Patriotism, Noble and Not

As so many have noted, humans are a social species. What little we know about prehistoric people includes the fact that they were gathered in groups, probably along the lines of what we would call nomadic or semi-nomadic clans. Since all members of the clan depended upon one another for sheer survival, notions of clan loyalty are probably as old as human consciousness itself. We prize the family, whether of blood relations, in-laws, or even surrogate families of close friends. Loyalty toward any entity larger than a clan requires a bit of an abstraction. It usually becomes loyalty to the idea of a larger group of people situated in a certain geography, what Benedict Anderson described as “imagined communities.”¹ That seems obviously true in massive countries like Canada, China, or the United States, but it was true of past, smaller German kingdoms even before they gathered in the nation that became the frequently fluctuating national borders we have generally called Germany.

It is easy to conceive of group loyalty when you are acquainted with all members of the group. It is another matter entirely when you may have visited only a small fraction of the geographical entity that has come to claim your loyalty. For the large nation-state or the empire, patriotism most certainly involves an idea in lieu of empirical experience.

In its most basic meaning, patriotism is merely an extension of and elaboration upon the group orientation of our species. We’re like lions or horses, not tigers. Mammals that band together enjoy advantages for survival and perpetuation of the species.² Elephants, horses, antelope, and other herd animals protect their young by encircling them within the group and facing the predators without. Wolf packs hunt effectively; lone wolves tend to die sooner. The same is true of lion prides and solitary lions. And obviously the earliest humans needed a great deal of group cooperation in order to survive when killing large prey, helping each other with shelter and clothing, and caring for their slowly developing (and thus protractedly vulnerable) young. As Robert Ardrey wrote in The Territorial Imperative, “cooperative prides and packs differ[ed] little from the bands of primitive man.”³ The solitary human was also a dead one.

Today we might think of the nuclear family as the smallest social unit, but historically and globally it has more often been the extended multi-generational family that included in-laws, cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents, grandchildren, and close friends and associates. After the clan we get the tribe, generally larger and somewhat more socially and politically complex.⁴ As illustrated in the Old English poem Widsith (probably 6th century CE), Germanic tribal loyalty ran fierce, particularly as it gathered around military heroes who defended the group.⁵ This would have been typical of fighting tribes in general, with exceptions for those more oriented toward agrarianism and defensive measures, such as those found among the Pueblo peoples of the American Southwest.

In levels of size and complexity, after tribes we get chiefdoms, which consist of tribes more or less banded together. There were also confederacies, a sort of chiefdom extraordinaire, such as those among the Iroquois and the Powhatan in North America. The next step along the scale of size and complexity would be the kingdom, followed by the empire.⁶ All of these group configurations featured loyalty or what we might generally describe as patriotism.

The earliest villages of Mesopotamia had patron deities that the inhabitants believed protected them. To worship these deities was inseparable from loyalty to the village itself. We commonly associate such “religious patriotism” with the Greco-Roman worlds populated by deities of the hearth and the spirits of ancestors, but also patron deities, such as Athena for Athens. The Acropolis itself was largely a multifarious altar to Athena, through which Athenians expressed their thanks for protecting Athens. This sort of thinking ultimately culminated in the Imperial Cult of Rome, and various state cults (worshiping Jupiter, Juno, and Roma) that Romans believed protected their empire.

In all of these contexts developed the emotional and religious attachments that modern society commonly recognizes as patriotism, from the Latin patria, from the Greek patrida; i.e., love for the fatherland. Thus, Homer would write in the Iliad that “the single best augury is to fight for one’s country,” and “for our country ’tis a bliss to die.”⁷ Centuries later Ovid would write “Our native land charms us with inexpressible sweetness, and never, never allows us to forget that we belong to it.”⁸

Despite what countless anti-Semites have claimed, more than any other factor this was probably the cause of the death of Jesus of Nazareth. Paul Winter made a convincing scholarly argument to this effect a long time ago in his book, On the Trial of Jesus.⁹ Though not necessarily a self-perceived political radical, Jesus nevertheless threatened the religious patriotism of Rome through his messages that spoke of and to ends quite different from Roman religio-patriotism.

A “religious patriotism” may have the most ancient origins, but it continues to this day for a great many Americans. Just think about those who say, “God and Country,” or where we print “In God We Trust,” and other sayings or emblems that mix what we would now categorize as patriotism and religion. Thus, there is some continuity from the oldest of Neolithic villages and their patron deities and concepts of a monotheistic deity and the contemporary nation-state, the latter largely the product of the eighteenth century (and especially) the nineteenth century.

In a general sense, the modern nation-state came to feature a common currency, a national military, and clearly-defined (or claimed) geographical borders. Often there was a common language or at least an aspiration toward a standard dialect against which the powers-that-be gauged all the other dialects. But unfortunately, nationalism (and especially hyper-nationalism) also fostered ideas of a national common race or ethnicity, and thus racism and ethnic exclusion. This sort of nationalism is patriotism’s ugly cousin.

Some people use patriotism and nationalism loosely, and there can be some overlap between them.¹⁰ But I will follow a distinct tradition that views them in contrast to one another. In this distinction, patriotism can rarely if ever go too far; nationalism easily goes too far, as we saw most notoriously with Nazi Germany. Albert Camus understood the distinction when he wrote, “I love my country too much to be a nationalist.”¹¹ So, strictly speaking, patriotism and nationalism ultimately reflect two radically different philosophies regarding a homeland.

Recent trends have caused the most concern over nationalism since the defeat of the fascists in World War II. These trends include the upsurge in white nationalism in America, signs of European xenophobia in the face of Muslim immigrants and refugees, Polish nationalism, Indian Hindu nationalism, and the recent English departure from the European Union (Brexit). It is an important time to remind ourselves of major differences between nationalism and patriotism.

The rise of nationalism mainly coincided with the development of nation-states during the nineteenth century, though some saw its precursors. Nationalists were what the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) referred to as loyalists to a district or a particular land; people he called “patriots of soil.” Shaftesbury’s England was well ahead of the nation-state trend, in part because a powerful navy defended an island nation, where the English were developing a sense of Anglo-Saxon superiority as they expanded the empire “where the sun never set.” But as early as 1711 Shaftesbury already distinguished the emerging nationalist from those who gave priority to freedom and justice, the latter the hero of Enlightenment philosophers.¹² The Enlightenment patriot is what scholar Maurizio Viroli called a “patriot of liberty.”¹³ In general, soil patriotism is primarily territorial, whereas liberty patriotism is more ideational. The terms themselves are inherently indicative of these respective orientations.

In the United States, soil patriots tend to place tremendous value on the Pledge of Allegiance and the flag, but often fail to consider the words that follow: “and to the republic for which it stands.” The constitutional republic is immeasurably important. In a 2008 Gallup poll it was not surprising to see a correlation between education levels and belief in patriotic symbols rather than concepts. Thus, the less formal education a person had, the more they believed that wearing an American flag pin was patriotic.¹⁴ A flag or any symbol is ambiguous at best. An obvious example would be white American southerners claiming their old Confederate flag as a symbol of regional pride. Blacks everywhere, but particularly in the American South, frequently denounce it as a symbol of racial oppression. Same flag, radically different symbolisms.¹⁵ Patriots of liberty tend to distrust how soil patriots interpret such symbols. Liberty patriots would rather focus on the democratic republic. A pledge to the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights would make them much more comfortable. But understanding the Constitution requires serious mental effort. Soil patriots tend toward the anti-intellectual. And yet there are interesting variations in the details.

Due to religious beliefs, the Amish do not condone formal education beyond the eighth grade, a practice that none other than the U.S. Supreme Court held as legal and allowable.¹⁶ Yet in the midst of this culture an Amish man (who asked to remain anonymous) offered the following:

I love this country. We have a country of great people. But the Kingdom of Heaven comes first. This trend in America: “Love America or Leave it.” You wave the flag. A flag is fine, but we’re the only nation in the world that worships the flag. It’s weird. It’s very heathen. The kingdom we live in we pledge our allegiance to God and not the flag.¹⁷

This comment makes perfect sense when considering the Amish worldview. But this Amish man also has a point regarding the United States being the only nation “that worships the flag.” That may be an overstatement, but I’ve heard no end of foreign students and professors comment upon this. I once had a former office mate, then freshly returned from eight years in Germany, who was still recovering from culture shock. One of the things he commented upon was how startling it was to see the American flag everywhere (as he put it) compared to Germany, where he rarely saw the flag at all. Germany may, in fact, represent the polar opposite among western nations when it comes to flag idolatry, given the tremendous effort to reverse the damage the Nazis did. Nazis were big on swastika symbol idolatry.

In any case, aside from flag idolatry, soil patriots and liberty patriots generally continue to experience an uneasy tension rooted in different worldviews of country and humanity. English poet Richard Aldington (1892–1962) summed up the dissimilarity through his fictional character Purfleet in his 1931 novel, The Colonel’s Daughter: “Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility. Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on its own dunghill and calling for larger spurs and brighter beaks.”¹⁸ Or, as departing French President Charles de Gaulle said in 1969, “Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.”¹⁹

Nationalists often abscond with the old language of patriotism — from its ancient religious roots to later republican ideals of universal freedom — and thus have obscured some important distinctions between two radically contrasting types of group loyalty.

The nineteenth century was when Germany came into being as a nation (1871), when Italy unified (1870), and when the United States preserved its national cohesion in the Civil War (1861–65). People in old multi-ethnic conglomerations like the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman empires began to aspire to national autonomy. European Jews began envisioning an Israeli homeland. Obviously struggles continue in places like the Balkan peninsula, the Pyrenees Mountains, and many other places based upon the nation-state premise.

Sadly, nation-state aspirations have involved a great deal of war. And fatefully, the rise of the nation-state coincided with industrialized military technology. While this fed readily into burgeoning nationalism, it seriously qualified (at the very least) ancient notions of patriotism as expressed in military service. The Civil War was America’s first industrial war, as World War I was for Europe. Both were wars of attrition employing mass-produced, standardized artillery and ammunition; both resulted in massive casualties. The valor of the Greek phalanx repelling invaders suddenly seemed quaint in comparison to the ordering of pawns out of their trenches to face certain machine gun slaughter.

The American Civil War accordingly left plenty disillusioned with patriotism, perhaps none more than the writer-turned-cynic Ambrose Bierce (1842 — ca.1914). Of the patriot Bierce wrote, “the dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.” Patriotism for Bierce was “combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.” Finally, Bierce corrected Samuel Johnson’s observation about patriotism being the last refuge of the scoundrel and asserted that it was his first resort.²⁰

Disillusioned with World War I, French writer Anatole France (1844–1924) wrote two years before his death, “You think you are dying for your country; you die for the industrialists.”²¹ Before World War I, Europeans had not seen widespread continental fighting since the pre-industrial days of Napoleon Bonaparte, whose leading of the charge on horseback in various battles (notably Austerlitz) no doubt seemed astonishingly obsolete by 1918. Anatole France referred to maturing industrial-capitalism, in which war profiteers could be removed from combat by many thousands of miles, their nation’s public ignorant of their country’s involvement with distant wars. How could ancient patriotism apply to such a world? The World War I scale of death alone (around 20 million, military and civilian) was staggering.

This was the sort of killing that made the famously machismo World War I veteran Ernest Hemingway muse: “They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”²² Like Hemingway, Ezra Pound (1885–1972) contrasted modern and ancient warfare. In his 1920 landmark poem, “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley,” he disparaged Horace’s First Century BCE idea that warriors died “sweet and fitting” deaths for their countries; but rather, World War I veterans had “walked eye-deep in hell believing in old men’s lies.”²³

Such was the difference between the eras of Horace and industrial war.

Yet the nation-state hardly eclipsed primeval ideas and feelings of group cohesion. The patron-protective deities of ancient and archaic villages and poleis may have faded into history, but the spirit of community lives on, sometimes in reality, sometimes merely in nostalgic notions and their rhetoric. Either way, there are deep roots in our species’ social nature for this. As Professor Carl Chinn said of working class people in Victorian England, “Patriotism was your mom and dad. Patriotism was your brothers and your sisters. Patriotism was your yard. Patriotism was your street. Patriotism was your town.”²⁴ And this, despite such working class people being victims of social degradations typically found in the early stages of industrialism. Patriotism in this sense had nothing to do with national politics, or even necessarily fighting for the nation. Thus, as Chinn said, “it was an elemental form of patriotism, a love of place, grounded in the way that working class people belonged to the street and showed great loyalty to that street despite the bad housing.”²⁵ G. K. Chesterton wrote something similar about his fictional character, Adam Wayne and the latter’s regard for his Notting Hill neighborhood.²⁶

Chinn and Chesterton described a universal human phenomenon that one could find in innumerable localities in all eras throughout the world.

For another example, during the tumultuous 1960s in the United States, young people in particular formed a great many groups in response to the Vietnam War draft, in advocacy of non-white civil rights, and in various forms of activism for social, economic, and political changes. Chicago was home to a group calling themselves the Young Patriots. Of this organization, former member Hy Thurman reflected, “We [were] going to be patriotic to the community. Not necessarily patriotic to the system. That [was] our way of being patriotic. If we’re going to try to help our community, then we are patriots.”²⁷ Many have described the 1960s as the most divisive period in American history since the Civil War. But even in the midst of that (and partly because of the divisiveness), patriotism found new expression, such as the one Thurman described.

But even in comparatively less divisive eras, Americans have always held multiple loyalties. Some are very fond of their particular state or city. Others are fiercely loyal to various civic clubs or churches in their neighborhood.

John Bodnar described Whiting, Indiana, of the early 1990s as a fading bastion of “moral patriotism.”²⁸ Collective oral histories indicated that, for Whiting residents, patriotism could “help to sustain an ideal of self-denial and love that, used constructively, could serve as a basis for the pursuit of the common good rather than self-interest or absolute state power.”²⁹ This evokes the multiple allegiances that probably exist everywhere in the contemporary nation-state; loyalties that begin with family, possibly extend to community, and only afterward (sometimes) to the greater abstraction of the nation-proper.

Today there is an interesting group called Patriotic Millionaires who are concerned about the disproportionate concentration of wealth and concurrent political power among America’s upper socioeconomic tiers.³⁰ You could call their version of patriotism as community writ large, in that it pertains to the entire nation. This is interesting as an illustration of what exists in the breach, particularly in how some people seem to take for granted what economists call the “public good,” particularly our massive public infrastructure of roads, bridges, sewers, and water supplies. This was a topic that came up in 2012 when President Obama famously said, “you didn’t build that,”³¹ meaning the public infrastructure that benefits all business. Obama’s political opponents tried to depict the comment as anti-free enterprise when it actually addressed this broader idea of national community.

Former governor and presidential candidate Deval Patrick made a similar point to Margaret Hoover in 2020. He mentioned how he was not advocating a wealth tax, as some of the other Democratic candidates were, because he saw greed as the problem, not wealth per se. “We want aspiration,” he said. “You know, that’s part of the American dream, frankly. We want people to reach.” But when greed and self-centeredness go too far, it is at the cost of the community.³² Undoubtedly the Patriotic Millionaires would agree.

In this sense, you could make a claim of self-service and lack of patriotism charge among absentee landlords, coal barons, and any other beneficiaries of internal economic colonialism — as well as sub-development builders who create problems (like traffic) and expenses (like sewers and sidewalks) but saddle future residents and their cities with these burdens in order to increase their own personal profits. They live or move elsewhere, of course, after the sprawl ruins the local standard of living. To some degree, these people are all profiteers against the community. It’s the “you make the sacrifice first” mentality among those who have little confidence in the greater society or its future. Patriotic Millionaire have the opposite approach, yet we are a long way from being a cohesive tribal nation like Denmark or other Scandinavian countries that stand apart even from the rest of Europe for their community orientation.³³ A large nation of immigrants is another matter entirely, and thus poses other questions and challenges when it comes to patriotism.

The sheer size of the United States alone challenges the abstraction that is the nation, but the high level of social diversity compounds even the geographical size. The abstraction cuts both ways; it has inspired countless examples of love and sacrifice for the country, but also imaginings from nativists who perceive that foreigners must be invading and destroying the nation, despite only the vaguest of notions and usually no detailed empirical evidence about the effects of immigration whatsoever; much less its historical dimensions or contemporary economic aspects.

Details are important, for except during comparatively rare times of economic recession and depression, foreigners are really not “taking jobs away” from citizens. In fact, today we are going begging for workers ranging from menial labor to skilled construction work to white collar jobs requiring graduate degrees. The nativists remain ignorant of a long tradition (now largely forgotten) of America being the beneficiary of the “brain drain” phenomenon, in which the cream of the global crop came here to pursue all sorts of noble ambitions. For economic reasons alone, the official Republican Party platform was pro-immigration until Donald Trump and a neo-populist, neo-nativist movement usurped this traditional position.

As several writers and scholars have pointed out, strength of loyalty to a group at least initially depends upon the group’s members perceiving themselves as similar. John Bodnar wrote (paraphrasing Michael Walzer), “Solidarity . . . is strongest where voluntary participation reinforces inherited membership.”³⁴ This is challenging in a multiethnic nation of immigrants, to say the least. The disenchanted are bound to feel ambiguous about their “inherited membership,” what Rebecca Wanzo called a “melancholic patriotism” among African American veterans.³⁵ Tellingly, Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn found that, during the Civil War, homogeneous companies of Union soldiers featured greater cohesion and less desertion than contrasting heterogeneous groups of soldier groups — with broader loyalty and thus patriotic implications beyond combat situations.³⁶ In a sense, sometimes it is amazing that the United States has stayed together at all, much more so considering the duration of over 200 years.

Even from the beginning, with a fledgling nation along the Atlantic Coast, the earliest American citizens entertained multiply allegiances.³⁷ This was when a minority of property-holding white males controlled the entire power structures of the nation-proper. Appreciate how much more complex the multiple allegiances have become with expanded geography and broadened political enfranchisement. Lest we forget, we should remind ourselves occasionally about the remarkable glue that (thus far) has more or less held such a national patriotism intact. As David Russo observed, “It was Americans who became Ohioans and Iowans and Oklahomans and Oregonians, not the other way around as in Europe.”³⁸

No small part of the multifaceted political patriotism of early America required and continues to require (to varying degrees) overcoming regionalism and primary loyalty to states rather than the nation. Thus, Patrick Henry would declare to the First Continental Congress in 1774 that he was “not a Virginian but an American.”³⁹ Robert E. Lee later took the opposite tack. Henry’s was no trivial statement considering the crucial unity then required for fighting the British. Late in life, Senator Henry Clay (1777–1852) of Kentucky faced the looming unraveling of this unity when he insisted, “I have heard something said about allegiance to the South: I know no South, no North, no East, no West, to which I owe any allegiance.”⁴⁰

By fits and starts, the diversity to be included in America’s political patriotism has gradually widened. “It is the flag [representing patriotism] just as much of the man who was naturalized yesterday as of the men whose people have been here many generations,”⁴¹ wrote Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (1850–1924), who lived through some of the nation’s fiercest nativism, dying the same year the notorious Reed-Johnson Immigration Act initiated a quota system restricting non-WASP entry into the country. Immigration quotas, of course, did not stop the dynamic of a diversifying citizenry, which continues to this day. As many rightfully dreamy-eyed fans of the Enlightenment (like yours truly) have reminded us, this ongoing and alluring possibility is based in an allegiance to ideas,⁴² as found centrally in constitutional principles.

Unlike other nations, with deep notions of historic and even prehistoric tribal identity based in linguistics or racial/ethnic identities, early Americans had to learn that they were a particular national people.⁴³ Even today, the literary education of American patriotism should begin with Enlightenment principles, as found in the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, all state constitutions, thousands of town and city charters, and other important foundational documents. All school children now learn something about these principles, such as the presumed equality of all humankind, freedom of religious belief, freedom from tyranny, freedom of speech (including dissent), and other ideas that were all quite radical in the eighteenth century. There have been countervailing forces from the outset, of course, none more glaring than the enslavement of Africans and African-Americans.

Frederick Douglass visited Ireland and England during the 1840s. Upon returning to the United States, he wrote, “That men should be patriotic, is to me perfectly natural; and as a philosophical fact, I am able to give it an intellectual recognition. But no further can I go. If ever I had any patriotism, or any capacity for the feeling, it was whipped out of me long since, by the lash of the American soul-drivers.”⁴⁴ Later, in an 1850 speech delivered in Rochester, New York, Douglass invoked ideas of Natural Law as well as the biblical deity to support emancipation of black slaves.⁴⁵ Natural Law had its full development during the 3rd century BCE in the context of the Hellenistic Greek period and afterwards; such ideas had heavily informed Enlightenment thinkers, including Jefferson and Madison. All humans being created equal is an idea going back, at least, to Natural Law. And so, in the 1850 speech, Douglass advocated patriotism “not to cover up our national sins, but to inspire us with sincere repentance . . . not to explain away our gross inconsistencies as a nation, but to remove the hateful, jarring, and incongruous elements from the land; not to sustain an egregious wrong, but to unite all our energies in the grand effort to remedy that wrong.”⁴⁶ These ideas anticipated Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1963 speech in which he famously said, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.”

For all the shortfalls of living up to Enlightenment principles throughout historic and contemporary America, it is very important to be able to invoke them in the first place. Imagine the nation without such a foundation.

The era of Reconstruction briefly imposed Enlightenment principles upon the South, but the region soon succumbed to the virtual slavery of the Jim Crow era. Virtual slavery included thousands of lynchings that were part of a domestic terrorism phenomenon. Virtual slavery also featured a labor regime, mostly agricultural, that ranged from share cropping, tenant farming, and seasonal day labor to outright peonage. Enlightenment principles did not begin to resurface in the South until the 1950s, and then only amid the great strife of the Civil Rights Movement. But around the same time, some began to wake up to the fact that the legacy of slavery was a national phenomenon, and far from merely a southern one. Northern and western urban slums featured no end of poverty and suffering among African Americans. A few historians began to appreciate how the Northeast had benefitted economically more from slavery than the South itself. Massachusetts textile mills alone depended upon cheap cotton, as did mills in London and Paris — all benefitting from African American slave labor. Manhattan, Staten, and Long islands were so deeply linked economically to the South that, following the Fort Sumter opening of the Civil War, some talked of seceding from the Union to form the “Free City of Tri-insula.”⁴⁷

Ultimately the idea may have been far-fetched, but the economic links were that substantial.

Producing a raw material (like cotton) only gains the producer a small share of the material’s overall profit. Manufacturing — in this case, into textile bolts, clothing, and other products — is where the lion’s share of profit is made. Thus, is was industrialized areas of the Atlantic world that monetarily benefited the most from southern slavery, more than did the southern slaveholders themselves. Was there any mystery about the prevalence of poverty in the South? The South was something of an internal economic colony for the entire nation, and that national economy was inseparable from slave labor.⁴⁸

After the end of the Civil War, a forgotten patriotic hero emerged quite starkly: black southerners!⁴⁹ Alas, this was only a brief phenomenon that ended after Reconstruction, a tragic period in American history considering its brevity and transience. The United States would endure several more generations of virtual slavery during the Jim Crow period, before the Civil Rights Movement emerged after World War II. The legacy of slavery is alive and well, and evident everywhere if you care to look for it: in the routes interstate highways took through black neighborhoods, in discriminatory Department of Agriculture farm loans, in healthcare disparities, in rates of incarceration, et cetera, et cetera.

In 2008, during her husband’s campaign for president, Michelle Obama said she was proud of America for the first time.⁵⁰ This is exactly the sort of truth that makes some white people in the United States nervous or upset. They want to pretend that the rapes, murders, tortures and the entire campaign of domestic terrorism directed against blacks during the Jim Crow era (1877–1954) and beyond never occurred. Certainly they do not wish to consider the earlier history of enslavement, nor the virtual slavery that followed in many parts of the South until the 1950s and 1960s. That’s a long time for a nation to contradict its own constitutional principles. And yet there has been remarkable progress. Barack Obama’s success was or should have been a proud moment for the United States, regardless of all partisanship matters. Personally, I would have been proud whether our first black president had been a Democrat or a Republican. I feel the same way about the prospect of the first female president. Why not?

Still, a single proud moment does not mean we forget history.

As many have observed, at the nation’s founding, the law stated that only property-owning white males were entitled to the political franchise.⁵¹ The law thus excluded the masses from political participation, even while the Founding Fathers wrote “all men are created equal.” Still, the principle was important, for soon it expanded (by Jackson’s presidency) to include all white males, and of course eventually women and non-white males. Still, as law professor Lawrence M. Friedman pointed out, there has never been any unified national patriotism in the first place; instead, there was WASP supremacy,⁵² which has eroded into the ambiguous post-Civil Rights Movement era. The WASP supremacy is largely over or ending; Catholics and Jews have long dominated the U.S. Supreme Court, for example. We might laugh to think of yesteryear’s nativists turning over in their graves. But we still seem to be a long way from a unified national patriotism.

Racist nationalists have always been a countervailing force to Enlightenment principles, and in recent years they have shown some significant resurgence. John Higham’s 1955 classic study Strangers in the Land illustrated the long and sordid history of pro-WASP nativism in the United States.⁵³ The second manifestation of the Klan (during the nativistic 1920s) was as much anti-Jew and anti-Catholic as it was racist against African-Americans. But despite all nativism, historic and contemporary, many others have sung the virtues of multi-ethnic political patriotism in the United States.

“America is a passionate idea or it is nothing. America is a human brotherhood or it is chaos,” Russian-born journalist Max Lerner wrote in 1949.⁵⁴ Lerner was, ironically, responding to a critic who was also foreign-born, but who nonetheless argued for limited immigration. Lerner, on the other hand, longed for the pre-nativist era when America welcomed foreigners. He wrote, “A foreign-born American who believes in the competition of ideas is of far more value to our common country than a native-born American who would drown out that competition.”⁵⁵

Lerner was involved in a debate that pitted his patriotic sensibilities versus a particular version of nationalism. The nationalist versions have shifted over the decades, but generally in America it has been nationalists harkening back to “the way things used to be” before whichever latest influx of immigrants changed or threatened to change things. It is an ironic feature in a land of immigrants, but it is also common to find people advocating immigration restrictions once they themselves are established citizens. Thus, American nationalism often overlaps with nativism, and thereby contradicts a patriotism rooted in the constitution and the entire Enlightenment spirit that helped create America in the first place.

The humanist Rabbi Sherwin Wine (1928–2007) eloquently described this Enlightenment spirit when he wrote, the United States “loves freedom, encourages diversity, embraces science and affirms the dignity and rights of every individual. It sees America as a moral nation, neither completely religious nor completely secular. It defines patriotism as love of country and of the people who make it strong. It defends all citizens against unjust coercion and irrational conformity.”⁵⁶ It is impossible to imagine a convincing argument in the name of American patriotism against these principles. That is not to imply an absence of debate, for debate is or should be an inherent aspect of republican constitutional patriotism. Perhaps this sort of thought inspired Mark Twain to write, “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”⁵⁷

America began with a strong tradition of patriotic dissent, which Thomas Jefferson made clear in the bulk of the Declaration of Independence. This document’s preamble is most famous, perhaps because what follows is a more prosaic (but wonderfully legalistic) list of past grievances unaddressed or ignored by the English Crown and Parliament. In other words, Jefferson was saying, the American colonists were not wild-eyed radicals, but rather sober patriots whose dissent against injustice had finally reached a very rational breaking point. To continue their patriotism (of liberty) they had no choice but to rebel. The patriotic tradition of at least “questioning authority” has, of course, endured ever since. In his 1796 presidential farewell address, George Washington himself warned his countrymen to “guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.”⁵⁸ Even the boisterous imperialist Theodore Roosevelt reminded the American public in 1918 that, in effect, they had a patriotic right to criticize the president.⁵⁹

The disaffected in contemporary America are fond of quoting Dr. Samuel Johnson’s “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel,”⁶⁰ but very ironically, Johnson was referring to the English and American Whigs who opposed his pro-English monarchial patriotism. Contemporary cynics would be more evocative (and more historically accurate) to quote the journalist Harrison Salisbury, who wrote, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.”⁶¹ Salisbury claimed this was a quote from Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here, but apparently Salisbury was rather offering a paraphrase capturing the overall message of the novel. This is worth noting, for five years earlier Lewis was living in Berlin, Germany. There, in a radio interview, he said, “Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.”⁶² Homesickness aside, in Lewis we seem to find a true patriot, but definitely not a nationalist.

Nationalists are often intolerant of criticism. They regard criticism of the nation as, well, downright unpatriotic. Often it seems impossible to explain patriotic dissent to them, when such dissent is enshrined in First Amendment and in the very idea of democracy.

The Vietnam War era’s “America: Love It or Leave It” idea had a precedent in the 1816 saying attributed to U.S. Commodore Stephen Decatur: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.”⁶³ This must have sounded a bit too jingoistic to John Quincy Adams, who wrote in response a few months later, “may our country be always successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right.”⁶⁴ By 1847, Adams had upped the ante during his opposition to the Mexican-American War and its implications for the expansion of slavery: “Say not thou, ‘My country right or wrong.’ Nor shed thy blood for an unhallowed cause.”⁶⁵

After the Civil War finally ended legalized slavery, German-born, former Union Army General Carl Schurz (1829–1906) still could not let Decatur’s 1816 point of view go unaddressed. In 1872, Senator Matthew Carpenter (R-Wisconsin) questioned the patriotism of then-U.S. Senator Schurz, and insinuated Schurz was loyal to his German homeland. Schurz famously responded, “The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming ‘My country, right or wrong.’ In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right. When wrong, to be put right.”⁶⁶ He must have repeated this often, and included the phrase as late as 1899 in his speech at Chicago’s Anti-Imperialistic Conference,⁶⁷ obviously this time in response against the Spanish-American War.

Two years later, British writer Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936) should have put Decatur’s sentiment to rest for good with the often-cited quip, “‘My country right or wrong’ is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’”⁶⁸

Occasionally there occurs an unexpected communication between the seeming oil-and-water worlds of soil and liberty patriotism. The late country and western musician Johnny Cash hosted a television show, 1969–1971. Country and western aficionados are generally well-noted for their soil patriotism, and they vehemently protested when Cash invited the “communist” Pete Seeger to play on his show. Cash responded that he and his wife not only loved Seeger as a personal friend, but that Seeger was probably the most patriotic American Cash had ever met. Cash obviously understood that dissent could be very patriotic. Country music star Rodney Crowell recently described Cash’s patriotism as “informed.” Crowell felt that Cash was a compassionate Christian who “was critical of the American government for what it did to the American Indian.”⁶⁹ Crowell said, “Through several traditional forms or archetypes — Christianity, patriotism — he filtered enlightenment, and in doing so therefore he resonated with conservative and liberal alike.”⁷⁰

Dissent is often far more complex that its detractors’ emotional reactions would indicate.

Writer James Baldwin (1924–1987) insisted that his love for America (beyond all other nations) was precisely what gave him a right to criticize her.⁷¹ In 1966, the Civil Rights Movement had achieved major victories at the national legislative level. But the unrest in broader America was breaking into a more multifaceted storm of mass and prolonged public unrest. That was when Senator J. William Fulbright graciously stated, “The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute.”⁷² Feminist writer Barbara Ehrenreich, angry at what she perceived to be the legacy of a decade of Reagan-Bush, put it more adamantly in 1990 when she declared, “Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.”⁷³ Attorney Wendy Kaminer (b. 1950) reminded us that constantly questioning our principles of liberty remains essential.⁷⁴

Obviously there has been and continues to be a long tradition of patriotic dissent.

Woven within this is a noble appreciation of America as that product of Enlightenment ideas. One of the most remarkable examples occurred in April 1968, when Robert F. Kennedy gave a remarkable speech in Indianapolis announcing the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This must be one of the most remarkable impromptu speeches ever delivered in American history. We hear the crowd gasp in shock, sorrow, and outrage upon first hearing the awful news. But only minutes later Kennedy almost unbelievably had them cheering and clapping (no doubt with tears streaming down their faces). He quoted Aeschylus, which almost seems derived from a different political world than we have known ever since or will ever know again. And finally, we know that Indianapolis did not riot that night, as did hundreds of other American cities. But also in this speech was a remarkable statement of patriotism. Kennedy said, “What we need in the United States is not division … not hatred … not violence and lawlessness, but [what we need] is love and wisdom and compassion toward one another and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.”⁷⁵

Kennedy then asked the crowd to return home and say a prayer for Martin Luther King’s family, but also a prayer for the country. He said, “It is not the end of violence … but the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to improve the quality of our lives and want justice for all human beings that abide in our lands.”⁷⁶ A few months later he too would be assassinated.

There was a reverberation of this noble sort of patriotism in Barack Obama’s 2008 speech addressing the then-recent controversy over Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Thankfully the circumstances were much milder compared to RFK’s Indianapolis speech. Obama said, “I can no more disown him [Wright] than I can disown my white grandmother . . . a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her by on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.”⁷⁷

Noble patriotism must have room for dissent. What sort of dissent is another matter. And, of course, dissent all by itself or taken to certain existential extremes seems somehow vacuous and counter-productive. As Trey Parker wrote (through his fictional character Stan), “America may have some problems, but it’s our home, our team, and if you don’t want to root for your team then you should get the hell out of the stadium.”⁷⁸

Perhaps mindless dissent eventually leads to what Robert Ardrey called the phenomenon of the noyau, a lonely society of internal antagonism where the family is the only cohesive social entity, and where no true friendships exist.⁷⁹ Ardrey said this described Italy of the 1960s where he had lived for a number of years.⁸⁰ Most would agree that the nationalist glue holding Italy together has never been particularly strong, especially between northern and southern regions of the peninsula. Given the noyau phenomenon, the brave Italian soldier became sort of an exercise in madness. As Ardrey wrote, “To die for one’s country is a dull way to end one’s days if one has no country.”⁸¹ That just makes common sense, even if such a disposition might seem unfamiliar in the United States.

Most Americans (over 85%) apparently link military service with patriotism,⁸² but even more (around 95%) see voting as patriotic.⁸³ Yet, one way or another, there is no separating military service from politics when it comes patriotism, perhaps especially in a democracy that began with a significant role for a citizen militia. And yet white racism has trumped appreciation of non-white soldiers over and over again⁸⁴ — and undoubtedly, many (if not most) of these white racists would call themselves “patriotic.”

War has an unfortunate yet understandable temporary function of uniting otherwise disparate peoples in a common cause. It presents the classic “us versus them” tribalism. Bismarck used the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to help his recently conquered Austrians lick their wounds and unite around a purported and promoted “common” Germanism against the French. The 1898 Spanish-American War served the same function for the sons and grandsons of defeated Confederates in the United States. Vietnam was exceptional in dividing the nation more than any other phenomenon since the Civil War; in stark contrast to the ultra-patriotic second World War. The American South, by the way, has been the region with the highest per capita military enlistment, both before and following the Civil War, mainly attributable to a warrior culture.⁸⁵ In a sense, in such a culture, you could make an argument that loyalty to the warrior ethic actually supersedes any notions of patriotism; or, in other words, that patriotism is contingent upon the primacy of the warrior ethic.

People may serve their country quite nobly in innumerable different ways, whether conscious or not of patriotism. But military service would seem practically impossible without at least some idea of patriotism, except for the mercenary phenomenon. As countless observers have noted, dying for one’s country constitutes the ultimate patriotic sacrifice. But marine veteran Richard Raymond III went further than that. In 2018, he wrote, “There is no other field of human endeavor that so nakedly bares the soul than that of facing the flying steel or roaring flame of battle, and going in against it for the sake of one’s brother. Patriotic or religious fervor doesn’t even come close to the call of brotherhood.”⁸⁶ In Raymond’s understanding, brotherhood supersedes patriotism. This is a crucial point we shall return to in a moment. In the meantime, Raymond may have made a stronger point than initially meets the eye, particularly when considering how recent and contemporary military service has become quite muddled . . . and all because of politics.

As mentioned, industrialism probably fostered a major demarcation in the fighting for one’s homeland. It is not merely the industrial war technology alone that renders killing the enemy different, but the accompanying complexities of “total war,” in which entire home fronts find women and children participating in factory production of war matériel and recycling and frugality campaigns for the war effort, such as the paper and tin can drives or gasoline rationing during World War II. But the 1990s marked a further development, in which “militarizing politics and politicizing of the military” had roots going back to the Vietnam War.⁸⁷ Despite Democrats (JFK and LBJ) escalating the war, many in the military and the general public came to see the Left as anti-war in general. In fact, during the Cold War, Democrats often rattled sabers precisely to avoid appearing “soft” on communism, thus allowing domestic reelection politics to play quite openly into foreign policy. This partisan divide also ignored how it was Republic presidents (Eisenhower and Nixon) who oversaw the ending of the Korean and Vietnam wars. As Robin Wagner-Pacifici pointed out, during the early years of the 1993–2001 Clinton presidency, a sometimes openly contemptuous military only grudgingly recognized their “draft-evading” civilian commander-in-chief. But Wagner-Pacifici also noted that, in 1996, we were probably in a transitional period regarding military acknowledgement of constitutional civilian authority.⁸⁸ In retrospect, this was an interesting prophecy.

Of course, preceding Clinton was a vice president (Dan Quayle) and a succeeding president (George W. Bush) — both Republicans — who were never the targets of opprobrium from the military, despite both having avoided service in Vietnam through National Guard service and the sorts of strings wealthy people employ. By contrast, during his 2004 presidential campaign, combat veteran John Kerry — who easily could have used similar channels of privilege to avoid military service — became a target, specifically regarding his military service. Clearly politics has come to trump military service, but not necessarily along Democrat-Republican partisan lines, as we saw in the “whispering campaign” against former POW John McCain during his 2000 Republican primary presidential campaign. This was a stunning example of lowlife politics, but I should pause for a moment to explain why I found it so.

In graduate school I had the misfortune of getting acquainted with a pudgy suburban classmate whom some called “Tosser” behind his back, because they employed a bit of deliberately ironic British flair for describing how this student made them want to “toss their cookies” (i.e., vomit, though Tosser in British slang means more generally an obnoxious jerk). Tosser was a classic sort of American male; completely gung-ho about military matters . . . as long as he was only writing, theorizing, or talking about it. He openly ridiculed one of our older classmates, a career marine veteran with more than twenty years in the Corps, which had included three tours of Vietnam. I’ll call the marine veteran Barry. Like other marine veterans, Barry had a combat nickname (here, I’ll call it “Barbarian”) that Tosser took joy in demeaning. Tosser would call out “Barbarian” in an imitation of the mincing and lisping homosexual, as if Barry were a drugstore cowboy instead of the genuine article. I was deeply impressed by Barry’s reaction; he never betrayed an iota of anger, when I knew full well he could break Tosser’s neck so freaking fast the pudgy suburban boy wouldn’t know what hit him. But I also assumed Barry had seen worse during all those years in-country, especially while witnessing some of those green recruits fresh to the Corps in a guerilla combat zone.

I never mentioned to Barry how I was raised in the heart of the anti-Vietnam War milieu. My father was a World War II veteran who joined the Navy on his seventeenth birthday (ten days before Pearl Harbor) and saw the war through to its conclusion. Yet, my father opposed the Vietnam war to the point of threatening to move the family to Canada, should the conflict still be ongoing when my older brother reached draft age. A lot of veterans feel that way about war, decidedly not romanticizing it the way Tosser did. But my father was also a college professor, so I had been well-exposed to various campus protests and riots against the war during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Anyway, regardless of all that, I respected Barry even though we had nearly opposite political orientations. As an undergraduate I had taken a colloquium on the Vietnam War, and was particularly gripped by the hellish recollections of Hanoi Hilton prisoners of war. Like a great many people, while reading those accounts, I asked myself what I would have done in their circumstances. My answer to myself was always, “Commit suicide as early as possible.” I just could not fathom how they had survived those solitary confinement incarcerations, year after year.

Finally, at one point I grew weary of Tosser’s bloviating about military-this and military-that, which was bad enough for its paper tiger aspects alone, not to mention the latent cowardice. But while at the same time disrespecting Barry so arrogantly? That was beyond the Pale. So, I finally suggested (with affected naiveté) that Tosser join the military, and got the easily anticipated response of horror, as if I were suggesting he might consider castrating himself. I was hoping the suggestion would penetrate his thick head regarding his ironic hypocrisy, but it never mitigated his intolerable behavior, not in the least. No wonder some called him Tosser.

Anyway, one of the strangest phenomena since the Vietnam War has been the self-proclaimed “patriotic” war mongers who deride and denounce combat veterans, much as Tosser did. Perhaps this represents a nadir in political rhetoric. This is how a propaganda group could start the aforementioned “whispering campaign” in 2000 about a former Hanoi Hilton prisoner of war, John McCain, in order to support a “draft dodger” like George Bush, Jr. This was certainly the sleaziest political propaganda I have ever witnessed during my lifetime.⁸⁹ And, of course, if partisan political operatives would attack a Republican hawk like McCain, no wonder the self-named Swift Boat Veterans for Truth would go after an elite liberal like John Kerry⁹⁰ who — despite his privileged socioeconomic class — nonetheless volunteered for military service and saw combat in Vietnam. The usual partisanship aside, undoubtedly some of their hatred for Kerry stemmed from the latter giving testimony to the U.S. Senate against the war in 1971. But the main reason was simple politics. “All is fair in war” pertains to political campaigns, which include varying levels of propaganda.

As then-senator Barack Obama said just before the November 2008 election, pondering what constitutes patriotism and who qualifies as a patriot “all too often poisons our political debates.”⁹¹ The following president (Donald Trump), also a Republican, used the lame excuse of “bone spurs” to avoid service in Vietnam — also through channels of family wealth and a well-placed family doctor. Wager-Pacifici’s observation, published in 1996 in the middle of a transition, would now seem to be complete. Military service as an informal prerequisite for the presidency has not only become a relic of history, but non-veteran politicos have come to resemble Tosser with their cowardice and flippant disrespect.

Perhaps more disturbing than the dirty tricks surrounding the 2000 presidential campaign was Trump’s criticism of McCain during the 2016 campaign. Of course, one could not expect much from candidate Trump, who ridiculed the Muslim parents of a soldier killed in combat.⁹² It would seem easy to dismiss Trump as a ranting coward in this regard, considering his own draft evasion — but obviously his popular support overlooked or forgave such glaring hypocrisy, partly because it played into the sentiment of Trump’s nativist base. Trump proved himself to be a dark master of stirring up bigotry, and particularly nativism. Apparently, some of Trump’s supporters even continued the vitriol against McCain after the senator’s demise.⁹³ Military combat service and prisoner of war status are only just below the ultimate patriotic sacrifice, thus making such critics blind partisans at best, and treasonous bigots at worst. But we have come to expect such in an era of jingoistic nationalism.

At long last, back to the aforementioned brotherhood of combat veterans. A great many described the guerilla fighting in Vietnam as a step toward insanity compared to the conventional battlefronts of World War II or even the Korean War. But apparently combat during the Iraq War (2003–09) was worse than guerilla fighting. Guerilla fighting, if anything, probably increased brotherhood in the face of the amorphous enemy. That has not abated, in the least.

For a time, a small wave of former Iraq War veterans were among my college students. Some had horrific wounds. One of them described his soldier experience as more like being a police officer in a very dangerous neighborhood with violence or the threat of violence ever-present. This sounded even worse than guerilla fighting. In these circumstances, another veteran told me he abandoned all consideration of why they were there; no ideology such as liberating a people or spreading democracy could sustain him amid such danger. Even pondering the mission’s purpose was a threat to his sanity. So instead, he concentrated on protecting his unit and himself. This brotherhood criterion became his very narrow, very focused mission.

And non-combatants like Tosser could not appreciate such things?

I once lived in Skagit County, Washington, where I had the immense privilege of meeting a member of the 442nd Infantry Regiment, the most decorated combat unit in American history. Except for white officers, the 442nd was constituted exclusively by Japanese-Americans, many of whom joined from internment camps. The man’s granddaughter warned me in advance that he was a “man of few words,” and indeed he was curious about why I wanted to talk to him at all, utterly dismissive of his place in history. He politely declined my request for a formal, audio-recorded interview. But I did get a smile out of him when I asked why the 442nd had been so fierce, and if there was any connection to ancient samurai ethics. “No,” he replied. “We just wanted to fight for our country. It was patriotism, that’s all.”

The sad truth is, politics and racism have a long history of trumping patriotism in the United States. Dying for one’s country has never been enough for nativists and racists. Blacks serving in both world wars did so during the Jim Crow era, and they returned to face racist discrimination despite risking their lives for the nation. When Muhammad Ali refused to serve in Vietnam, partly precisely because of such a legacy, racists denounced him for being “unpatriotic.” So, obviously, patriotism is never as simple as some would have it be; it becomes a cudgel like any other convenience serving other agendas, evoking emotional responses that are inherently illogical, and (like calling oneself a follower of certain religions) has an infinite number of definitions that cause eternal disagreement and debate. Theoretically, debating patriotism and other aspects of American citizenship is supposed to be healthy for our democracy. But often it seems more like people talking past one another. This seems especially true when various people respect or disregard combat service, link such service to patriotism or claim it is irrelevant, or what have you.

*

Obviously, anything important in life generates disagreement. So, my two cents’ worth is, the patriot loves her imperfect country with at least some aim toward rectifying flaws. The nationalist tends to deny or downplay the existence of flaws, unless those “imperfections” represent deviations from other goals, such as today’s neo-nativism. Worst of all, the nationalist often contradicts constitutional principles as part of an overall irrational stance, what Hugh Seton-Watson described as followers of an “ersatz religion” worshipping a form of “ethnolatry.”⁹⁴ In this sense the nationalist is more selfish than the patriot; the nationalist loves her country so long as it serves her other interests, which often contradict constitutional principles. I admit, my personal favorite antidote for such myopia is found in the contemporary philosophy of moral cosmopolitanism.

If the Classical Greeks gave us democracy, the Hellenistic Greeks gave us cosmopolitanism, attributed to a school of philosophy known as the Cynics, not to be confused with the modern usage of the word. Diogenes of Sinope (412–323 BCE) famously wrote, “I am a citizen of the world.”⁹⁵ The school of philosophy known as the Stoics developed cosmopolitanism more fully, particularly by advocating an application of personal virtue and Natural Law to wider societies.⁹⁶ As in so much philosophy, ideals of cosmopolitanism had a utopian aspect; something for practitioners to aspire toward but never reach. Famous Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca (d. 65 CE) recognized this and reconciled the ideal with practical matters by proposing a “dual citizenship” of membership in one’s inescapable mundane political community while retaining an appreciation for an ideal universal humanity.⁹⁷ Seneca’s idea resonates to this day, regarding both patriotism and cosmopolitanism.

Age of Enlightenment philosophers simply fell in love with liberty, even to the extent of embracing a cosmopolitanism based in freedom. Anticipating this sentiment, Algernon Sidney (1623–1683) quoted an earlier Latin phrase when he wrote, “Where liberty is, there is my country.”⁹⁸ American patriots Benjamin Franklin and James Otis both frequently repeated this saying. The great Englishman-turned-American-patriot Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense, picked up this mantle when he said, “My country is the world, and my religion to do good.”⁹⁹ Thomas Jefferson wrote something similar when he penned, “My affections were first for my own country, then, generally, for all mankind.”¹⁰⁰

This idea of universal liberty often became a republican liberty in specific conflict with monarchy, and especially absolute monarchy and the old notion of Divine Right of Kings in which the monarch claimed to be the Christian god’s representative on earth. But the general sentiment has continued ever since among certain cosmopolitan patriots. Alfred, Lord Tennyson repeated this sentiment in his poem, “Hands All Round.” The opening lines read, “That man’s the best Cosmopolite / Who loves his native country best.”¹⁰¹ And Spanish philosopher George Santayana (1863–1952) wrote, “A man’s feet must be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.”¹⁰²

Cosmopolitanism has enjoyed something of a rebirth lately through scholars such as Jeremy Waldron, Richard Thompson Ford, David A. Hollinger, and Kwame Anthony Appiah.

A commonsensical version of moral cosmopolitanism goes something like this: people have vital universal things in common despite a myriad of cultural differences. In this regard, moral cosmopolitanism can be a state of mind, regardless of an individual’s opportunity (or lack thereof) to participate in a diverse or global society. Beyond the basic requirements for living that we all share (a need for food, medicine, shelter, clothing), most people would like to do meaningful work, have options to choose from regarding education and employment, earn enough money to help provide for their loved ones, and the like. From my point of view, all of this seems so obvious. Name a human characteristic, desirable and not — kindness, greed, compassion, opportunism, generosity — and we will find equal proportions of these traits among all peoples, and certainly in equal proportions that supersede the artificial social constructs that supposedly define various races, ethnicities, geographical and cultural identities. There are cultural variations upon vices and virtues, but in their basic form they are universal.

After World War II, western European nations put aside 1930s nationalism in an effort to foster friendly supra-national relations — most ostensibly in economic cooperation in what became the European Union, but also in an effort toward political cooperation.¹⁰³ In a very practical sense, cosmopolitanism is the only viable philosophy to hold in the global economy, which has been around for centuries and only promises to grow more intertwined. For decades we have had many supranational organizations such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations.¹⁰⁴ Also supranational would be any number of non-governmental organizations, such as Amnesty International or Greenpeace. These entities would be, in one literal sense, citizens of the world or the very definition of cosmopolitan. To some degree, resurgent nationalism is a reaction against this new reality, particularly those getting left behind in the global economy. But any version of the old economy is never going to return. In this sense, cosmopolitan patriotism is the future and nationalism is retro. But never underestimate the power of the retro.

The nation-state is fragile, and quite new in the bigger picture of human history. Regionalism is an expression of local differences; sectionalism is a break from the national cohesion. Given the tribalistic nature of the human species, and given recurrent provincial bigotries, it seems far-fetched to dream that supra-nationalism will ever reign supreme except periodically in smaller or larger instances. Instead, we are likely to remain in the paroxysms of nation-state building and disintegration for many generations to come. Yugoslavia has come and gone, Palestinians and Basques still seek autonomous nations, many Irish would prefer the English leave their island, Canada and Italy may yet split apart — and there is no guaranteed that the United States will not do the same.

The nation-state continues to be a work in progress or decline.

In this light, the cosmopolitan perspective is a luxurious state of mind. It is a perspective fostered by life’s circumstances, at least some degree of economic well-being, access to formal education, preferably some travel or relocation, and of course a personal disposition. Many people never enjoy these features in their lives. Life’s circumstances encourage them to remain in one place, near family and the only home they have ever known. Perhaps they live paycheck to paycheck, if that. Access to formal education might be limited, nonexistent, or purely technical and pragmatic. Travel is out of the question. Relocation is out of economic necessity and thus serves a utilitarian function, not really one encouraging reflection or a broadening of personal horizons.

But the personal attitude factor remains invaluable. I have met too many people with a cosmopolitan attitude who had little else, and certainly no privilege, including limited formal education. On the other hand, I’ve met no end of bigots with PhDs. Many people simply find comfort and security in their tribe, and that tribe may be a political party, a religious sect, or a geographical territorialism. Adherence to the tribe remains ipso facto mentally provincial.

The contemporary resurgence of nationalism may seem both bizarre and disturbing, even if Hegel wrote long ago that the only thing humanity learns from history is that humanity learns nothing from history; that great smart aleck Winston Churchill was fond of repeating this quote in the dry wit of a grand British tradition. Hence, we have Brexit, and various populist and nationalist movements in countries as contrasting as Poland and India and the United States. Nationalism is alive and well.

In a 2006 article in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Dora Kostakopoulou criticized various scholars for their interpretations of patriotism, because their intellectual framework did not supersede nationalism.¹⁰⁵ Kostakopoulou hoped we could supersede nationalistic patriotism. It is a wonderful dream. More realistically, tribalism and its inherent inclusion/exclusion will likely always be a feature of human societies. Soil patriots remain incredibly powerful, ignored or underestimated only at the peril of the starry-eyed liberty patriots. Of course, this is not a Hobson’s choice. In his famous Peoria Speech of 1854, none other than Abraham Lincoln stressed the need for national geographical cohesion without sacrificing the principles of the U.S. Constitution.¹⁰⁶

Lincoln’s obvious understanding now seems as mundane as it is unsurprising: an admixture that gives priority to the practicalities of defending one’s homeland, but acknowledges the emotional love all peoples have for their native land. Such a view stresses the importance of upholding republican principles of liberty and justice at home for Americans, but hesitates imposing such values upon other people. Loving and defending home, embracing a qualified cultural relativism in an attempt to respect those from radically different traditions, and recognizing the vast commonalities of all human beings should be a part of any country’s modern patriotism.

I know; dream on.

But we can dream even while acknowledging that local affiliations will always persist and probably should persist. They are fine as long as they are not local bigotries. Bigoted affiliations writ large are precisely what contributes to nationalistic war. Nationalistic wars also have a long history of morphing into colonial or imperial wars. Imperialism adds a further twist in the topic of patriotism, especially when the imperial power is a democracy — because obviously dominating people abroad presents a fundamental contradiction to democracy, unless you openly advocate two systems, one for domestic policy and another for foreign policy.

Do not feel too bad about the paradox regarding America since the age of nineteenth century imperialism; the paradox goes all the way back to Athens, which we like to cite as the birthplace of democracy. As every informed person appreciated at the time, the so-called Delian League was in reality the Athenian Empire, and Sparta even allied with recent enemy Persia to put an end to Athenian dominance of colonies on the Greek peninsula and beyond. And, lest we forget, other democracies or quasi-democracies (the United Kingdom being prominent on the list) have also featured dual policies of democracy at home and domination abroad. This is the sort of thing that irritates certain Republican-Libertarians as a fundamental contradiction of what the United States is supposed to be about.

Except for historians, few Americans seem to realize that geography and attitude once made the United States far more “isolationist” than it was after the 1930s. In fact, from the Chinese and English points of view, earlier U.S. involvement in World War II might have saved millions of lives. That’s all unresolvable speculation, of course, but obviously once the war got under way, the United States broke out of isolationist mode quite dramatically and decisively. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Congress voted for war with only one dissenting vote, and public sentiment went from a deeply entrenched “neutrality” to vehemently pro-war, almost overnight.¹⁰⁷ But remember, from the Revolutionary War until World War I, the United States always demilitarized after the conflict was resolved. World War II was the exception, and we have been militarized ever since. This was the “military-industrial complex” that Eisenhower described in his 1961 farewell speech, perhaps the most famous presidential farewell speech in American history.

Republican-Libertarian Pat Buchanan has long decried the American Empire, with blog titles such as “A Republic Not An Empire,” and “America’s Unsustainable Empire,” and “Is the American Empire Worth the Price?”¹⁰⁸ Returning to an isolationist republic has great emotional appeal, but sometimes includes a naïve aspect, as if the United States could imitate Switzerland. One way or another, America as a superpower is bound to end, sooner or later. When considering this inevitability, many turn to the world’s second largest economy (China) with various predictions of eventually first place status. It is nice to think of an expansive China in the mode of Zheng He (鄭和; 1371 — ca.1434) taking the place of the United States, bestowing more gifts than exacting tribute; but probably few of China’s nervous neighbors consider such a possibility as realistic. And, in the contemporary and future world, no doubt a rising China’s global relations will be far more complex than they were in Zheng He’s era.

Within our own fragile nation-state, we should always remember what a luxury it is and has been to ponder Enlightenment ideals. Critics, including some contemporary Libertarians, are accurate in pointing out how democratic principles at home contradict strong-arm tactics abroad (and sometimes strong-arm tactics at home as well). Followers of real politik would sneer at the naiveté of expecting anything different. But without the nation-state’s institutionalized legal system, things like Enlightenment principles would surely become mere notions in the heads of philosophers.

Like a great many interesting entities, the nation-state is ambiguous. It has given some the luxury of an illusory pre-government utopian freedom. Taken to its Anarcho-Libertarian extreme, this would mean eradicating the national government and thereby abandoning the nation-state — which would immediately invite invasion from other nation-states, and then the notion of utopian freedom would be revealed exactly for what it is. So we should probably cling to our nation-state just as vigorously as we do to our Enlightenment principles. Life without either would be unrecognizable from what has become (at least for some) an American cultural point of view, not to mention constitutional orientation.

The idea of the isolationist republic also falls apart as soon as you consider how all countries and nations are affected by global events. Who has a self-contained economy? We have been in a global world of trade, geopolitics, and military strategy for many centuries now; it’s just that the global economy has been intensifying of late. And, lest we forget, economic matters are often entangled in causes of war.

But there are troubling signs within the republic itself, isolationist or not. In 2020, journalist Nick Bryant wrote, “A broken politics, a broken democracy, a broken country. Is the United States beyond the point of repair?”¹⁰⁹ Bryant acknowledged that recent divisions in the United States are but a culmination of many years of fragmentation and disagreement. Many would trace this fragmentation back to the tumultuous 1960s,¹¹⁰ and thus the predicted demise of national cohesion has been a theme for more than half a century now. Maybe we are now in a culmination, maybe not. It is simply too early to tell. As John Bodnar observed, the 1960s were indeed a crossroads when something fundamentally changed in American patriotism. Apparently, Americans lost the thread of seeing the government as an arbiter of moral issues, going back to Lincoln — or as an arbiter of economic injustice, going back to FDR.¹¹¹ Since the 1960s (and since Bodnar’s 1996 observation) little has changed in this regard. In fact, if anything, we have become even more fragmented and divided as to what even constitutes morality and fair economic distribution.

Historians can list a great many factors that characterized the decline of the western Roman Empire (the eastern half thrived for many more centuries). There was the over-bureaucratization and strain on the tax base, currency depreciation, locking people in their professions to address labor shortages, and loss of patriotism as expressed in low rates of military service and concordant reliance upon mercenaries. External enemies, ever present on the borders, sensed weakness and invaded accordingly. When I consider these and other factors in the Roman Empire decline, I cannot help but imagine what future historians might say of the declining American Empire. Perhaps some of the following will be on their list for causes of decline.

1. rise of self-inflicted health problems, decline in work ethic, decline in belief in free will and will power

2. the rise of fake addictions, fake poverty (i.e., personal financial mismanagement), fake oppression (exploiting one’s “identity” and selective ancestry)

3. Big Pharma and the psychology industry re-labeling the human condition as an array of disorders, complexes, and syndromes

4. decline in military service

5. enormous national debt growing during a booming economy, exactly when it should be paid down

6. unmitigated greed allowed in healthcare in the name of free market capitalism when this sector of the economy actually much more closely resembles predatory, monopolistic racketeering

7. all-around over-bureaucratization and consequential strain on the tax base and exacerbation of the national debt

8. wealthy profiteers exploiting the public good for private gain

9. disrespect for education, the family, the elderly

10. broken families perpetuating the vicious cycle of future broken families, including a perpetuation or rise in homelessness

We could go on and on with other factors, and many of the above factors are interrelated. But the empire will indeed pass, one way or another, as all empires do. If we’re lucky we’ll be more like England and less like Italy following the loss of their respective empires. Losing the “empire where the sun never sets” may have harmed English pride, but economic theorists could argue that it has helped the average English citizen and harmed the profiteers who once benefitted disproportionately from the national wealth, in the way of public military protection for their private enterprises, as well as what we would now call military contracting. In the early 1900s, English economic theorist John Atkinson Hobson was one of the earliest and most prominent to point this out these disproportional economic results of imperialism.¹¹²

Lenin liked Hobson’s analysis, which made subsequent Soviet propaganda about the American imperialism ironic when they (of course) had their own empire and were America’s main Cold War colonial competitor. Context is vital in history, and even though nineteenth century European imperialism does not excuse the American version, it helps explain it. After all, fear of being outmaneuvered by one’s geopolitical and economic competitors is a genuine concern, whether or not you agree with how nations have responded to such factors.

Americans generally feel uncomfortable calling their post-World War II global influence as an “empire” at all. For many years, I once featured an annual class forum on imperialism in one of my Western Civilization survey classes. The forum thus focused on European colonies, but made one humorous reference to the “American Empire” through John Oliver’s comedy.¹¹³ After breaking the ice on this subtopic, I mentioned how during recent decades the United States has maintained somewhere between 700–800 military bases around the world.¹¹⁴ It’s not exactly a secret. For the broadest context, I included a comment from historian Clifford R. Backman, who listed many empires throughout world history, then wondered quite rationally, “might empires, in fact, be the norm of human political life?”¹¹⁵

But the students often bristled at the use of the term, “American empire.” Maybe it clashed with their indoctrination in the notion of America “making the world safe for democracy,” never mind whether or not the world shares American cultural or political values (including that of democracy). True, many students did not react at all, or expressed indifference or admitted ignorance about the topic. Others recoiled or even angrily denied the existence of an American empire. “I was stationed overseas, and we never colonized those people,” one veteran responded in a written forum, apparently unable to imagine how he would feel about foreign military bases on American soil.

Political strategist Frank Luntz once cited his own list of past empires and great powers (Romans, British, Portuguese, Russia, France, Egyptians) that came and went. Then he got teary-eyed when it came to the prospect of the American empire in decline. “I really don’t want to be around to see the end of mine [i.e., the American Empire].”¹¹⁶ The aforementioned comedian and commentator John Oliver had a more humorous take on the inevitable, when he described the United States as the second leg in a relay race, his own native Britain having handed off the baton, while China awaited to accept it from the United States.¹¹⁷ If China does indeed emerge as the new dominant superpower, it will inherit the ambiguous advantages and disadvantages accorded to all such powers — in addition to a guaranteed temporary status.

I’m as big a fan of Enlightenment principles as the next person, but we should remember that some of these ideas are western cultural values that have a historic association with western imperialism. The United Nations’ 1948 “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” rectified this to a significant extent, with contributions and oversight from many nations and cultures. Philosophers Peng Chung Chang (China) and Charles Habib Malik (Lebanon) were particularly influential.¹¹⁸ Yet it is telling that New York City is where the United Nations’ headquarters are located. There’s an illustration of global superpower and universal human rights, all in one. That may seem like a trivial point until you consider how some always resent the superpower, whichever empire or nation it happens to be. And if someone resents the superpower, they are bound to be skeptical of that power’s philosophy, even regarding something like universal human rights and (particularly) the details of what those rights should entail.

In a way the Universal Declaration of Human Rights represents the modern ideal of moral cosmopolitanism. The problematic complications will lie, as always, in the details of implementing or trying to implement them. Even if non-western peoples adopt Enlightenment principles, they are bound to modify them according to their own culture, nation, and circumstances. That would be an example of voluntary acculturation and perhaps an assimilation of sorts into a global community. In the meantime, “American Exceptionalism” may be closer to the end rather than the beginning of running its course.

*

In 1630, aboard a ship off the east coast of what would become New England, John Winthrop delivered a famous sermon prophesizing that Calvinists like him would make the new land a “city upon a hill” as an ideal Christian nation for the world to emulate.¹¹⁹ Thus was born American Exceptionalism, which has characterized domestic and foreign policy, at least to some major degree, ever since. Exceptionalism informed Manifest Destiny, the nineteenth century idea that divine providence ordained that Americans acquire the rest of what came to be the continental United States, dispossessing aborigines and competing European colonial powers. Manifest Destiny morphed into imperialism abroad, particularly during the 1898 Spanish American War that rendered the United States the territories of Puerto Rica, Guam, and the Philippines. We see American Exceptionalism in Woodrow Wilson’s much-repeated phrase of “making the world safe for democracy,” and the ethos that significantly informed at least one of the subthemes of the Vietnam War.

In their 2007 book The True Patriot, Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer unfortunately perpetuated American Exceptionalism, sometimes apparently without being fully conscious that they were doing so.¹²⁰ “No nation on earth has America’s greatness of spirit and purpose,” they wrote.¹²¹ That’s fine if you agree with that spirit and purpose.

American Exceptionalism has been noble in the sense of advocating Enlightenment ideals, but only if you value those ideals. It has also been openly self-righteous, culturally absolutist (as opposed to culturally relative), and Calvinistic. In other words, American Exceptionalism has failed to appreciate how different peoples value their own cultures, and perhaps most importantly, wish to modify those cultures according to their own tastes, at their own pace, and with themselves firmly in control. All cultures change, but very few people desire outside forces dictating cultural change. After all, that is their expression of patriotism.

Copyright © Will Sarvis, 2020; re-posted, March 2022. All Rights Reserved.

ENDNOTES

[1] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (NY: Verso, 1991), 6, 36, 46. Many others have made similar observations. For an earlier example, see Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974), 101.

[2] See e.g. Jan Vansina, How Societies are Born: Governance in West Central Africa before 1600 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Pr., 2004), 26–33.

[3] Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations (NY: Atheneum, 1966), 4.

[4] Kenneth S. Carlston, Social Theory and African Tribal Organization: the Development of Socio-Legal Theory (Urbana: University of Illinois Pr., 1968), 3, 15, 16, 65.

[5] R.H. Hodgkin, A History of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. I, 3rd ed. (Oxford University Pr., 1952), 29, 34–35.

[6] Carlston, Social Theory and African Tribal Organization, 15, 16. Carlston deals with the rise of the state, 27–28.

[7] Homer, Iliad, book 15 line 583.

[8] Ovid, Epistolae Ex Ponto (I, 3, 35), available at http://www.worldofquotes.com/author/Ovid+%28Publius+Ovidius+Naso%29/1/index.html.

[9] Paul Winter, On the Trial of Jesus, edited by T. A. Burkill and Geza Vermes (1961; Berlin: De Gruyter, Inc., 1974), 56–58, 86. For the broader context of relations between Jews and Rome, see chapter one. Also see Karen Armstrong, History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (NY: Knopf, 1993), 97.

[10] Maurizio Viroli, For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism (Oxford: Clarendon Pr., 1995).

[11] Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (NY: Knopf, 1961), 4.

[12] Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Lawrence E. Klein, ed. (1711; Cambridge University Press, 1999), 403.

[13] Viroli, For Love of Country, 59, 184–85.

[14] Lymari Morales, “Nearly All Americans Consider Military Service ‘Patriotic’: Symbolic Gestures Valued More Highly by Older Americans and the Less Educated,” Gallup Poll (July 3, 2008).

[15] Patrik Jonsson, “Battle Over the Past Rages on in an Evolving South,” Christian Science Monitor (Feb. 24, 2008); Patrik Jonsson, “Divisive Symbol: The Sons of Confederate Veterans Recently Hoisted the World’s Largest ‘Soldier’s Flag’ in Tampa, Florida,” Christian Science Monitor (Aug. 4, 2008); Tom Geoghegan, “Why Do People Still Fly the Confederate Flag?” BBC News (Aug. 29, 2013).

[16] Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972).

[17] The Amish: American Experience (PBS, WGBH Boston, 2012), minutes 41–42. The filmmakers identified him only as “Amish Man #5” in concordance with requests for anonymity from all who participated in the documentary.

[18] Richard Aldington, The Colonel’s Daughter (London: Chatto and Windus, 1931), 53.

[19] Romin Gary, “Quiet End to Grandeur,” Life Magazine 66:18 (May 9, 1969), 29.

[20] Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, Tales, and Memoirs, S.T. Joshi, ed. (NY: Library of America & Penguin Group, 2011), 577.

[21] From L’Humanite (July 18, 1922), retrieved Aug. 5, 2013 from:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anatole_France

[22] Ernest Hemingway, “Notes on the Next War,” Esquire 4:3 (Sept. 1935), 156. This thesis regarding World War I in general finds great elaboration in W.J. Reader, At Duty’s Call: a Study in Obsolete Patriotism (Manchester: Manchester University Pr. and NY: St. Martin’s Pr., 1988).

[23] Ezra Pound, “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley,” part I, section IV, line 11.

[24] Great Queens of England: Queen Victoria, (West Long Branch, NJ: Kultur Video, 2006), minutes 40–41.

[25] Ibid.

[26] G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (NY: John Lane Co., 1909), 133.

[27] Ray Santisteban, dir., “The First Rainbow Coalition,” Independent Lens (PBS, Jan. 27, 2020), minutes 16–17.

[28] John Bodnar, “Moral Patriotism and Collective Memory in Whiting, Indiana, 1920–1992,” in Bonds of Affection: Americans Define Their Patriotism, John Bodnar, ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Pr., 1996), 290–304.

[29] Ibid, 303.

[30] patrioticmillionaires.org.

[31] “Remarks by the President at a Campaign Event in Roanoke, Virginia,” Office of the Press Secretary, White House (July 13, 2012).

[32] Margaret Hoover, Firing Line (PBS, Jan. 24, 2020).

[33] This cohesive tribal phenomenon was well-illustrated in Remy Christopher Ansiello, “Scandinavian Dream: A Region’s Common Philosophical Principles Resulting in Equality, Prosperity, and Social Justice,” (Masters Thesis, Rollins College 2011), available via http://scholarship.rollins.edu/mls.

[34] Bodnar, “Moral Patriotism and Collective Memory in Whiting, Indiana, 1920–1992,” 304.

[35] Rebecca Wanzo, “Wearing Hero-Face: Black Citizens and Melancholic Patriotism in Truth: Red, White, and Black,” Journal of Popular Culture 42:2 (2009), 341, 342.

[36] Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn, Heroes and Cowards: the Social Face of War (Princeton University Pr., 2008), 8, 216, 217m 220, 221, 223–24.

[37] John Bodnar, “Introduction,” Bonds of Affection: Americans Define Their Patriotism, John Bodnar, ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Pr., 1996), 5.

[38] David J. Russo, Families and Communities: a New View of American History (Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1974), 146.

[39] Speech in the First Continental Congress (1774); Benson J. Lossing, Our Country. A Household History of the United States for all Readers, from the Discovery of American to the Present Time (NY: James A. Bailey, 1895) vol.3, p.733.

[40] Henry Clay, The Works of Henry Clay, Comprising His Life, Correspondence and Speeches (NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), vol. 3, p.207.

[41] This is supposedly from a letter Lodge wrote to Theodore Roosevelt on Oct. 20, 1902. The quote is available on the internet, but I have yet to find a traditional published source.

[42] Bodnar, “Introduction,” in Bonds of Affection: Americans Define Their Patriotism, 11; Cecilia Elizabeth O’Leary, “‘Blood Brotherhood’: The Racialization of Patriotism, 1865–1918,” in Bonds of Affection: Americans Define Their Patriotism, John Bodnar, ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Pr., 1996), 55; Viroli, For Love of Country, 179.

[43] Anderson, Imagined Communities, 67, 145; Cynthia M. Koch, “Teaching Patriotism: Private Virtue for the Public Good in the Early Republic,” in in Bonds of Affection: Americans Define Their Patriotism, John Bodnar, ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Pr., 1996), 22, 27, 29–31.

[44] Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (NY: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855), 369.

[45] Ibid, 439.

[46] Ibid.

[47] Ron Soodalter, “The Day New York Tried to Secede,” HistoryNet.com (Oct. 26, 2011); reprinted in the journal America’s Civil War (Jan. 2012), 44–51.

[48] Many well appreciated the internal economic colony aspect at the time. For examples, see Ellwood Fisher, The South and the North: Being a Reply to a Lecture on the North and the South, delivered before the Young Men’s Mercantile Library Association of Cincinnati, January 16, 1849 (Washington DC: Buell & Blanchard; 1849); Thomas Prentice Kettell, Southern Wealth and Northern Profits: As Exhibited in Statistical Facts and Official Figures, Showing the Necessity of Union to the Future Prosperity and Welfare of the Republic (1860; reprinted by University of Alabama Press, 1965); Stephen Colwell, The Five Cotton States and New York; or, Remarks Upon the Social and Economical Aspects of the Southern Political Crisis (Philadelphia: n.p., 1861). Internal economic colonialism has continued in parts of the South to the present time; for some examples, see the collection of essays in Helen Matthews Lewis, et al, eds., Colonialism in Modern America — The Appalachian Case (Boone, NC: Appalachian State University, 2017).

[49] O’Leary, “‘Blood Brotherhood’: The Racialization of Patriotism, 1865–1918,” 54.

[50] Mike Underwood, “At Last, Michelle Obama Proud of America,” Boston Herald (Feb. 19, 2008); Evan Thomas, “Alienated in the USA: an Unguarded Comment from Michelle Obama Speaks Volumes About Race and Assimilation in Modern America,” Newsweek (March 13, 2008); Rochelle Riley, “Michelle Obama Tells Democrats ‘Why I Love This Country’: Candidates Wife Gets Personal,” Detroit Free Press (Aug. 26, 2008).

[51] Robert J. Dinkin, Voting in Revolutionary America: A Study of Elections in the Orig- inal Thirteen States, 1776–1789 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Pr., 1982), 28–39, 45–47; Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: the Contested History of Democracy in the United States (NY: Basic Books, 2000), 4–5; Albert Edward McKinley, The Suffrage Franchise in the Thirteen English Colonies in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1905), 478. For examples specific to individual colonies, see McKinley, Suffrage Franchise, 62, 71, 132, 146, 362, 363, 374, 386, 408.

[52] Lawrence M. Friedman, American Law in the 20th Century (New Haven: Yale University Pr., 2002), 545.

[53] John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1932, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Pr., 1988).

[54] Max Lerner, “The United States as Exclusive Hotel,” in Actions and Passions: Notes on the Multiple Revolution of Our Time (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1949), 92.

[55] Ibid., 93.

[56] Retrieved Aug. 6, 2013: http://religiousliberty.tv/rabbi-sherwin-wine.html

[57] Mark Twain, “The Czar’s Soliloquy” (1905), 325; retrieved from https://archive.org/stream/jstor-25105366/25105366_djvu.txt

[58] The entire address is reproduced at Yale Law Schools Avalon Project:

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp (retrieved Aug. 5, 2013).

[59] “Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star,” p.149 (May 7, 1918), via https://theodoreroosevelt.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=991271&module_id=339333

[60] James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (NY: Modern Library 1931), 525; also available on Project Gutenberg.

[61] Harrison E. Salisbury, The Many Americas Shall Be One (NY: W. W. Norton (1971), 29.

[62] “Lewis Holds Books Do Not Prevent War,” New York Times (Dec. 30, 1930), p. 5, col. 2

[63] Irvin Anthony, Decatur (NY & London: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1931), 265.

[64] Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., Writings of John Quincy Adams, vol.6, (NY: MacMillan Co., 1916), 61.

[65] Adams supposedly wrote this in an 1847 publication called Congress, Slavery and an Unjust War, but library databases like Worldcat show no record for this title. However, the quote can be found in Hugh Rawson and Margaret Miner, eds., Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations (NY: Oxford University Pr., 2006), 501. Also quoted by William Hayes Ward, “The Hebrew Scriptures: What I Believe and Why — Nineteenth Paper,” The Independent (New York, Feb. 1, 1915), p. 171, col. 1.

[66] 42nd Congress, 2nd session (Feb. 28, 1872), printed in the precursor to the Congressional Record, the Congressional Globe vol. 45, page 1287.

[67] Described in Bartleby’s Quotes, retrieved Aug. 6, 2013 from: http://www.bartleby.com/73/1641.html

[68] Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Defendant (London: J.M. Dent, 1901), 125.

[69] Leigh Edwards, Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity (Bloomington: Indiana University Pr., 2009), 146.

[70] Ibid, 147.

[71] James Baldwin, Collected Essays (NY: Library of America), 9.

[72] Dictionary.com citation, retrieved Aug. 6, 2013 from:

http://quotes.dictionary.com/the_citizen_who_criticizes_his_country_is_paying

[73] Barbara Ehrenreich, The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed (NY: Pantheon Bks., 1990), 11.

[74] Wendy Kaminer, “Patriotic Dissent” The American Prospect (Dec. 19, 2001), retrieved Aug. 6, 2013 from:

http://prospect.org/article/patriotic-dissent

[75] This speech is available at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/rfkonmlkdeath.html

[76] Ibid.

[77] “Barack Obama’s Speech on Race,” New York Times (March 18, 2008).

[78] Trey Parker, “Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants,” South Park, season 5, episode 9 (Comedy Central, Nov. 2001).

[79] Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative, 167, 185.

[80] Ibid, 183, 187.

[81] Ibid, 186.

[82] Lymari Morales, “Nearly All Americans Consider Military Service ‘Patriotic’: Symbolic Gestures Valued More Highly by Older Americans and the Less Educated,” Gallup Poll (July 3, 2008).

[83] Martha Teichner, “How Do You Define Patriotism?” CBS News (Nov. 2, 2008).

[84] This, of course, is a huge and well-documented subject. For a general overview, see Richard O. Hope, Racial Strife in the U.S. Military: Toward the Elimination of Discrimination (NY: Praeger, 1979). For a sampling of more specific examples, see Anon. “Blacks’ Presence Ignored in Nation’s Tribute to Vietnam Unknown Soldier,” Jet vol.66 (June 18, 1984), 54; Bruce A. Glasrud, ed., Brothers to the Buffalo Soldiers: Perspectives on the African American Militia and Volunteers, 1865–1917 (University of Missouri Pr., 2011), 3, 10, 12, 14; Adriane Danette Lentz-Smith, Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I (Cambridge: Harvard University Pr., 2009), 36, 95, 110, 156. For some complexities involving racism and war atrocities on multiple sides during the Civil War, see William A. Dobak, Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 2011), 5, 186–87, 353, 393, 420. For some recent overviews, see Jay Price, “Documenting The History Of Mob Violence Against African-American Veterans,” NPR’s Morning Edition (Sept. 20, 2018); James Jeffrey, “America’s Strained Salute to its Black Military Veterans,” BBC News (May 24, 2019).

[85] David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (NY: Oxford University Pr., 1989), 687, 769, 843, 860, 866, 877.

[86] Richard Raymond III, “Book Review: ‘Odyssey of Echo Company’ Glorifies Warrior’s Pulse in Vietnam,” Roanoke Times (April 14, 2018).

[87] Robin Wagner-Pacifici, “‘Talking Lords Who Dare Not Face the Foe’: Civilian Rule and the Military Notion of Patriotism in the Clinton Presidency,” in Bonds of Affection: Americans Define Their Patriotism, John Bodnar, ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Pr., 1996), 308.

[88] Ibid, 310.

[89] This aspect was heavily covered by the media, of course. For a few examples, see Dan Nowicki and Bill Muller, “John McCain Report: The ‘Maverick’ Runs,” Arizona Republic (March 1, 2007); Jennifer Steinhauer, “Confronting Ghosts of 2000 in South Carolina,” New York Times (Oct. 19, 2007); David Brancaccio, “Dirty Politics 2008,” NOW on PBS (Jan. 4, 2008).

[90] David M. Halbfinger, “In Battle of Patriotic Symbols, Veterans Muster in Kerry Camp,” New York Times (July 27, 2004); Kate Zernike and Jim Rutenberg, “Friendly Fire: The Birth of an Attack on Kerry,” New York Times (Aug. 20, 2004); Adam Nagourney and Jim Rutenberg, “Kerry TV Ad Pins Veterans’ Attack Firmly on Bush,” New York Times (Aug. 23, 2004). Also see G. Mitchell Reyes, “The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the Politics of Realism, and the Manipulation of Vietnam Remembrance in the 2004 Presidential Election,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 9:4 (Winter 2006), 571–600.

[91] Martha Teichner, “How Do You Define Patriotism?” CBS News (Nov. 2, 2008).

[92] Maggie Haberman and Richard A. Oppel Jr., “Donald Trump Criticizes Muslim Family of Slain U.S. Soldier, Drawing Ire,” New York Times (July 30, 2016).

[93] Renae Reints, “Cindy McCain Shares Hateful Facebook Message From Stranger Targeting Late Husband, Daughter,” Fortune (March 20, 2019).

[94] Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism (Boulder, CO: Westview Pr., 1977), 465.

[95] Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, vol. 2, R.D. Hicks, trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Pr., 1970), 65.

[96] John Sellars, Stoicism (Berkeley: University of California Pr., 2006), 129, 130, 131.

[97] Ibid, 131, 132.

[98] Retrieved from Bartleby Quotes on Aug. 5, 2013:

http://www.bartleby.com/78/606.html

[99] This quote comes from chapter five of the Rights of Man (1791), called “Ways and Means of Improving the Condition of Europe.” See Willam M. Van der Weyde, ed., The Life and Works of Thomas Paine, vol. 7 (New Rochelle, NY: Thomas Paine National Historical Assoc., 1925, 33; or Rights of Man on the Project Gutenberg website.

[100] Jerry Holmes, Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Pubs., 2002), 233.

[101] Alfred Tennyson, “Hands All Round,” in Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson (Boston & NY: Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1900), 632.

[102] George Santayana, The Life of Reason, or, The Phases of Human Progress, vol. 2 (NY: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1922), 175–76.

[103] William B. Cohen, “Nationalism in Europe,” in Bonds of Affection: Americans Define Their Patriotism, John Bodnar, ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Pr., 1996), 336–37.

[104] For the beginnings of the United Nations, see Stephen C. Schlesinger, Act of Creation: the Founding of the United Nations, a Story of Superpowers, Secret Agents, Wartime Allies and Enemies, and their Quest for a Peaceful World (Boulder, CO: Westview Pr., 2003). For a more recent assessment (false dichotomy of the title notwithstanding), see Paul Heinbecker & Patricia Goff eds., Irrelevant or Indispensable?: the United Nations in the Twenty-First Century (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Pr., 2005).

[105] Dora Kostakopoulou, “Thick, Thin and Thinner Patriotisms: Is This All There is?” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 26:1 (Spring 2006), 73–106. The assertion mentioned here appears near the end of Section 1 of the essay.

[106] Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 1859–1865 : Speeches, Letters, and Miscellaneous Writings, Presidential Messages and Proclamations, vol. 1 (NY: Viking Press, 1989), 307–48.

[107] David M. Kennedy, Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (NY: Oxford University Pr., 1999), 381, 386–88, 393–94, 421, 432, 434, 435n.15, 472, 523.

[108] As reflected in numerous television interviews and appearances, especially in the role as pundit for the weekly public television magazine, the McLoughlin Group. Also see Buchanan’s indicative blogs:

https://buchanan.org/blog/Topics/imperialism

https://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-a-republic-not-an-empire-312

https://buchanan.org/blog/americas-unsustainable-empire-129168

[109] Nick Bryant, “Trump Impeachment Trial: is the US Beyond the Point of Repair?” BBC News (Feb. 9, 2020).

[110] This is the general theme in Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: a History of Liberalism in the 1960s (NY: Harper & Row, 1984).

[111] Bodnar, “Introduction,” in Bonds of Affection: Americans Define Their Patriotism, 10.

[112] J. A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (NY: J. Pott & Co., 1902).

[113] Troy Miller, dir., John Oliver: Terrifying Times (Dakota Pictures, 2008), opening minutes.

[114] This is a huge topic, of course, with a wide spectrum of interpretations and perspectives. For a sampling, see Kent E. Calder, Embattled Garrisons — Comparative Base Politics and American Globalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Pr., 2007); Lynn E. Davis, U.S. Overseas Military Presence: What Are the Strategic Choices? ( Santa Monica, CA: Project U.S. Air Force, Rand Corp., 2012); David Vine, Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World (NY: Metropolitan Books, 2015).

[115] Clifford R. Backman, Cultures of the West: A History (Oxford University Pr., 2013), 815.

[116] Walter Issacson, “Republican Strategist Frank Luntz on Toxic Politics,” Amanpour & Company (PBS, March 26, 2019), min. 8–9.

[117] Troy Miller, dir., “John Oliver: Terrifying Times” (Dakota Pictures, 2008), opening minutes.

[118] A goldmine of documentation resulting from this momentous event is found in Dag Hammarskjold Library, “Drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” at http://research.un.org/en/undhr/introduction and links therein.

[119] John Winthrop, A Modell of Christian Charity (1630), available at http://history.hanover.edu/texts/winthmod.html

[120] Eric Lieu and Nick Hanauer, The True Patriot (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2007), 19, 51, 71.

[121] Ibid, 31.