The interesting thing is that the moral universalism that Harry B wants emphasized over patriotism, is very close to a scaled down american patriotism without borders:

Its just all men have inalienable rights with more emphasis on the “all” part.

Borders are just so last millenium.

Flip dismissals don’t add up to a rebuttal. My point remains unanswered.

Sure, same as so called ‘soviet patriotism’. But why would you call commitment to an abstract doctrine ‘patriotism’? Sounds more like ‘dogmatism’ or something…

European-style patriotism is based first on foremost on blood and birth. This has been somewhat muted and concealed since WWII made blood-nationalism suspect, but not as much as you might think. (I believe all identity-cards in Germany to this day have to include a code for your ethnic group. Greece just had a big debate over whether or not to continue requiring your religion on your ID card.) In many ways, nothing in Europe has replaced the loyalty to a royal dynasty (Hapsburgs, etc.)that once held together (shakily) a melange of feuding ethnic groups.

The EU certainly won’t do it; it’s already mostly dead, and I predict it will be quietly interred within a few years.

The other European reality is a commitment to the state as uber-parent.

American patriotism is not like that. It’s a commitment to a set of ideas and institutional arrangements, embodied in a constitution, the rule of law, and a very few “sacred” things and places (like the copies of the Constitution and Arlington National Cemetery).

Of course we have had racists, blood-nationalists, and European-style advocates of a parent-state, too, but the American idea has also been the basis for challenging these things.

American patriotism is not generic; it’s fundamentally different from that of the rest of the world. If that’s “exceptionalist,” so be it. In no European country would Nixon have lost office simply because he contravened the Constitution. Chirac commits greater enormities than Nixon every year, and it’s business as usual for France. It’s well known that if Chirac didn’t have the immunity from prosecution (!) the French head of state enjoys, he would be in jail for fraud, corruption and embezzlement. And no one over there (except for a few political opponents) even thinks that’s a big deal.

If European intellectuals from Derrida to Habermas can understand how American patriotism is different, why don’t some of the posters here get it? The millions of people who flock to our shores understand these things quite well. They’re not immigrating to be Democrats or Republicans, but Americans.

I always wondered why some of my lefty friends refused to display the American flag because only “jingoists” do. I ask them: So you’re willing to “give” the American flag to George Bush and the Republican Party? Displaying of not displaying the flag should say nothing about your views on Iraq or anything else.

Coda: A colleague of mine has spent years photographing and displaying photos of German churches (Catholic, Lutheran and Evangelical) in the Missouri River valley. He got some money from the German cultural attache to support his work. But when he asked about bring them to Germany, he was told this: “I don’t think you’ll get that much interest. Germans regard those people who left [i.e., in the waves of 19th-century emigration] as social trash and not really interesting.”
—After all this time! And despite the fact that we kicked their butts twice with their “rejects.” The rate of enlistment was highest among German-Americans.

And YES, we should be teaching these things! Why isn’t that a no-brainer?

It is rumoured that people in other countries may not all think quite as highly of our country as we do. Why do you think this might be?

Candidates who make a genuine effort to consider this possibility at length will automatically fail. The best answers will be confined to one or two sentences. The highest credit will be given to candidates who answer contemptuously and especially to those who are able to marshall clichés and absurdities in support of their opinions. Credit will also be given to those who indignantly reject the premise of the question as offensive or irrelevant. Candidates may wish to bring to bear historical ignorance they have developed through their lack of study of other papers. An ideal answer to this question would exhibit abuse of English words such as “freedom” combined with a pathological inability to comprehend the motivations of other human beings.

Essays (min 500 words):

Why is America so darned peachy?

Explain why living elsewhere would be unthinkable.

Answer the question: If we are so bad, why do they hate our freedom?

Or multiple guess (circle all that apply)

Sure, we invaded Iraq but we did not

a) participate in the Thirty Years’ War.
b) start WWI.
c) render the League of Nations impotent.
d) invade Poland.

Jackson’s Indian policy may have been misguided but

a) many Americans now feel badly about it.
b) casinos abound.
d) yeah, well Armenians, Jews, and Huguenots.
e) Remember the Alamo, er except for Tejano participation.

Optional Extra Credit:
List three Patriotic acts you performed today, and neither recycling nor enger conservation count.

The concensus regarding legitimacy of teaching patriotism may be explained by the fact that it appeals both of the dominant moral systems, what George Lakoff refers to as Strict Father and Nururant Parent moral systems. I assume the strict father support of patriotism makes sense to you, its the whole-hearted support of the nurturant parent crowd that surprises you.

I would guess that patriotism, despite its war-mongering potential, still represents the responsibility and community themes that are central to the nurturant parent morality.

Or maybe its just that almost everyone thinks that “us” are better than “them”. Everything else is just choosing sides. (Darn there goes the strict father, life is competition meme again.)

you;d be very hard put to find more than a smattering of people willing to teach that the US is evil in our institutions of higher ed; still harder put in high schools. Lots of people oppose US imperialism. most of them are patriots, just as most British opponents of British imperialism were. Really; what is extraordinary to me (as a Brit) is how much consensus there is among educators of right and left on the legitimacy of teaching patriotic sentiment. I agree with you, and other, by the way, that there is something more innocent about the ideas around which American patriotism is organised than those around which, say, English patriotism is organised.

marcus stanley—that is a great idea (and yes, what a good discussion). Any chance of my book being one of the texts?

To my mind the most important issue is how we shape patriotism. I don’t think that public schools really have the choice not to teach patriotism, if you leave the field on such a powerful and important emotion to the jingoists then you are asking for disaster. I also agree with Peter that patriotism is a positive thing in certain ways. The question is how you can shape patriotism so it is in a critical tradition of holding one’s country to certain ideals vs. raw, unquestioning loyalty. And then how do you agree on those ideals. The fact that the “critical tradition” of patriotism has gotten associated with ideals that people think of as particular to one political party is a big issue in U.S. politics right now. And that’s not because most of those ideals are in themselves so questionable, but because the other party has chosen to emphasize a jingoist ideology.

There is a big difference between `teaching that the United States is an evil country’, and teaching accurate history, or avoiding blind patriotism (or worse, jingoism). You can study the mistakes made along with the triumphs, the failure to live up to ideas along with the ideals itself, no? Noting that a country has done evil and or stupid things as well as great things (to use a problematic terminology, but I’m just following along) is hardly judging it evil, right?

Oh, and if you feel that the nations finest institutions of higher learning education are full of (or even contain a significant number, e.g. `many’) people teaching that the US is evil, you are pretty much out to lunch, as far as I can see. So no, it wouldn’t be an issue, if some people weren’t dead set on pretending it were true, against all evidence….