Comments on: Contingency and solidarity

By: Geoff Robinson

Geoff Robinson — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:40:24 +0000

The Australian Social Attitudes Survey in 2003 found 83% would rather be a citizen of Australia than any other country (liberal nationalists?), but only 43% thought people from other countries should be more like Australians (conservative patriots?) and only 23% said support their country even if wrong.

By: stostosto

stostosto — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:38:39 +0000

Rome? Spot on. It's the Holy See! Immigrant population as percentage of state population United States is #40, squeezed in between Moldova and Germany. Patriotise that!

By: Righteous Bubba

Righteous Bubba — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 04:12:08 +0000

There’s one place in the world people can’t wait to get to, for all its faults.

Rome?

By: Superheater

Superheater — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:24:22 +0000

Specifically, I would say that liberals do a better job of recognizing that much as we may love America there’s something arbitrary about it—we’re just so happen to be Americans whereas other people are Canadians or Mexicans or French or Russian or what have you. The conservative view is more like those Bill Simmons columns where not only is he extolling the virtues of this or that Boston sports team or moment, but he seems to genuinely not understand why other people don’t see it that way. But of course Simmons is from Boston and others of us aren’t.

Yglesias has it wrong. Liberals don’t do a better job at anything and its not arbitrary. There’s one place in the world people can’t wait to get to, for all its faults.

What a jerk.

By: smaug

smaug — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:00:41 +0000

I’m not sure where the “American liberals are not patriotic” canard arose. I imagine it had to do with the protests against the US war in Vietnam. Conservatives have been critical of the US in its foreign and domestic practices, too (George Kennan was hardly a booster for much of US diplomacy; the conservative criticism of US popular culture is a mainstay of the movement).

I was w/ a fishing guide last weekend who volunteered for two tours in Vietnam as a demolitions expert, was a Chicago cop for 20 years, and then a security contractor for the USG in the off-season. He remarked that he was not a fan of the 4th of July—explosions and drunks didn’t strike him as cause for celebration.

By: Ponder Stibbons

Ponder Stibbons — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:59:01 +0000

Along the same lines the child analogy falls down – Ha! Ha! – when in fervent nationalism aspects of your nation are seen to be despicable. Few parents have a seething desire to amputate their child’s hand.

They may have a seething desire to be rid of some aspect of their child’s personality, though. I have parents who have never been able to accept my disregard for social customs.

By: engels

engels — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:35:24 +0000

This is pretty funny.

By: Righteous Bubba

Righteous Bubba — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:45:23 +0000

I’ll quote Eric Hobsbawm

By: engels

engels — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:33:26 +0000

Siva’s post is quite revealing because it emphasises how Siva’s American patriotism appears to be based in large part on a sense of gratitude for all the good things America has given him. This gets at one central feature of patriotism; that it has a great deal to do with one’s investment in the status quo. The kind of quiet love for England’s gentle countryside is something you are just slightly more likely to appreciate when you are driving through it in your Aston Martin. Pretty directly, then, making a big deal about patriotism is an effective way of stigmatising those who realise themselves to be victims of the current order of things, and giving a veneer of virtue to those who profit from it. Note that this would apply to the most understated forms of patriotism as to the cruder, flag-waving kinds.

Since people above have been wheeling out mots justes I’ll quote Eric Hobsbawm:

It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they’re not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans.

By: engels

engels — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:40:46 +0000

Iow is patriotism one thing which ‘looks different’ to people in different places, or just lots of different things? Is it necessary for someone who is sympathetic to some forms of anti-colonial patriotism to cut any slack to the US or English variety? Why do I have to have an opinion about ‘patriotism’ anyway?

By: engels

engels — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:57:01 +0000

Perhaps there’s not so much that can be said, in moral terms, about national and patriotism in the abstract? I am not sure that either term, in referring to a wide range of cultural and historical phenomena, denote something which is very uniform or cohesive. The kind of defensive nationalism that might be seen among a people struggling against invasion, colonisation or cultural assimilation seems to be a very different thing from that seen in a country which faces no such misfortunes and is perhaps imposing them on others. Maybe each instance of nationalism or patriotism can only be supported or opposed after considering its character, genesis and functional role and so it might not be inconsistent for someone to strongly oppose all manifestations of nationalism or patriotism in a stable, independent, developed country like England (and above all in the US) while supporting some instances in developing countries which may be struggling to liberate themselves from economic or military domination. But perhaps this would just show a lack of the political detachment and love of universal principle which is the first requirement of any system of thought that aspires to the status of political philosophy.

By: roger

roger — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:17:53 +0000

It is interesting how little reflection is done about the particular passion that is expressed by the word love in “love of country.”

Is this romantic love? Do people want to have sex with America? Robert Coover’s A Public Burning is all about a sexually charged Uncle Sam, who eventually does have sex with Richard Nixon. I’ve noticed that the more vociferously love for the country is proclaimed, the more that love takes a sadistic turn. In fact, sado-masochistic language is quite common in the lover’s discourse between patriot and country. Perhaps this has something to do with the problem of release. How can the patriot achieve orgasm, in this relationship, given that the country has a certain sexual intangibility? Its bodily form in dispersed among a truly paltry number of symbols.

So isn’t the real question for fourth of July – for the true patriot – how to make love to the nation without falling into the infinite spiral of cruelty and abjection characteristic of the S/M relationship? The frustrated patriot/lover, unable to obtain release positively, will of course try to obtain release negatively, pursuing orgasm through war and torture. That seems to be the usual route.

By: Down and Out of Sài Gòn

Down and Out of Sài Gòn — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:06:24 +0000

You have neglected to mention the left at all, the purpose of democratic politics is to represent all factions.

No, it isn’t. Democratic politics is there to represent as many people as possible. Factions are just people grouped together to maximise their representation in the process.

By: matt

matt — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:11:35 +0000

Tom Hurka said, Part of loving a particular person is thinking they’re better than they actually are, and part of loving a nation is thinking it’s better than it actually is.

That might be right on the person part, though I’m not sure even there, but it seems wrong to me on the nation part, even dangerously so. Shouldn’t we rather say that part of loving one’s nation, if it’s a good thing to be promoted, at least, is seeing it as it is but wanting it to be better, and thinking it can become so? If you think it’s better than it is you’re unlikely to be as motivated to make it better, for one thing. If one must believe lies to be a patriot (as, say, Keller implies) then perhaps it’s better to look for a different view. I’m not sure one must believe lies to have an acceptable form of love of country, but the acceptable form does seem to involve having as clear a view as one can about the true nature of the object in question.

By: Tom Hurka

Tom Hurka — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:04:34 +0000

1. Chris: You’d better not be calling me a communitarian—that’s a serious insult.

2. Nationalism looks different to people in states where it’s a defence against assimilation, either military or cultural. Hence its popularity among Israeli and Canadian academics. But the situation of facing assimilationist threats is hardly unique to those two countries.

3. In my experience US political philosophers tend to be anti-nationalist and pro-cosmopolitan, because of what nationalism has led their country to do. That’s fine, but it’s no less a parochial response to their local situation than the pro-response of Israelis and Canadians.

4. Part of loving a particular person is thinking they’re better than they actually are, and part of loving a nation is thinking it’s better than it actually is. But there’s a limit: and flag-waving American “light unto the world” nationalists go way beyond it.