Obama’s Patriotism
The kerfuffle over Barack Obama’s pastor is in large part about whether the man is patriotic enough. Other data: he doesn’t wear a Stars & Stripes lapel pin; his wife found herself proud of America for the first time a little too recently. This sort of thing may well be deadly to his candidacy. He may be obliterated by John “No Glory but Service to the State” McCain’s thorough and unimpeachable Americanism, a cult of fake history, hubristic exceptionalism, tacky iconography, and aggression. But Obama’s inferior patriotism makes me like him more rather than less because I agree with George Kateb that patriotism is hardly worth the blood it is designed to spill.
Kateb’s reply today in Cato Unbound to Walter Berns’ and Bill Galston’s sophisticated civics class apologies for patriotism is strong. He is completely dogged in his insistence that patriotism is good for little more than readying people to kill and die for the state. He implies something that I believe to be correct: the proud and enthusiastic patriotism of Americans bears a large measure of responsibility for the immoral and failed war in Iraq. This administration’s war would have been impossible had our mindless love of country not made the public rather too ready. As Kateb writes:
I am not writing from a pacifist basis. I believe in the right of self-defense, by violence if need be. The trouble is that most democratic wars are not fought to preserve the lives, liberties, and goods of the people, but are fought, instead, for grandiose and often insincere ideals and for limitless augmentation. If patriotism — devotion to the country and obedience to its state for the wrong reasons — has to exist, it should be defensive in temperament and parsimonious in the expenditure of life, including the lives of its enemies, and not mobilize the energies of self-defense and transmute them into the energies of expansion and imperialism. In truth, if strict self-defense were ever at stake, patriotism would be unnecessary: people would not require any inflated passion to defend what was not an inflated purpose.
Barack Obama should be proud that he is no great patriot. Of course, in America it is political suicide to appear to be anything less than besotted with the purple mountains’ majesty, so of course he gives his speech explaining the meaning of “god damn America” in front of a de rigeur rank of flags, which testify silently, garishly, to his devotion to true religion.
March 19th, 2008 18:24
Living in Berkeley CA, I’ve had recent exposure to well above my minimum daily requirement of patriots, thanks to the influx of red-staters who came here to chastise us for trying to boot out the Marine recruiting office downtown. The fanaticism they brought to their loud insistence on the “heroism” of their thoroughly duped offspring for having signed up for this war was unsurprising, but terrifying nonetheless. I saw it again last night in the eyes of the hideous Wolf Blitzer on CNN, who spoke repeatedly of the “anti-Americanism” of Obama’s pastor with such contempt and disgust that I had to laugh.
March 19th, 2008 21:21
I agree that the jingoism of the Limbaugh variety is rightly regarded as dangerous and toxic to rational thought. But it saddens me to some extent that that mind-frame has completely co-opted the term ‘patriotism.’ I’m currently living in China–a country more infected with unquestioning, government-led group think than anywhere else I can think of– and the experience has definitely made me more proud to be an American than I can ever recall being. Of course, I don’t always have to feel proud of my government (I rarely am) to be proud of my country, but that is to a large extent what I love so much about the place. Is there any room left in the concept of ‘patriotism’ for the deep appreciation of the freedoms and independence of thought that the states are at least supposed to embody, and that they do embody in their finer moments?
March 19th, 2008 22:16
[...] the comments below, David Stearns asks: Is there any room left in the concept of ‘patriotism’ for the deep [...]
March 20th, 2008 11:49
The reason patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels is that it works brilliantly; American jingoism does little but give their ilk aid and comfort.
March 25th, 2008 15:34
“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it.” - Mark Twain.
Sorry to sound a bit facile about it, but being both patriotic and reasonable is not inherently inconsistent. That is, unless you hold that every bit of government comes at the expense of personal liberty - which I think is nonsense and which Charles Kesler eloquently discusses here in a recent speech he gave on limited government:
From a certain point of view—let’s call it, for shorthand purposes, the libertarian point of view, or the view associated this year with Ron Paul—every dollar that government spends comes at the cost of freedom. The premise of this view is that government and freedom are opposites—that all government is oppression. By this way of thinking, limited government is simply limited oppression, differing in magnitude but not in kind from tyranny. Interestingly, this notion does not come originally from any libertarian thinker or friend of freedom. It comes from Machiavelli, the great analyst of open and hidden power, of force and fraud. From Machiavelli’s point of view, there’s no difference between just and unjust government, which are the same phenomenon called by different names. All government, whether considered to be just or unjust, is oppression. Just government is the kind we happen to agree with and profit from, and unjust is the opposite kind.
Against this view stand the American Founders and the greatest statesmen, who have always sharply distinguished between just and unjust—or between free and tyrannical—forms of government. What is the Declaration of Independence but a great meditation on the difference between the absolute despotism contemplated by King George III and the freedom that the Americans hoped to enjoy under their own form of self-government? The Declaration does not proclaim that just government is merely less oppressive than unjust government—as if the American republic and, say, Nazi Germany were separated only by degrees of tyranny. Our ancestors thought that republican governments like ours were good because, grounded in human nature and operating by law and consent, they affirmed human liberty. Though fundamentally devoted to the protection of our natural rights, such governments, especially at the local level, might also provide instruction in morality, because republican habits and customs are needed to shape a republican citizenry who can keep government limited, and who have the character to make liberty something good and enduring
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Read the whole thing here: http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp
March 29th, 2008 21:58
[...] Will Wilkinson does get this much right: The kerfuffle over Barack Obama’s pastor is in large part about whether the man is patriotic enough. [...]
March 30th, 2008 05:59
[...] 30, 2008 An interesting exchange between Larison and Will Wilkinson on the question of wether or not Obama will be seen as [...]
April 1st, 2008 12:28
Proud and enthusiastic patriotism isn’t the problem. The problem is unbridled capitalism manipulating patriots.