Patriotism and Nationalism

At the end of a long post on David Gellertner essay on Disraeli, he comes to the subect of patriotism.

Gelertner writes:

Patriotism favors Republicans on a deeper level than many of them seem to realize. No one questions the personal patriotism of Democratic leaders. The real question is different: Where do you rank patriotism as a public virtue? Anyone who has looked at young people nowadays (in the Blue States especially) knows that, since we no longer teach them to be patriotic, many of these Blue State Specials no longer are. No country has the luxury of not speaking up for itself to its own children in its own schools. For a generation and more, we in the wealthy, influential, profoundly self-important Blue Regions have run our schools as if we were too sophisticated for any such low-brow, cornball drivel as teaching children to love their country. If this nation is serious about defeating terrorism, we must teach our children why we fight. From where I stand, we are not doing it--at least, not in Connecticut. The conservative party should be the national party, Disraeli said, and he knew what he was talking about.

Holbo replies:

Being patriotic is good, but the word Gelernter is reaching for is actually 'jingoism'. If this nation is serious about defeating terrorism, conservatives have to know that the reason why we fight is to defeat terror, not so that they can achieve an edge at the ballot box. After all, if no one questions the patriotism of Democratic leaders - and presumably their followers are also patriotic? - how could it be that Republicans are better at fighting terror, on grounds of patriotism? Is Gelernter saying the inhabitants of the coasts don't love America? (I should hope not.) The patriotism that favors Republicans - as opposed to patriotism that favors Americans  - is an electoral angle, not a tool against terror.

Leaving aside John's points, I think trying to pin the blame for this alleged problem on the schools is misleading. My elementary school was very much a school of the old school (little boys in ties and slacks, weekly Episcopal church services, cursive writing, multiplication tables) and its history curriculum did, in fact, go in for a reasonable amount of "love thy nation" type material. The problem was that it came across as, well, "low-brow, cornball drivel" even in seventh grade. It was too dissonant with the rest of one's upbringing among the progressive, cosmopolitan ironists of lower Manhattan. Even children notice that the other residents of their nice apartment building and the other attendants of their nice elementary school are overwhelmingly white people. And yet here are all these brownish people -- Puerto Ricans, West Indians, Costa Ricans -- cleaning everyone's houses, working behind deli counters, pushing the white kids' strollers, etc. Maybe if one's parents had different political leanings, this would all be explained as the natural order of things -- the white folks are just more entrepreneurial, or the black people are being held back by the "soft bigotry of low expectations" emanating from liberal bureacrats. But when one's parents are more inclined to explain such things as the living legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, etc., then these attitudes are internalized.

That's not to say you grow up learning to hate America, or even to dislike America, or even not to love America. It does, however, mean that this sort of "America: Fuck Yeah!" or "Rah, Rah, USA!" stuff winds up wringing a bit hollow. It's not part of your upbringing, not part of your local community, not rooted in your lived experience of the world. Just another weird thing the teacher or the men in suits on television say. "Why do they always sing that song before the baseball games start?" The nature of dad's answer to that question, and related ones, makes a great deal of difference. Something a textbook exposition of the virtures of James Madison can't really change. By contrast, an emotionally similar attitude to the sort of feeling Gelertner things we ought to invoke was, in fact, instilled with regard to New York City. Manhattannost, call it, after Lenin's partinost. If you've ever spoken to a native New Yorker, you know it. It's not the sense that New York City is a fun place to visit or a good place to live. It's not inconsistent with the recognition that the cost of living is appallingly high, the subway appallingly dirty, the non-Yankees sports teams consistently mediocre, the schools bad, (when I was young) the crime rate high, etc., etc., etc. It's simply the deep-seated conviction that New York City is the best place on earth and everyone living anywhere else is missing out.

Think of Woody Allen's irrational fears of LA in Annie Hall, a schtick that was reprised in the Seinfeld episodes when they visit the left coast. Obviously, everyone knows that life in Los Angeles is, in many ways, more pleasant than life in New York. The weather is better. You could get a bigger house. Etc. Manhattannost isn't about rational appreciation of the virtues of the city. It's about "New York: Fuck Yeah!" "Rah, Rah, NYC!" Nobody teaches this stuff explicitly. It grows naturally out of lived experience. Perhaps not for every New Yorker, but certainly for this New Yorker.

This is the sort of feeling Gelertner wants people to feel about America. Patriotism isn't quite the right word for it. As the pro-patriotic Alasdair MacIntyre has it in "Is Patriotism a Virtue?" (well worth a read if you can find a copy somewhere) the patriot has a kind of special concern for his country and its fate. This I certainly have, as does my father and just about every pomo leftwinger I know. We wish all the peoples of the world well, but we wish Americans especially well. If America has problems -- persistent injustices, say, or misguided foreign policies -- we want to correct those injustices and improve those policies. We care about our country, and we deeply appreciate its virtues and feel especially stung by its vices. This is the common denominator just about all Americans share across the board. People who didn't feel that way would have actually followed-up on the much-issued threat to move to Canada, France, wherever (people do, in fact, leave the country). But most of us stay. We care. We're patriots.

What we aren't, and what Gelertner wants us to be, are nationalists in the way that I was raised with the Manhattannost. The nationalist doesn't just have a special concern for his country. He has a kind of irrational attitude toward it. Like how Red Sox fans will scream -- perfectly sincerely -- "Yankees suck!" even when the Yankees, in fact, are a very skilled baseball team. But sports fans don't take an attitude of rational scrutiny toward their favorite team and its historical adversary. It would be contrary to the spirit of fandom. Now of course you can turn to the Red Sox fan and say, "actually, the Yankees have won all these baseball games, they're a very good team" and he won't say you're wrong. He's not an idiot, or blind to the facts. But the facts are beside the point. The nationalist, similarly, isn't unaware of his country's problems. He just doesn't really care. It's besides the point. The patriot feels a deep sense of shame when he finds out about Abu Ghraib and associated wrongdoings. "This is my country and look what's becoming of us." The nationalist hastens to note that the Syrians are worse, the French are hypocrites, and the leftists are only complaining about this because they didn't like the war on the first place so can't we move on please it was only a few bad apples and whatever atrocities may have happened on Guadalcanal hardly shows World War Two was a bad idea so let's shut up and move on why do you care so much about protecting the rights of terrorists anyway.

It's an attitude that's harmless enough, on its own terms. Life would be dull without irrational attachment to sports teams. Irrational attachment to city, neighborhood, state, peculiar folkways, etc. lends coherence to the personality. I think relatively few of us would want to move to Singapore, teach at a university there, and raise our kids in postmodern East Asia, even if in the course of things it seemed to suggest itself as the rational course of action. But competition in sports is friendly and bounded by rules. Except for the occassional riot after a fan throws a cup at a player's head, no real harm is done and a good time is had by all. The disdain of the New Yorker for Washington, Boston, or the airheads of the west coast is just a part of life, like the Texas pride of my roommates. In the international sphere, though, people get hurt. We have a tendency to settle our differences with bombs and bullets and torture. Sometimes, this really is the way to go. I'm no pacifist. It's a Hobbesian jungle out there and sometimes you've got to fight, and you've always got to be ready to fight. But when mistakes are made the consequences are, shall we say, rather severe. Corpses and missing limbs and so forth. It's the sort of thing you want to be applying a rational scrutiny to. A scrutiny shaped by a special love for one's own country, sure. But not the kind of love that blinds.

Patriotism, not nationalism. Though, yes, the fact that liberals tend not to be nationalists in a country where most people are holds us back. To most Americans, what John Kerry did in those Senate hearings after coming back from the war was very distasteful. Not because anyone really thinks Vietnam was a fantastic war in which no atrocities were committed, but just because even so nationalists don't think such things should be done. Dragging our country's name through the mud while the troops are in the field. Not very "rah, rah," that. It's a real problem.