Why I’m Not Patriotic
by Matthew Rothschild
(In memory of George Carlin.)

It’s July 4th again, a day of near-compulsory flag-waving and nation-worshipping. Count me out.

Spare me the puerile parades.

Don’t play that martial music, white boy.

And don’t befoul nature’s sky with your F-16s.

You see, I don’t believe in patriotism.

It’s not that I’m anti-American, but I am anti-patriotic.

Love of country isn’t natural. It’s not something you’re born with. It’s an inculcated kind of love, something that is foisted upon you in the home, in the school, on TV, at church, during the football game.

Yet most people accept it without inspection.

Why?

For when you stop to think about it, patriotism (especially in its malignant morph, nationalism) has done more to stack the corpses millions high in the last 300 years than any other factor, including the prodigious slayer, religion.

The victims of colonialism, from the Congo to the Philippines, fell at nationalism’s bayonet point.

World War I filled the graves with the most foolish nationalism. And Hitler and Mussolini and Imperial Japan brought nationalism to new nadirs. The flags next to the tombstones are but signed confessions-notes left by the killer after the fact.

The millions of victims of Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot have on their death certificates a dual diagnosis: yes communism, but also that other ism, nationalism.

The whole world almost got destroyed because of nationalism during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The bloody battles in Serbia and Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s fed off the injured pride of competing patriotisms and all their nourished grievances.

In the last five years in Iraq, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died because the United States, the patriarch of patriotism, saw fit to impose itself, without just cause, on another country. But the excuse was patriotism, wrapped in Bush’s brand of messianic militarism: that we, the great Americans, have a duty to deliver “God’s gift of freedom” to every corner of the world.

And the Congress swallowed it, and much of the American public swallowed it, because they’ve been fed a steady diet of this swill.

What is patriotism but “the narcissism of petty differences”? That’s Freud’s term, describing the disorder that compels one group to feel superior to another.

Then there’s a little multiplication problem: Can every country be the greatest country in the world?

This belief system magically transforms an accident of birth into some kind of blue ribbon.

“It’s a great country,” said the old Quaker essayist Milton Mayer. “They’re all great countries.”

At times, the appeal to patriotism may be necessary, as when harnessing the group to protect against a larger threat (Hitler) or to overthrow an oppressor (as in the anti-colonial struggles in the Third World).

But it is always a dangerous toxin to play with, and it ought to be shelved with cross and bones on the label except in these most extreme circumstances.

In an article called “Patriot Games” in the current issue of Time magazine (July 7), Peter Beinart, late of The New Republic, inspects his navel for seven pages and then throws the lint all around.

“Conservatives are right,” he says. “To some degree, patriotism must mean loving your country for the same reason you love your family: simply because it is yours.”

And then he criticizes, incoherently, the conservative love-it-or-leave-it types.

The moral folly of his argument he himself exposes: “If liberals love America purely because it embodies ideals like liberty, justice, and equality, why shouldn’t they love Canada-which from a liberal perspective often goes further toward realizing those principles-even more? And what do liberals do,” he asks, “when those universal ideals collide with America’s self-interest? Giving away the federal budget to Africa would probably increase the net sum of justice and equality on the planet, after all. But it would harm Americans and thus be unpatriotic.”

This is a straw man if I ever I saw one, but if the United States gave a lot more of its budget to eradicating poverty and disease in Africa and other parts of the developing world, it might actually make us all safer.

At bottom, note how readily Beinart disposes of “liberty, justice, and equality.”

He has stripped patriotism to its vacuous essence: Love your country because it’s yours.

If we stopped that arm from reflexively saluting and concerned ourselves more with “universal ideals” than with parochial ones, we’d be a lot better off.

We wouldn’t be in Iraq, we wouldn’t have besmirched ourselves at Guantanamo, we wouldn’t be acting like some Argentinean junta that wages illegal wars and tortures people and disappears them into secret dungeons.

Love of country is a form of idolatry.

Listen, if you would, to the wisdom of Milton Mayer, writing back in 1962 a rebuke to JFK for his much-celebrated line: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

Mayer would have none of it. “When Mr. Kennedy spoke those words at his inaugural, I knew that I was at odds with a society which did not immediately rebel against them,” he wrote. “They are the words of totalitarianism pure; no Jefferson could have spoken them, and no Khrushchev could have spoken them better. Could a man say what Mr. Kennedy said and also say that the difference between us and them is that they believe that man exists for the State and we believe that the State exists for man? He couldn’t, but he did. And in doing so, he read me out of society.”

When Americans retort that this is still the greatest country in the world, I have to ask why.

Are we the greatest country because we have 10,000 nuclear weapons?

No, that just makes us enormously powerful, with the capacity to destroy the Earth itself.

Are we the greatest country because we have soldiers stationed in more than 120 countries?

No, that just makes us an empire, like the empires of old, only more so.

Are we the greatest country because we are one-twentieth of the world’s population but we consume one-quarter of its resources?

No, that just must makes us a greedy and wasteful nation.

Are we the greatest country because the top 1 percent of Americans hoards 34 percent of the nation’s wealth, more than everyone in the bottom 90 percent combined?

No, that just makes us a vastly unequal nation.

Are we the greatest country because corporations are treated as real, live human beings with rights?

No, that just enshrines a plutocracy in this country.

Are we the greatest country because we take the best care of our people’s basic needs?

No, actually we don’t. We’re far down the list on health care and infant mortality and parental leave and sick leave and quality of life.

So what exactly are we talking about here?

To the extent that we’re a great (not the greatest, mind you: that’s a fool’s game) country, we’re less of a great country today.

Because those things that truly made us great-the system of checks and balances, the enshrinement of our individual rights and liberties-have all been systematically assaulted by Bush and Cheney.

From the Patriot Act to the Military Commissions Act to the new FISA Act, and all the signing statements in between, we are less great today.

From Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Force Base and Guantanamo, we are less great today.

From National Security Presidential Directive 51 (giving the Executive responsibility for ensuring constitutional government in an emergency) to National Security Presidential Directive 59 (expanding the collection of our biometric data), we are less great today.

From the Joint Terrorism Task Forces to InfraGard and the Terrorist Liaison Officers, we are less great today.

Admit it. We don’t have a lot to brag about today.

It is time, it is long past time, to get over the American superiority complex.

It is time, it is long past time, to put patriotism back on the shelf-out of the reach of children and madmen.

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/04/10096/

I don't do politics and didn't read the whole article as to me it was developing to a verbal diarrhea.

One thing I noticed the Editors surname Rothschild

That family is one of the 5 families controlling the Federal Bank which controls the money supply to this nation and the world in conjunction with Bank of England to which they are answerable to no one including President of the USA or any other body
Isn't that interesting

A lot of excellent points

wow..that was a workout

I can train a monkey to wave a flag; that doesn’t make the monkey patriotic.”
—-SCOTT RITTER

“Patriotism is nationalism, and always leads to war.”
—-Dr. HELEN CALDICOTT

“My country is the world.”
—THOMAS PAINE

“This planet is deeply troubled, and the biggest cause of that trouble is our own government.”
——RAMSEY CLARK, former U. S. attorney general

“Patriotism is loyalty to one’s country, not loyalty to one’s government.”
—-HOWARD ZINN

“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
—–THOMAS JEFFERSON

“It is our sense of conceit that fortifies patriotism.”
—-BENITO MUSSOLINI

“No flag is large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
—-HOWARD ZINN

“To overthrow militarism, it is necessary to depreciate the idea of the fatherland. So long as there are fatherlands there will be militarism.”
—–BENITO MUSSOLINI

“Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.”
—-GEORGE JEAN NATHAN

Earthian July 4th, 2008 2:50 pm
Patriotism is the conviction that your country is superior to all others because you were born in it.

George Bernard Shaw

I agree. It is time for the people of this country to pick it up out of the muck that Bush and his "friends" have stomped it into and shake it off and begin the cleaning out and in process needed to start over. We have suffered greatly at the hands of this administration and change is needed badly. McCain is not it though so hopefully noone has been bamboozled to believe that one this time.

Why I’m Not Patriotic
by Matthew Rothschild


Madman ......

I didn't bother reading any of your post, only the title and author. You made a mistake ---- "Why I'm Not Patriotic" is something that is attributed to Obama.

Amen

Our Neocon friends are gonna freak out when they read this

I agree

yes well they don't try people anymore for treason...

...or carpetbaggers like the clintons would be in jail.

It's people who believe these lies that will kill our freedoms & corrupt our form of govt. further.

I wish they would come out of the closet & say what they truly are, communists & anarchists, instead of hiding behind the banner of our constitution.

“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
—–THOMAS JEFFERSON

“My country is the world.”
—THOMAS PAINE

Patriotism is the conviction that your country is superior to all others because you were born in it.

-George Bernard Shaw



I really identify with that.

HUH??? I am patriotic because of what my country offers me...freedom. That's something learned & not something you are born into...what about people who live in thrid world countries? You think they like their lives?

Think about that...

Freedom to be prosecuted and thrown in jail A cop can do anything to you they want at any time What freedom?? Freedom to be beaten and killed if you resist? Freedom to be humiliated? Freedom to be spied upon, to have your property taken by a judge at anytime??? What freedom?? The local government where I live is no different than the Taliban. They just have better military weapons to use against the people. To me, it sounds like your living in a dream land. To me, Im living in a nightmare I just dont see the freedom How many State Trooper roadblocks did I have to go thru to see the fireworks show?? How many people can I assemble in one place without having the police arrive? I just dont see it. Freedom of WHAT????? You dont even got the freedom to die when you choose in this country

I am neither a communist nor an anarchist. I used to see things like you and Starsailor and Lindyy. I think the word disillusioned describes me best. I feel so heartbroken Now,all this talk of freedom sounds like a sick joke to me, and the only thing that gives me any comfort is "GOD". Thats why I start talking about HIM so much when I enter these discussions. I feel like HE is all I have left to believe in.

Excellent points . Thank you for sharing .

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/byron-williams/what-is-patriotism_b_110718.html

Oh sure...and the alternative is better????

What country do you live in?

Yes well you can thank terrorists for that...

..you can also thank violent protest & damage they do to property that caused alot of the security measures we see today.

..

so punish the majority for the deeds of a few....great thinking.