

tonyf, Your Samuel Johnson post is truer today because Bushco uses it frequently to keep the populace in line with his agenda based on untruths and incompetence.

I think I'd extend the scope of the Samuel Johnson quote to include not only those who preach patriotism but also religious zealots of any persuausion.

Anatol Lieven continues to write some of the most perceptive analyses of American nationalism one can find presently. I've linked this recent review of a new book by Andrew Bacevich from the London Review of Books. Two elements here are, I think, key...the shape and consequences of modern American militarism and the too infrequently studied/mentioned role of the Likud lobby in how and why America behaves in the Middle East as it has.

What can America expect of a president that doesn't read or understand foreign policy? He's probably the only president that has gone AWOL, then became commander in chief. Throw in that mix C's and D's in college, and we have an idiot of a president. Americans are no smarter; they voted for him. We are now paying dearly for our ignorance.

I'm not so sure. It seems a barbarian menace du jour is a necessary element of any ideology. For example, as a libertrian, I suspect petty tyrants (and some not so petty ones) behind every corner, and I never fall go to sleep without checking first if there might be one hiding under my bed. No doubt Lola and Blatham do the same with fanatic Christians and anti-intellectual Republicans respectively. Some paranoia about barbarians is a normal and harmless byproduct of the way we all think about politics. It's when that paranoia gets enforced from positions of power that one needs to reach for one's garlic, one's stick, and one's crucifix.

I used my hammer and sickle until Mrs. Walter put some storage boxes under the bed.

Hmmmmm....very true, but seemingly more harmful in the hands of some ideologies than others??? Or is it that the more harmful (by which I mean, for the sake of this argument, more likely to support going out and killing other people) go for different ideologies, or for the more extreme form of the ideology in question?

As a social democrat, I get very worried about my current conservative government, eg, and I am doing what I can to persuade it against some of its more extreme anti Aboriginal and anti worker pieces of legislation, but I have no desire to go out and kill it, nor would I denounce as traitorous Australia haters those who do not oppose it.



Patriotism seems to me an ideology which is especially prone to turn murderous, or to support murder. Prolly because, if I am correct about its origins in "clan/kin group" protectiveness, it is sort of hard wired into our more primitive neuro/hormonal systems.


Actually, I suspect that is where the dangerousness in fervently held ideologies (including religions) comes in....it evokes all who do not agree with is as "out group/stranger".

Certainly, I think some religions seem to encourage mor ebloodiness than others. I cannot really think of a time when Buddhists have slaughtered non Buddhists to try and make the mBuddhists, for instance....though I do not doubt they have killed for other reasons.


I guess I see patriotism as especially prone to dangerousness....while I do not see it as alone in that, of course.


Look at all the examples right here on this sweet little board where numbers of folk are calling anyone anti the Iraq war traitorous and supportive of terror.


There is something wrong with this picture.


I do not doubt there is also something wrong with its mirror image from the other side, too, but a thing which holds one must support one's country's killings, even when opne considers them utterly unjustified? Hmmmmmmm.....

walter : are you allowed to open the box and have a peek - let's say, once a month ?
and don't forget : you need to sharpen that sickle now and then ! hbg



(i hope the boys from the ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE aren't monitoring my email; if you haven't heard from me by year-end, pls send out a search party)

Trash for most of the time|

Fee fi fo fum! Who woke this thread after 13 years?

I will go back to the page I was reading here shortly, but what a trip down memory lane. So many names of people so long unheard.

I would point out that patriotism cannot be equated to approval of a government's policies. In the War of 1812, the New York militia largely refused to cross the Niagara River into British territory--a few hundred out of thousands crossed, and most of them crossed back as soon as they could. After the British seized outposts in American territory, and landed from the sea to burn towns, sentiments changed--but "Mr. Madison's War" was highly unpopular. The Mexican War was seen in the same light, although perhaps not as unpopular. Ulysses Grant called it our "most evil war" and likened the United States to the corrupt nations and empires of Europe. He was a serving officer, and did his duty with great courage and initiative--but he made friends in Mexico, kept in touch, warned the French off after the end of the American civil war and was never shy about expressing his contempt for Polk's government and what he and many others saw as a war intended to extend slavery (actually, a rather reasonable characterization).

During the American civil war, more than 100,000 southerners voluntarily enlisted in and served in the United States Army. I have no doubt that they loved their homes and the regions from which they came, but they were not prepared to fight to defend the human chattels of slave-owners, especially at the cost of the Union. Desertion rates were very high in the Confederate States Army, and especially among those from the mountains, where slavery was never a common or useful institution.

Jeannette Rankin, the first woman to hold Federal Office in the United States, and a key figure in the passage of the proposed amendment which was ratified as the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote, was clearly a patriot. A life-long Republican (of the Theodore Roosevelt, progressive stripe) in 1917, she was one of a handful of members of Congress to vote against the declaration of war against the Central powers. More courageous still, she was, in December, 1941, the only member of Congress to vote against the declaration of war against the Empire of Japan. (She said she was terrified, and she received a good deal of hate mail and threatening telephone calls.) As a life-long pacifist, she was voting her conscience. Anyone who would allege that she was not a patriot is a damned fool and a liar.