Contingency and solidarity

as I’m not a political theorist, I offer no guarantees whatsoever that my thoughts on the topic are original

How very odd. Is being an academic political theorist positively correlated with having original thoughts about politics?

The problem with the inability to generalize patriotism is that — following your example — you don’t understand why other parents would care for their own children. The conservative is unable to understand why an Iraqi rejects the invasion and occupation of his country by a foreign power, and why those who take up arms against this occupation may fairly be called Iraqi patriots.

But even that’s giving conservatives too much credit. They aren’t American patriots, because they couldn’t care less about the Constitution, American high ideals about e.g. torture, or anything else defineably American. They love those parts of it that can be made to fit movement conservatism. They’re traitors.

Yglesias says,

Up on a terrace yesterday with a bunch of somewhat buzzed people watching fireworks and shouting taunts against England and Canada and extolling the virtues of America as seen in explosions, loud noises, old TV theme songs, and grilled meats it seemed to me that the liberal experience of patriotism is really just the same as the conservative one.

Wait, ‘liberal patriotism’ is like ‘conservative patriotism’ because both involve grilled meats? Isn’t that, um, a bit shallow?

My feeling the difference in politics — and epistemology — is the big difference here, and ‘liberal patriotism’ of Americans has more in common with ‘liberal patriotism’ of, say, Iraqis, even if the details are different.

— bi, International Journal of Inactivism

Hey, I kind of like “banned commenter”s pidgin. Is that you, abb1? Please don’t impose it on me though; I make enough mistakes of my own.

I think your analogy shows the problem with even well-intentioned and non-jingoistic patriotism: it is as difficult to see your country objectively as it is to see your kids objectively. Well, maybe not quite, but the same dynamic is at work. Particularly in the uS, where the country is almost synonymous with the government (most countries have existed under various governments), it makes people feel that the government may be wrong, but its motives must be good. “I know he gets in trouble, but he’s basically a good kid, Your Honor” We have had years of ridicule of those “no blood for oil” signs, and only now are people looking at their gas pumps and saying “you know, maybe it did have something to do with oil”

I think the book-of-the-moment on this general topic is Simon Keller’s The Limits of Loyalty.

Moreover, we would think that there was something very strange about somebody who wanted to revisit that moment of combination and choose a different outcome.

Perhaps the parent of a severely autistic child, or one with CP, or some other genetically-based problem might look at that question differently.

Moreover, we would think that there was something very strange about somebody who wanted to revisit that moment of combination and choose a different outcome.

Perhaps the parents of a severely autistic child, or one with CP, or some other genetically-based problem might look at that question differently.

Loyalty to your country doesn’t require a belief that it is the best country on Earth, anymore than belong to a family requires you to ignore its failings. Indeed, the poorly concealed secret of the more bombastic of our patriots is that their chest thumping is a cover story for an uncertain sense of nationality. Those of us for whom being an American is a given don’t feel the need to brag about it. In fact, since we buy into a certain interpretation of “my country right or wrong,” we’re likely to be mighty critical of it when it is in the wrong, which, like any other nation, it often is. That’s because we expect to go down with this ship if it ever goes down.

The overbearing parents believes their child to be God’s gift; the conservative patriot believes the same thing, only literally.

Even when I was a kid, it always struck me as illogical that God, who has by definition seen it all, should be especially worried about our piece of land in our particular time. But then I was raised to believe in a God who is unusually interested in Rome.

Abb1 – if you continue to repeatedly post comments to my threads, where you know you are banned, I will be pushing with my colleagues to ban you completely from CT. Consider yourself under warning.

There seems to be an idea in the U.S. that to be a good American is to be a patriotic American. My feeling is that this is a much less widespread view in Europe, where being a good citizen is about obeying the laws and treating your fellow citizens decently. Whether you love, hate or feel indifferent about your country is another matter.

I think drawing an analogy between parental love and patriotic love actually obscures certain very important characteristics of patriotism.

While children are concrete persons with whom we establish a reciprocal relationship of affection and obligation, countries/nations are abstracts constructs (an amalgamation of territory, ritual, people, and often unequal citizenship) to whom obligations tend to be both collective and individual, and reciprocity from whom for large swathes of the public (often) non-existent (i.e. the plight of US war veterans).

Aside from that, I have never really understood the fine distinctions made between nationalism and patriotism and it has seemed to me that these distinctions are often drawn by Anglo-Americans who are somewhat uncomfortable with Continental varieties of nationalism and so want to distinguish their love of patria by calling it patriotism, rather than its proper name.

Chris- who do you have in mind? The biggest philosophical supporters of patriotism or something like it that I can think of off the top of my head are David Miller (British), Tom Hurka (Canadian), Alasdair MacIntyre (British), Charles Taylor (Canadian), Yael Tamir (Israeli), and Michael Walzer (American). But of these, it seems that Walzer’s version is the most “civic” in form, at least in his book _What it Means to be an American_. I may well be over-looking some people, perhaps even some obvious choices, but most of the ones who were obvious to me were not American. (I think that much of your more basic point is right, but I don’t see it in philosophy as much, I guess.)

It is possible to a liberal nationalist, like Jefferson or Ghandi. I am using the term “liberal” in the classical sense rather than its as left-wing., i.e. a liberal for me is someone who prioritise liberty over other ends (such as equality) and therefore believes that people should be free to do what they want, so long as it does not cause someone else harm.

The term “nationalist” does not distinguish between liberal and illiberal but it is the illiberal nationalists that gave the term nationalism its negative connotations. When people describe, say Hitler as a nationalist, they actually mean that his foreign policy was illiberal. So long as he only sought to unite German speakers voluntarily under one state his policy was not inconsistent with liberal nationalism (and the Western powers left him alone). But when he began to invade other countries, starting with Czechoslovakia, he was revealed as an illberal nationalist, or “imperialist”.

Today I sometimes hear Serbian politicians referred to as “nationalists”, by those that see them as the bad guys regarding Kosovo. However it is Kosovans that wishes to exercise their right to national self-determinations through the creation of a sovereign state which is nationalism no different from that of Ghandi or Jefferson. The Serbs may be nationalist to the extent that they wish to live in a state where they form the majority, but when they cross the Rubicon of denying Kovovo the same right they become imperialist too, which is what people really object to.

The distinction I make between liberal nationalism and illiberal imperialism can be decided on an international version of J.S. Mill’s principle of harm. For example a country that wages a defensive war is not imperialist, but if it attacks another for any other reason than to prevent harm to its own citizens then its actions are no longer liberal and cannot be supported. (John Rawls “Law of Peoples” is also consistent with this distinction).

Matt: I might have been too hasty in translating my impressions into fact, but it wasn’t the forthright communitarians that you list that I had in mind. Rather it was the people who think of themselves as liberal but are anxious to make room for patriotism. And it isn’t that I disagree that there is room for some patriotism as much as I’m slightly repelled by their keenness to demonstrate their “good American too” credentials. Late Rawls can suffer from this, as does Elizabeth Anderson, perhaps Richard Miller, probably others.

(Maybe I should write a post about the way in which political philosophy (supposedly aiming about the truth re justice, legitimacy, liberty etc) gets regularly intruded on by rather parochial concerns driven by US politics and history.)

Thanks Chris- I can see the cases you mention though I’d have to think on them a bit more. I’d like to see the suggested post- This is clearly sometimes a question but I’m also unsure how abstract political philosophy can be and still be worth doing so it’s hard to know how to cut things here, I think. (It’s also surely not only Americans who have this problem, of course, though I don’t suspect you think otherwise. Kymlica, for example, seems to me to generalize a particular Canadian problem into a general view in a way that’s not really legitimate.)

“and fortunately I’m not alone: Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Johnson”

You are not alone, but I wouldn’t be too hasty in inviting Johnson to your party. That quotation is famously ambiguous.

A US flag lapel pin is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

“Saying ‘My country right or wrong’ is like saying ‘My mother, drunk or sober’.” (G.K. Chesterton)

[Quoted from memory: may not be the exact wording.]

The analogy brings to mind “where all of the children are above average”. A pleasantly sensible definition for a patriotism.

It is interesting that the analogy is to one’s nuclear family, a group that, presumably, you know well, Henry. And not to your extended family, say, to your seventh cousin, the one who claims he is the son of your great aunt Judy’s daughter Marge by her second husband and wants a small loan from you to start his own auto repair shop.

As I understand the sociologists, familialism is, in fact, historically the enemy of the nation. In, say, Southern Italy, there’s long been a struggle between ties of loyalty to the family and the demands of the nation. Interesting that, as the nation curbs or breaks the power of the extended family, it then portrays itself as a family substitute – a thing to evoke an emotional tie. And of all ties, love. Why love?

Could liberals get by without conservatives, in their undiluted patriotism, to staff the military?

But in the first place, are conservatives — and especially neo-conservatives — really more disposed towards entering the military?

 – bi, International Journal of Inactivism

Nearly all parents are quietly sure that while all children are wonderful, their children are the most wonderful of all.

How old is your child? 7 months? I’m fairly sure that very few parents of children older than 5 are quietly sure that their children are the most wonderful of all. Maybe in some ineffable way, but unless you really have a prodigy you get constant reminders that there are other children out there better than your child in most endeavors. But that doesn’t mean you don’t love them more than any other children. Ironically it seems to be easier for most people to find flaws in their children than flaws in their country.

Basically, the liberals and conservatives in town are about to kill each other until they realize that, in a real way, their different mindsets work symbiotically with each other. Could liberals get by without conservatives, in their undiluted patriotism, to staff the military? And would the military have any moral superiority to cling to without bleeding heart liberals back home?

Nathan: I think you’ve confused personality types with political labels. Small “c” conservatives are useful in an organization to balance the experimentalists. A good example of a such a man would be Kevin Rudd – very cautious, extremely process oriented, and quite the prude on certain matters. He’s also the head of the Australian Labor Party (a little to the left of the American Democrats), signed Kyoto, and is trying to create measures to tackle climate change. He’s no big C-Conservative, and to his credit.

Most Australians are small-c conservatives, including myself. On the other hand, they’ve got no use for the Big C-Conservative parties at the moment; they’re out of power in the federal government, and also in every state and territory. Neither do I. I think your thesis needs more work.

btw, I too took note of henry’s sweeping disclaimer:

I offer no guarantees whatsoever that my thoughts on the topic are original, or that they haven’t already been comprehensively refuted by someone somewhere

Well-nigh universally useful. Better even than the Daily Show’s “its opinions are not fully thought through”.

in a real way, [liberals’ and conservatives’] different mindsets work symbiotically with each other.

Interesting idea. Does it work a bit like this?

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is pretty funny.

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.

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

Rome?

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.