Home of the crazed

I enjoy Independence Day because it always involves the Three B's -- barbecue, beer, and bug spray. But it's hard to be politically radical on the Fourth of July, when fireworks are toxic to the environment, alcohol consumption increases the abuse of women and children, and there's red, white, and blue everywhere. What's a liberal girl to do?

That last one is only a recent concern of mine. Old Glory never made me nervous until after September 11, when I began to see how quickly patriotism can become antithetical to intellectual growth and social betterment.

1) Patriotism is a form of national identity that requires a belief in the uniqueness of one's own nation and precludes global identity. To love America one need not believe in its superiority, but certainly in a singular goodness which other countries, by default, must not share -- which is simply false. Every country -- indeed every group -- is a mix of the pleasant and the unpleasant, the visionary and the destructive. America produced Abraham Lincoln. It also produced Bob Dornan.

2) Patriotism relies on symbols because it lacks substantive objects. The patriot's claims to love America is foolishness because "America" is a political construct, not a thing. One can appreciate the landscape, yet there's virtually no geological difference between San Diego and Tijuana or Toronto and Detroit. One can meet kindly Americans or inhospitable ones. It's possible to claim an affinity for culture, history, or even one's own home, but this usually speaks more to familiarity than genuine preference. It's no more feasible to love America than it is to love time, space, or any other mental concept that does not tangibly exist.

Thus the rituals of patriotism rely on symbolism -- pledging allegiance or singing "God Save the Queen." Such symbols are meaningless upon deconstruction because they are symbols of other symbols which never come to rest on a substantive object or event except in the most personal senses, in which case it has little relevance to the public square.

3) In the absence of such objects or events, patriotism requires a devotion to vague, and often false, national qualities. Again, what's lacking is empiricism. America leads the world in rural electrification and inexpensive, efficient postal service with the highest and most accurate delivery rates for the lowest cost in the world. Patriots never talk about this. They talk about "freedom" and "democracy" -- either without a working definition or with one of questionable veracity. Discussion of such concepts requires specificity and certainly discussion should be a prerequisite to devotion.

What does "freedom" mean exactly to an American? It means I probably won't be shot at dawn for writing this. It also means the FBI will investigate you as a national security risk if you check the wrong book out of the library.

What about "democracy"? It means some national leaders are chosen by majority vote and legislators are highly accessible to their constituents. It also means that national health care, stem cell research, and gay marriage are repeatedly blocked in Congress even though a majority of Americans support these things.

But patriotism flails under such measurable scrutiny that reveals the murky nature of the day-to-day revelations of vague concepts. Patriotism doesn't simply look at the world through rose-colored glasses; it blindly adores pink just on principle.



But all of this begins to take itself a bit too seriously. To bring this up during the fireworks show would be a real bummer. Besides, it wouldn't really matter. If patriotism were just good clean fun or mawkish sentimentalism, then this discussion is just a killjoy. But patriotism has some weighty and destructive social consequences.

4) Patriotism promotes competition at the expense of cooperation. If America is the harbinger of uniquely good values, then it follows that other countries are either less deserving of material comfort, conveniences, or human rights or that they should accept our uniquely good values in order to get them.

This plays out more like childish egocentrism than a superiority complex. Even Americans who can readily concede that Venezuelans or Palestinians are people too, struggle to believe that Venezuela or Palestine should have the right to elect leaders whom the American president says do not further American goals. The struggle of workers in southeast Asia is distanced from the struggle of workers in America. They're foreigners, not like us. They must not have what we have and maybe they don't deserve it either.

5) Patriotism functions like a drug used to numb unpleasant emotions. September 11 generated a lot of pain, rage, grief, and fear. Unable to express these feelings, Americans grabbed for their flags like alcoholics for the bottle. Banding together in an identity-soaked froth brought relief, hope, security, and a sense of connection - as fleeting and insubstantial as a high, perhaps, but nonetheless real. Anything that threatened the supply of the red, white, and blue drug (such as criticizing Bush, war, or American response) left Americans as defensive, angry, and agitated as any strung-out junkie jonesing for their next fix.

6) Patriotism creates false dichotomies. It requires one to either love or hate with nothing in between. Last September, Bush declared that "you are either with [America] or you're with the terrorists." There's no room to love the Bill of Rights and hate the drug war or debate the finer points of legislation or foreign policy. Such a world is comprised of diametrically opposed groups: saved versus unsaved, patriot versus terrorist. A paradigm that has historically killed more people worldwide than cancer.

7) In short, there is no room in this for intellectual, thinking human beings. The logical conclusion (and the most dangerous outcome of patriotism) is the totalitarianism of thought itself. Not only are some people against America and for the terrorists, but some thoughts are as well. Patriotism is intemperate, whereas the pursuit of knowledge requires the mental flexibility to recognize that good and evil reside in all entities, that nothing is pure.

Patriotism is anti-intellectual to the extent that how much one can know is circumscribed in order to maintain unfailing support in the face of reason. It doesn't matter that the Pledge of Allegiance was written by a socialist minister who was thrown out of his own church for being too politically radical. It doesn't matter that the earliest American ideas and writings, from Jefferson to Paine, were heavily influenced by Rennaissance thought, European anarchism, and the governing charter of the Iriquois (which our Constitution mirrors in content). It is more patriotic to believe we are a Christian nation "under God." So history be damned; it's un-American.

Patriotism needs heroes to adore and scoundrels to revile. The hero's words and actions merit unquestioned support. (Recall that when California Representative Barbara Lee voted against attacking Afghanistan immediately after September 11, was not criticized for being wrong, but for "not supporting the president.") In this dichotomy, to "love America" is to offer such support and to "hate America" is to withdraw it -- to disagree. Certainly this is not a stage set for anything resembling intellectual discourse.

In light of this, I propose global citizenship. To place our identity and affections with living creatures, not borders. To make the struggles and triumphs of people who live far as important as those who live near. To remember that everyone is a sinner and a saint. To maintain the only real freedom that can never be taken from us, which is the freedom to think and reason.

In the meantime, pass the beer and Roman candles. Even global citizens know how to party.

Response to reader comments:

I wrote this in July 2002, at which time "patriotism" and "nationalism" in the US were virtually indistinguishable in the wake of September 11. A number of reviewers have pointed that I should have taken greater pains to distinguish between the two and I think they're right to the extent that they are two different things -- but they weren't at the time I wrote this.

As a result, I think some aspects of this have grown outdated as the country has somewhat calmed down in the last eight years. But some aspects are still timely.

Certainly not all patriotic Americans believe the US is without fault. But American exceptionalism is part of our culture, so I would argue that American patriots are more inclined to take the view that, if America did it, it can't possibly wrong -- a view still encouraged among Christian nationalists (i.e. usually Biblical literalists who believe America is uniquely some kind manifestation of God's will; one common view among these groups, for example, is that the anti-Christ cannot possibly be American because, naturally, Americans are just too perfect).

I didn't say America itself is just an idea (though national borders are a construct and a relatively capricious one); I said patriotism relies on the idealization of symbols. This commitment to symbolism is important because it's in the quotidian that the tawdry dwells.

I'm very patriotic, for example, about the First Amendment. But, if I study it long enough, there are plenty of problems in its precedent and application and suddenly it ceases to be a big, grand idea and becomes...a pretty good law. But one doesn't usually wave flags and tear up, awash in weirdly transcendent love, over....a pretty good law. That requires idealization; appreciation can remain more realistic.

And I think that should be good enough. We shouldn't need these grand ideas in order to feel proud of or happy with our native countries, much of which is probably more reliant on familiarity than anything else (especially for notoriously less-traveled Americans, although I have pointed out to Europeans that some of this is just the sheer size of the US -- Europeans can much more easily travel to other countries because EU countries are smaller than many US states).

I do think American patriots have more sense of privilege than others. Largely cultural or a factor of our enormous national wealth, but, nonetheless, a factor -- and one that doesn't facilitate our ability to play well with others. In fact, one needn't even identify as particularly patriotic to exhibit this kind of behavior. Americans have a shocking capacity to believe we're the only people on the planet who matter (or who live in a democracy or whose legal system respects the rule of law or fill in whatever benevolent characteristic of Western society).

In short: We desperately need to get over ourselves.

Patriotism-as-a-drug is arguably the most outdated point in this. After September 11, that was true to the point where it frightened me. It was nationalistic; there was no distinction. There are still pockets in society who continue to behave this way, but there are pockets of nationalist fanatics all over the world and I no longer see this as uniquely American or especially widespread anymore.

We've come back to earth now, even if a lot of our countrymen still don't seem to realize that people are being killed in these kinds of violent acts all over the world. The mentality still exists that there was something unique about September 11, simply because it happened to us. (One of the first pop country songs written after September 11 referred to it as "when the world stopped turning" and that resonated with a lot of Americans because...we think we are the whole world.)

Again, we need to get over ourselves.

Patriotism in its most benign sense is just the appreciation of one's country of origin or country of adoption. There's nothing wrong with that and most people are probably capable of waxing poetic about something and then going on with their lives.

But it's interesting to me that, even well after September 11, this essay continues to irritate Americans, even those for whom patriotism is not a central part of their identity. Because we're still weaned on that sense of exceptionalism, which I still think is rooted in a false dichotomy and intrinsically anti-intellectual.

Sure, eight years later, it's now possible to criticize America without being accused of being...well, an infidel, basically (there's not much difference between American nationalism and Islamism, really). But the exceptionalist attitude still fosters an arrogant stupidity.

Patriotism isn't required, even in its most benign form, to evaluate the things America does well or has historically accomplished. However, if patriotism is assumed, it can be harder to honestly evaluate how other countries in the world operate and the ways in which they may do things better than we do or have historically accomplished more.

As the world becomes ever-smaller through trade and technology, I think global identification is more essential -- even if we all naturally tend to prefer our own countries best.


Oh, Jesus...Canadians who love America!

You have to admit there is a widespread "type" of American who idealizes Canada and Europe and a corresponding type of Canadian who holds America in the kind of dignified honor we think we inspire everywhere.

But I'm proving your point: America is the one kid on the playground that, whether you like it or not, will be in your face. I just see that as more of an historical anomaly than a quality to be admired.

Patriotism and nationalism blur so easily for Americans because the country isn't old enough to have realized that, when America's reign as superpower ends, that's most likely not the end of the country. And believing it would be betrays the kind of arrogance and self-absorbed privilege for which are we are stereotyped all over the world.

Incidentally, I don't believe that stereotype is true, although, like most stereotypes, it has a rudimentary basis in reality for the intellectually lazy. Americans do, broadly speaking, have a sense of entitlement and an appalling ignorance of other countries. But it's balanced by a charming (if credulous) optimism and a high value placed on honesty.

Not to mention, the US is so large that, while there is an overarching American culture (part of which is to deny that we have one), it has a tremendous number of subcultures. New York City and Wyoming feel like two different countries with a handful of tangential similarities.

While Detroit and Windsor do not -- now I'm proving my point: Borders are a political construct -- historically, a frightening one. Jews during World War II, for example, wrote about feeling more terror of a border than of the "rumors" that led to the Warsaw Uprising; borders were a tangible and more easily imaginable threat.

To elevate these borders, these constructs, to the level of quasi-worship is nationalism that some Americans are still calling patriotism -- just fewer than were doing so eight years ago.

We couldn't cope with September 11 because, unlike Europeans, we have no sense of the inconstancy of nation-states. Europeans have a cultural memory of destruction; Americans are completely shaped by our inability to imagine there ever being a day when, say, Nebraska no longer exists. We have the privilege of being able to say, "Oh, politics don't interest me," and not even realizing that's a factor of privilege.