It’s almost the Fourthof July: red, white, and blue color store windows, early (unauthorized) fireworks boom at night, and patriotism fills the air–leaving a sour taste in my mouth.
It’s not solely bitterness over the way conservatives cried “anti-patriotic” (stealing a page from McCarthy) to stifle dissent toward the Iraq War, the anticipated resulting disaster, and the tragedy of unnecessary death. Some might call this a “misuse” of patriotism, a manipulation for a corrupt political agenda. But I don’t think it’s a misuse at all: it reflects the essential nature of patriotism and what it’s used for.
Patriotism and nationalism divorce people from a sense of universal humanity. Sure, the well-being of friends and family is and should be more important to you than that of people you’ve never met–the ability to create these bonds of personal caring is fundamental to human nature. However, there’s little noble in determining one stranger’s life to be superior to another stranger’s based solely on their nationalities. It’s not personal connection or human feeling that creates this situation: it’s an us-versus-them, we-are-better-than-them, mentality, that treats members of other countries as subhuman.
Would over a hundred thousand dead Americans be an acceptable toll for the Iraq War in the eyes of the U.S. public? Doubtful–the few thousand American fatalities to date are seen as too much, and even in the much-protested Vietnam War we lost just half that number. Yet, over a hundred thousand Iraqi deaths are overlooked. That’s patriotism: believing the death of human beings means less if they hold a different passport from your own.
In response to a question regarding whether better means than torture exist for gaining intel, former CIA officer Michael Scheueur replied: “Why would you care? If we get the information we needed and America is better protected, who cares? …These are not Americans.” That’s nationalism. That’s patriotism.
As the 4th approaches, the American public is learningabout the 100 detainees who died under torture, while Obama considers an executive order that will allow him to continue the Guantanamo Bay practices of indefinite detention. Is this something to celebrate?
“Patriotism” is also the concept behind intolerant (sometimes violent) religious fundamentalism, just by another name; it draws from the same place as racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia. It’s about division.
We learn patriotism from the get-go, from idealized stories of the Revolutionary War taught in elementary school classrooms and children’s books. Especially in a democracy, war-mongering relies on patriotism and demonization of the other; domestic industry utilizes it to gain protective tariffs and subsides, and to wage economic warfare; and countries claim “sovereignty” to keep free of international agreements that would “bind” them” to serve a global well-being, ruining the potential of organizations like the United Nations.
I’ll love seeing the light show over the Hudson on Saturday, but let’s not swoon over a little razzle-dazzle. And if you’re desperate for a substitute for nationalistic patriotism on the 4th, think about becoming a card-carrying Citizen of the World. Hey–while he might not be registered, even Obama called himself a citizen of the world in Berlin last year. (Let’s hope he remembers.)
I disagree (as usual). I think what you describe is nationalism, not patriotism. I believe the two are different. I’m a big fan of this quote from Mark Twain: “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”
Twain’s quote doesn’t alter my stance. The problem is not simply nationalism; I’m uninterested in scapegoating the government. It’s the disturbing impact of patriotism on people–it’s not solely that dissent toward government injustice should be praised, but that patriotism, supporting one’s country, warps our sense of universal humanity. It lets people buy into perceiving the rest of the world as less human, demonstrated when they care less or not at all about the causality count or human rights of members of other countries.
I see the negative impact of patriotism–what’s the real benefit in supporting one’s country over the entire world? George Barnard Shaw comments: “Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.”
And from Paul Farmer, a memory from freshman year, “The only real nation is humanity.”
Semantics – What Shaw calls patriotism, I call nationalism.