Data point: My home country, Australia, does not have a pledge of allegiance. Overt demonstrations of patriotism were limited to being expected to sing the national anthem in school assembly once a week. I personally feel that there is still plenty of patriotism to go around. However, a common perception of the US is that you guys are over-patriotic.
Thinking a bit more on this, I can’t help wondering how much of this can be traced to free voting versus mandatory voting. How much of encouraging patriotism is an attempt to make people care enough to vote?
I wonder whether the reason why a lot of people don’t realise it might be because it’s not actually true.
I mean, ESR’s argument seems to me incoherent and mostly aimed at finding a way to identify Barack Obama as not only an America-hater but also a freedom-hater. (Step 1: True US patriotism is more about loving the ideal of liberty and less about tribal attachment to the US as such. Step 2: Because for a while Barack Obama chose not to wear a flag pin, he doesn’t love his country. Step 3, unstated but I think clearly there: Since true US patriotism means loving liberty and Barack Obama is not a true US patriot, he is opposed not only to the US but to liberty.) It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that his characterization of US patriotism may be as much a matter of political convenience as the (absurd) inference he draws from Obama’s not wearing a flag pin. Certainly at least one of them must be wrong; it cannot be true both that patriotism for Americans means loving their country “not as a thing in itself, but insofar as it embodies core ideas” and that not wearing a US flag pin indicates “a lack of love for America as it actually is” and therefore a lack of patriotism.
And it’s certainly not only in the US that patriotism tends to involve not only tribal loyalty to one’s country but also love of what are taken to be its virtues. (Sometimes grand things like liberty and enterprise in the US, courage and fair play in the UK; sometimes little quirks like apple pie and baseball in the US, pubs and cricket in the UK.)
I’d be very interested in others’ opinions: Is US patriotism really as much more “abstracted” than other nations’ as ESR suggests? Is it true that “most Americans love their country … not as a thing in itself, but insofar as it embodies core ideas about liberty”?
But the French, roiled by political instability and war, have never settled on a political unifying idea or constitutional touchstone. Instead, French patriotism expresses a loyalty to French language and culture and history. It replaces tribalism not with idealism but with culturism.
That sounds wrong. Certainly people who consider themselves French patriots are likely to say “Speak French, dammit!”, “Yeah, maybe it’s like that in your country but you’re in France now”, or “Go Napoleon!”, but no more than American patriots are likely to say the analogues.
Also, French patriotism is huge on political ideas. Motherland of human rights, French revolution, Resistance, and all that.
That’s OK; I, likewise, missed the part in what I wrote where I said that those words appear in ESR’s post.
I think he’s suggesting it, not saying it. And he comes pretty damn close to saying in so many words that Barack Obama “doesn’t love” America, which of course is far from the same thing as hating it but still a pretty serious accusation to level at a candidate for the presidency.
As for the stronger claim about hating, though, consider the following bits from what ESR wrote. (Please feel free to verify that the ellipses don’t misrepresent his meaning or tone.)
[...] a kind of anti-patriotism in which dedication to an imagined America-that-might-be produces actual, destructive hatred of America as it is and has been. [...] for this kind of anti-patriotism I shall analogously coin the label “chomskyism” [...]
But my choice of Noam Chomsky as an icon does reflect the fact that chomskyism is far more a phenomenon of the American left than of the American right. It is near impossible to imagine a conservative presidential aspirant refusing to wear a flag pin, or explaining that refusal as Obama did.
It seems to me that (1) ESR is defining “chomskyism” to mean actual destructive hatred of America, and (2) his comments about the significance of Obama’s not wearing a flag pin make no sense unless he’s taken to be saying that Obama was exemplifying “chomskyism”, and hence actual destructive hatred of America.
But no, indeed, he didn’t actually say it explicitly using the words “America-hater” or “freedom-hater” or any close analogue.
(I shall not comment further on the political questions at issue here. The actual point I was making was just that I don’t feel any obligation to believe what ESR says about American patriotism as compared with other sorts.)
Yeah, it seems like you’re going a bit far to connect the dots. ESR is saying that the “destructive hatred” is produced by “patriotism by dissent” “at its extreme”. He didn’t actually say that Obama has this extreme sort.
It seemed to me that he was just using the flag pin case as an accessible example of this “patriotism by dissent”. It didn’t seem to me that he was even saying anything was wrong with “patriotism by dissent”, other than noting that a lot of Americans seemed to disagree with it. Though he does suggest it’s a “pathology”, which would normally be a negative term.
In the comments, he even clarifies that he was not trying to call any particular person unpatriotic, and repeatedly says that he is trying to do an analysis of American patriotism. Given the sorts of stuff ESR has written on the philosophical side before, I’m inclined to believe him.
Whereas, given the sort of stuff ESR has written on philosophy and politics before, I’m not at all inclined to believe that he didn’t (alongside the theoretical stuff, which I’m sure he means sincerely) intend to insinuate that Barack Obama doesn’t love his country.
But I think taking this further would almost certainly get unproductively political, so I shall leave it here.
According to the article, patriotism-as-dissent is identified as un-American and as Obama’s theory. American patriotism is also conceptualized as loyalty-to-freedom, for example in the Franklin quote.
Something that a lot of people, both inside and outside the US, don’t realize is that what patriotism means in the US is not quite the same as what patriotism means in other countries.
I would expect nearly all patriotic people to consider patriotism to their own country to be different in some fundamentally important way to patriotism to another. The other patriots don’t care about Better Seating after all.
Requiring someone to make a mandatory pledge to a flag instills the Love of Freedom how...?
By making it Capitalized. Actually having the people loving freedom sounds all sorts of dangerous—people may expect you to let them do stuff. If you make them Love Freedom instead you should be able to keep them in line.
That doesn’t seem true to me. Do you have anything more solid to back this up? Also, see Esar’s comment below that the US is a mess but it’s his mess. How is that not regular old tribal patriotism?
Data point: My home country, Australia, does not have a pledge of allegiance. Overt demonstrations of patriotism were limited to being expected to sing the national anthem in school assembly once a week. I personally feel that there is still plenty of patriotism to go around. However, a common perception of the US is that you guys are over-patriotic.
Thinking a bit more on this, I can’t help wondering how much of this can be traced to free voting versus mandatory voting. How much of encouraging patriotism is an attempt to make people care enough to vote?
Something that a lot of people, both inside and outside the US, don’t realize is that what patriotism means in the US is not quite the same as what patriotism means in other countries.
I wonder whether the reason why a lot of people don’t realise it might be because it’s not actually true.
I mean, ESR’s argument seems to me incoherent and mostly aimed at finding a way to identify Barack Obama as not only an America-hater but also a freedom-hater. (Step 1: True US patriotism is more about loving the ideal of liberty and less about tribal attachment to the US as such. Step 2: Because for a while Barack Obama chose not to wear a flag pin, he doesn’t love his country. Step 3, unstated but I think clearly there: Since true US patriotism means loving liberty and Barack Obama is not a true US patriot, he is opposed not only to the US but to liberty.) It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that his characterization of US patriotism may be as much a matter of political convenience as the (absurd) inference he draws from Obama’s not wearing a flag pin. Certainly at least one of them must be wrong; it cannot be true both that patriotism for Americans means loving their country “not as a thing in itself, but insofar as it embodies core ideas” and that not wearing a US flag pin indicates “a lack of love for America as it actually is” and therefore a lack of patriotism.
And it’s certainly not only in the US that patriotism tends to involve not only tribal loyalty to one’s country but also love of what are taken to be its virtues. (Sometimes grand things like liberty and enterprise in the US, courage and fair play in the UK; sometimes little quirks like apple pie and baseball in the US, pubs and cricket in the UK.)
I’d be very interested in others’ opinions: Is US patriotism really as much more “abstracted” than other nations’ as ESR suggests? Is it true that “most Americans love their country … not as a thing in itself, but insofar as it embodies core ideas about liberty”?
That sounds wrong. Certainly people who consider themselves French patriots are likely to say “Speak French, dammit!”, “Yeah, maybe it’s like that in your country but you’re in France now”, or “Go Napoleon!”, but no more than American patriots are likely to say the analogues.
Also, French patriotism is huge on political ideas. Motherland of human rights, French revolution, Resistance, and all that.
I would say that many Americans don’t properly keep the two concepts separate.
I missed the part where he was identifying Obama as an “America-hater” or a “freedom-hater”—I don’t see those words, or any analogues, in the post.
That’s OK; I, likewise, missed the part in what I wrote where I said that those words appear in ESR’s post.
I think he’s suggesting it, not saying it. And he comes pretty damn close to saying in so many words that Barack Obama “doesn’t love” America, which of course is far from the same thing as hating it but still a pretty serious accusation to level at a candidate for the presidency.
As for the stronger claim about hating, though, consider the following bits from what ESR wrote. (Please feel free to verify that the ellipses don’t misrepresent his meaning or tone.)
It seems to me that (1) ESR is defining “chomskyism” to mean actual destructive hatred of America, and (2) his comments about the significance of Obama’s not wearing a flag pin make no sense unless he’s taken to be saying that Obama was exemplifying “chomskyism”, and hence actual destructive hatred of America.
But no, indeed, he didn’t actually say it explicitly using the words “America-hater” or “freedom-hater” or any close analogue.
(I shall not comment further on the political questions at issue here. The actual point I was making was just that I don’t feel any obligation to believe what ESR says about American patriotism as compared with other sorts.)
Yeah, it seems like you’re going a bit far to connect the dots. ESR is saying that the “destructive hatred” is produced by “patriotism by dissent” “at its extreme”. He didn’t actually say that Obama has this extreme sort.
It seemed to me that he was just using the flag pin case as an accessible example of this “patriotism by dissent”. It didn’t seem to me that he was even saying anything was wrong with “patriotism by dissent”, other than noting that a lot of Americans seemed to disagree with it. Though he does suggest it’s a “pathology”, which would normally be a negative term.
In the comments, he even clarifies that he was not trying to call any particular person unpatriotic, and repeatedly says that he is trying to do an analysis of American patriotism. Given the sorts of stuff ESR has written on the philosophical side before, I’m inclined to believe him.
Whereas, given the sort of stuff ESR has written on philosophy and politics before, I’m not at all inclined to believe that he didn’t (alongside the theoretical stuff, which I’m sure he means sincerely) intend to insinuate that Barack Obama doesn’t love his country.
But I think taking this further would almost certainly get unproductively political, so I shall leave it here.
According to the article, patriotism-as-dissent is identified as un-American and as Obama’s theory. American patriotism is also conceptualized as loyalty-to-freedom, for example in the Franklin quote.
I would expect nearly all patriotic people to consider patriotism to their own country to be different in some fundamentally important way to patriotism to another. The other patriots don’t care about Better Seating after all.
Requiring someone to make a mndatory pledge to a flag instills the Love of Freedom how...?
By making it Capitalized. Actually having the people loving freedom sounds all sorts of dangerous—people may expect you to let them do stuff. If you make them Love Freedom instead you should be able to keep them in line.
That doesn’t seem true to me. Do you have anything more solid to back this up? Also, see Esar’s comment below that the US is a mess but it’s his mess. How is that not regular old tribal patriotism?
Both forms of patriotism exist and are frequently confused, even by said patriots.