We do not mean, as some on the Christian Right do, that our country was singled out by God to advance His purpose in the world.
As is typical, though, for sane but ideological liberals, it’s clearer what we don’t believe than what we do believe. What might we believe?
- We celebrate the progressive achievements of this country. At its founding, the United States of America represented a democratic and progressive hope to the world. We strive to preserve and advance that hope.
- We celebrate the remarkable culture that is peculiarly American and shared throughout the world. Jazz and Hollywood come to mind.
- We celebrate the particular people that we live next door to, that we share our lives with.
- We are proud of our traditions of innovation and experimentation.
Please share widely!
What I love most about this post is that you panned Christianity (sort of), but exalted Hollywood. Even though I have no idea what he looks like, I can just picture Peter Porcupine fuming, saying, “See? This is what I’m talking about!”
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Mostly I agree with you K. There are a great many things I love about our country that, right now, are hard to talk about given the way the 21st Century has gone so far for the United States. But I do believe that we would do our country, and liberals everywhere, a service by talking about what we love about our country without tearing down the current administration, or the Christian right. After all, one of the great things about our government, you must concede, is that we’re allowed to have a Christian right to begin with.
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We should also be willing to admit – indeed proclaim – as liberals, that not everything our government does is ipso facto immoral.
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I think the first step toward reclaiming the term “patriotism” from the right is to be able to use the word unashamedly, and admit that you are patriotic and you do love this country, without qualification.
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So, let’s talk this fourth of July about the things we love about America, rather than the things we do not.
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I love the fact that my family is here and we’ve been allowed to prosper here, and pursue, happiness wherever that might lead us.
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Anyone else?
I wasn’t panning Christianity. I was referring to the segment of right-wing Christians who have taken American exceptionalism and made it theology. They see the USA as a successor to the Jews of the Old Testament, namely as God’s chosen instrument. They have a very special and unusual sort of patriotism particularly distant from that expressed by liberal lovers of this land of ours.
And here I thought that was my main point of my diary! Well, uh, thanks for agreeing with me, I think.
What might we believe?
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Well, having posted a comment yesterday on dKos that eschews the idea of American exceptionalism as a positive notion, I guess I’d have to go with this:
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In the classroom, I’ve conducted many discussions on the difference between nationalism and patriotism because young people generally aren’t familiar with the concept of nationalism. Once, however, they grasp the difference between the two concepts, many are emboldened to speak and to think in ways they previously believed to be “unpatriotic.” Responsible citizens must be able to separate the two in order to make informed and sound decisions when it matters most.
to put a little spring in your step.
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Do you point out to these youg and impressionable people the reverence that our fore bears had for their God , as they recognized him, and as a result structured the foundations of this country on that concept? The Bill of Rights and the US Constitution being two documents that arose from that concept?
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It was good for our country in the past , but no longer serves a purpose and in fact is discriminatory, divisive, noninclusive, sexist, racist, homophobic, exclusive, classist . I may have left one of the “isms” out inadvertently. From a shining star in the universe of mankind, progressives now perceive America as a cancer..
Happy Fourth of July. Enjoy it, the Islamo-fascists will be arriving soon and you may give them the keys to the city. That will be the last Fourth of July.
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There are a lot of reasons why I wouldn’t do that, chief among them is I don’t teach history. And take a zero for the gratuitous “poisoning” comment. Happy 4th to you!
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I’ve never really thought about the 4th as a celebration of the present, as much as a celebration of our history. Each year, read the Declaration of Independence. Think about the courage of the people who put their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor on the line by declaring the independence of the 13 colonies. They were the colonial elites of their day, and had everything to lose.
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As much as the signers, think of the courage of the ordinary men and women who stood up to the most powerful army of the day. Farmers and merchants left their farms and businesses to fight. The country plunged into economic turmoil-real life and death hardship for ordinary people. It took decades for some parts of the country to recover from the disruption of the revolution. History books tend to focus on the men who fought the battles, but historical records show women running farms, engaging in business, and standing up to the British. Many people (not all, of course), put aside their short term comfort to create a new, independent country.
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There’s certainly a lesson we can draw today from the courage of the colonists and their leaders. Today, our leaders create a culture of fear, of paralysis and passive compliance with what our founders surely would have seen as the same kind of “injuries and usurpations” they railed against in the Declaration.
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There’s a lot to be happy about on the 4th. I only wish it included the present as well as the past.
military of the time but they also stood up against the most powerful corporation–the British East India Company.
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Many of the founders spent their fortunes in rebellion and ended up broke.
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They weren’t perfect – no one is – but it is an awesome legacy to keep in mind when when standing up to the oligarchs.
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It’s nice to be able to remind jingoistic relatives who diss Massachusetts the revolution started here – not in Texas
Among these is John Hancock, he of the conspicuous signature, and one of the wealthiest men in the colonies before the Revolution. After the Revolution, he had difficulty paying taxes because he was broke, and the Commonwealth, not being particularly sentimental, seized his land, which was (and still is) the most prime real estate in Boston. Rather than conduct a forced sale of the property, the Commonwealth chose to use the land:
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In Gore’s Assault on Reason, he makes the very interesting point that one always trades in some safety for the sake of liberty. To live in fear is to want to live under a benevolent tyrant. Proud, liberal Americans immediately recognize that as un-American.
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Courage and liberty have a very deep linkage.
I thank you, and demolisher, for bringing it up.
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Our nation is founded on a liberal ideal: The philosphical underpinnings of the our organic institutions were, and are, truly liberal documents. As with any ideal, we necessarily fail to reach it, and our entire history has been consumed with a struggle to realize the ideal. We have not yet done so.
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Yes, it is true that, on the right wing, “patriotism” assumes a flavor of chauvanistic militarism. But the fashion on the left to vituperatively eschew patriotism is no less simple minded and no less odious.
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In my view, this Wednesday we celebrate the founding a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” and that government can be “of the people, by the people, for the people” and does not require the supervision of a monarch and aristocracy. We contemplate the progess that has been made– as recently as this last month– toward this ideal during the last 231 years. And we resolve to protect our imperfect experiment from those–from both within AND without– who would prefer to see liberty withdrawn from various subsets of the people.
wrote that column in response to the “bomb Afghanistan into a parking lot” mentality that was sweeping the nation immediately following 9/11. Did you check the date on the article? She is not “vituperatively eschewing” patriotism at all. She, however, like Zinn, knows “simple minded” and “odious” nationalism wrapped in a flag when she sees it, and 9 days after 9/11 it was manifest across this nation in the form of the American flag.
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Your characterization of her sentiments on patriotism based on one column written in New York City 9 days after 9/11 is a bit unfair, don’t you think?
That column sticks out in my memory as a partciularly egregious example of the left’s (or at least the academic left’s) utter contempt and loathing for most Americans. It sticks out in my mind precisely because of the date of its publication. I read first on first on the Staten Island Ferry around Halloween, after attending the funeral of a former classmate killed on 9/11.
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What’s more, the article absolutely drips with contempt for those New Yorkers who chose to display unity at that time by displaying the flag of their country which had just been attacked.
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That the column was opposing not a war in Iraq, but a war in Afghanistan against the regime that supported and aided those who perpetrated the attack just cements that the writer’s knee-jerk response for anything that i9s wrong, anywhere, is that it Must be Our Fault Because We’re Evil.
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So, no, I don’t think my description was unfaor. If anything, it was charitable.
Good thing this is still America where people with differing or dissenting views and opinions can still articulate their views without being called names, labeled unpatriotic, or have their views intentionally mischaracterized for someone else’s rhetorical purposes.
I missed the drips of contempt. There was only one offense. A sentence in the penultimate paragraph can be convicted of contempt.
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I thought that her comments at the start about the multiple meanings that the flag had in November 2001 were balanced and nuanced. Some of the little vignettes were touching even. Expressing patriotism in a time when there is a lot of fear and revenge in the air has a different effect from expressing patriotism in peaceful, hopeful times.
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Her history of U.S. support for the Islamist oppononents of the Soviet-backed Afghani government did not stray into fantasy or into an orgy of blame-America-for-everything. Her doubts about the Afghan war seemed reasonable to me and were inexpressible politically at the time. While the Afghan war did dislodge Al Qaeda, it has not created a stable Afghan government and the problems with warlords and the lack of rights for women persist.
I always thought of exceptionalism as a kind of kinship pride in the same way that one may feel like they have the best family in the world even though you know it really isnt true.
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I remember listening to a report on “Manifest Destiny” in junior high and thinking WTF it sounds like a fancy excuse for murder and plunder.
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bemoaning the USA’s loss of standing in global popular culture
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http://thephoenix.co…
I stumbled upon this opinion the other day in the Amherst Bulletin that I’d like to share.
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“This Fourth of July, let’s consider an alternative to patriotism: matriotism”.
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Article: “Matriotism on July 4” By JESSE SCHWALBAUM
http://www.amherstbu…
Just sprained my eyeballs rolling them heavenward.
Just sprained my eyeballs rolling them heavenward.
There’s more in common between some of my liberal bretheren and my Catholic bretheren than either group would like to admit: both are obsessed with flogging themselves for their original sins at every opportunity.
…there’s no harm in re-posting this one day early for my friends!
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http://capecodporcup…
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(I think of myself as the new Art Buchwald, with his Pelerins and Peux-Rouges!)
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Ed – Hollywood is a big place. It takes in Mr. Smith and his DC trip, and the Passion of the Christ, as well as Porky’s (unfortunate name!) and Hostel II. What we DO need to ‘own’ is the impact our process of free speech and unregulated conversation have upon the rest of the world, especially via our megamillion dollar entertainment industry, who cannot fathom it and think us little better than pornographers. If I were a terorist, I’d blow up Disneyland as an icon of that industry.
You’d better have an alibi if something ever happens to Disney! They’re going to have your mug up on their security screens every time you try and get in there now.
A pipe bomb did explode at Disney yesterday. Hmmm….
…placed by a terrorist of the same Keystone variety as those in England and Scotland a few days ago, and even Germany a few months ago.
I’m a full citizen in 1 state (MA). I was voted off the island of potential full citizenship in my natal state of MI. I do very much appreciate the good, even great things Americans have accomplished. But somehow I just don’t feel much like flag waving on the 4th, when the flag doesn’t wave for me too.
It’s not a perfect world. You could have drawn the short straw and been born in Afghanistan Iraq, Saudi or another garden spot exponentially less tolerant than Good Ole USA.
And of course, someone will immediately tell me I hate America because I recognize there are some other places that are better at least some things.
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You don’t have to be a flag waver to love your country. And truthfully, loving your country is not a requirement for citizenship. Maybe the rest of the country has to ‘suck it up’ if we have citizens who have suffered enough in some way they can’t love the country they are part of.
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I personally will be celebrating the fourth, and admiring the great principles our country was founded upon. However, it will require I don’t think of a lot of the crap ‘we’ have been out there doing though- a lot of stuff that I would call evil and that is being done in MY name as citizen. Instead I’ll focus on how many poeple are with me in outrage these days.
Is it possible, or even desirable to be patriotic when the people directing our country are assaulting reason and right around the world? I know folks who can’t bear to sing the national anthem because “bombs bursting in air” reminds them of Tikrit and Baghdad. It’s tough to be proud of your country when there’s so little to be proud of.
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But I truly believe our country is better than the slime in the White House. I believe that if the United States can survive the Articles of Confederation, the Great Depression, and the Civil War, it can survive this boy-king. There are times the United States feels like Russia — a proud people with a rich history and spectacular culture, deserving of a far better government than it currently has.
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For the reasons mentioned here, and here, there’s a lot of reasons to fly the flag. Sure, people are all atwitter about the iPhone, but Americans are driving the project of an ultra-cheap laptop for the Third World. And yes, we have abdicated our role as good offices in the Middle East, but the United States was instrumental in bringing peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
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My country is more than the rudderless, moralless parasites on the top. It’s 300 million people represented by our flag, most of whom are hard-working, hard-caring people who innovate and celebrate. From Babylon to the Prussians, the greatest world powers usually use their might to persecute, expand, and conquer. The US has been an exception to that, mainly because of the good intentions of its people, and the firm and strong foundation laid by our Founders. I’m proud of my country because it’s bigger and better than any one administration, and I refuse to let their decisions stain that pride.
Winston Churchill once said that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others” and I would add that American democracy which we celebrate tommorrow is similarly the least evil of all the government that preceded it. In fact if anything things like slavery, imperialism, jim crow, and certainly in the modern era like the Patriot Act, the National Security Agency, and Guantanamo are all blemishes on the fabric of that once great and mighty idea of America.
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That said there are many things to still be proud of, local governments, especially here in New England, are by far the most open and accountable local governments on Earth. Federalism has with one glaring exception during the Civil War worked, the checks and balances system have worked magnificently, even would be trials like Watergate turned into a triumph of our very system.
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We are still a nation of immigrants, and though assimilation and acceptance has always been resisted that resistance shall always be overcome. We remain ever more socially progressive and live up the fine liberal tradition of John Stuart Mill by always questioning social norms and either tearing down useless or constrictive ones or reforming others to be more inclusive.
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The Bush presidency has been a diaster, but increasingly most Americans realize that and I am confident that the next President from either party will have a mandate to not only reverse these mistakes but implement bold new policies to ensure that messes like that don’t happen again.
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Out of the darkness shall emerge new light and I couldn’t be prouder to be an American. Tommorrow I shall journey up to Salem with my family as I do every year, with a parade completely devoted to the ideals of free speech. Anyone can join, things as innocent as children dressing up as their favorite movie characters to the most offensive satire one could think of, all are allowed and open during this parade. To me nothing can honor the sacrifice of our veterans more, the sacrifice of civil rights workers, underground railroad members, or the thousands of people that through their own actions and independent spirit moved this country forward and made it more free. As an experiment in democratic and free government we are constantly evolving, and ours is an evolving Constitution not one set in stone, and through that framework we can and will live to see the expansion of rights, the expansion of democratic government, and the expansion of progress here and across the world because history has shown and demanded nothing less.
[This song describes what patriotism means to me -ed.]
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What is America to me?
A name, a map, or a flag I see;
A certain word, democracy.
What is America to me?
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The house I live in,
A plot of earth, a street,
The grocer and the butcher,
Or the people that I meet;
The children in the playground,
The faces that I see,
All races and religions,
That’s America to me.
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The place I work in,
The worker by my side,
The little town or city
Where my people lived and died.
The howdy and the handshake,
The air and feeling free,
And the right to speak my mind out,
That’s America to me.
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The things I see about me,
The big things and the small,
The little corner newsstand,
And the house a mile tall;
The wedding and the churchyard,
The laughter and the tears,
And the dream that’s been a-growing
For a hundred-fifty years. [For o’er two hundred years – ed.]
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The town I live in,
The street, the house, the room,
The pavement of the city,
And the garden all in bloom;
The church, the school, the clubhouse,
The million lights I see,
But especially the people;
That’s America to me.
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The house I live in,
My neighbors white and black,
The people who just came here,
Or from generations back;
The town hall and the soapbox,
The torch of liberty,
A home for all God’s children;
That’s America to me.
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The words of old Abe Lincoln,
Of Jefferson and Paine,
Of Washington and Jackson
And the tasks that still remain;
The little bridge at Concord,
Where Freedom’s fight began,
Our Gettysburg and Midway
And the story of Bataan.
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The house I live in,
The goodness everywhere,
A land of wealth and beauty,
With enough for all to share;
A house that we call Freedom,
A home of Liberty,
And it belongs to fighting people
That’s America to me.
And so did Frank Sinatra. Both the lyricist and composer were major lefties.
Gary Hart
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“And Our Posterity”
Posted July 3, 2007 | 11:58 PM (EST)
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Conservatives believe in self?reliance, hard work, and individualism. We are each to look out for ourselves and our families and not rely on others, particularly the state, for economic security. This has been the dominant political philosophy since the age of Reagan and, with the notable exception of the age of Roosevelt, say 1932 until 1968, the public philosophy throughout most of U.S. history.
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Conservatives have allowed for the U.S. government to provide national security and, with few exceptions, seem happy to pay taxes to finance it even at extraordinarily high levels by comparative international standards. Otherwise, we are pretty much in this for ourselves.
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This philosophy meets with one exception, however, and it happens to be the Constitution of the United States. In its preamble the people of the United States establish the Constitution to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty “to ourselves and our posterity.”
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continued
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http://www.huffingto…