O PATRIOTS: A Flag for Sunrise
BUELL, JOHN
O Patriots AN EXCHANGE A Flag for Sunrise BY JOHN BUELL The day after U.S. bombers attacked Libya, students in my political-economy class asked about my reaction to the raid. I said I shared...
...Even among those who claim to hold patriotism in great disdain, the answer to that question tends to be contradictory and confused...
...It encourages citizens to identify their welfare with that of a narrow band of fellow countrymen rather than with the broad spectrum of humanity...
...Language, culture, geography, and politics, as well as purely economic interests, are factors in determining the nature of human life...
...In this sense, patriotism is, indeed, an artificial phenomenon, since the nation state is often a poor substitute for older and more solidly grounded allegiances and loyalties...
...I said I shared Senator Mark Hatfield's view that America, too, now had the blood of innocents on its hands...
...But the need for allegiances and loyalties—for roots—is real, and in our time the nation state is often the most accessible vehicle for expressing them...
...But the Left cannot leave it at that if it is ever to play a significant role in American political life...
...but it is realistic to posit it as a long step toward peaceful accommodation...
...Only a new kind of domestic politics can begin to break through this destructive dialectic...
...To suggest that this is a formula for eliminating conflict would be visionary...
...Patriotism, they argue, diverts workers' attention from their real class interests...
...People realize their identities by entering into significant associations with others and interacting with them on a regular basis...
...Many on the Left would cheerfully plead guilty to the charge...
...That identity could serve, in turn, as the basis for a new kind of internationalism that dispenses with military force or other forms of coercion...
...Localities can be encouraged—and funded—to undertake not only such conventional activities as energy conservation and preventive health care, but also such innovative endeavors as autonomous schools and local-access communications...
...A social order based on an irrational economy and a manipulative culture will not prepare us to resist such simplistic slogans as "It's morning again in America...
...What our Government did may have been ill-advised, but we did try first to get other nations to respond to Libyan terrorism in nonmilitary ways...
...That's how many Americans— especially working-class Americans—feel about the Left and its politics: We are perceived as indiiferent, if not downright hostile, to the traditional love of homeland that is called patriotism...
...Raymond Williams, the British cultural critic, has observed in The Year 2000 that it is "ineffective to come back from a demonstration of the universality of the human species and expect people, from that fact alone, to reorganize their lives by treating all their immediate and actual groupings and relationships as secondary...
...it is quite another to sneer at patriotic Nicaraguans defending their revolution, or patriotic Poles resisting Soviet oppression, or patriotic Palestinians seeking to fashion a homeland for themselves...
...Public attitudes, as reflected in such phenomena as the enthusiastic support for the raid on Libya and the invasion of Grenada, compel us to confront a fundamental question: Is patriotism merely a primitive and inherently John Buell, an associate editor of The Progressive, teaches political economy at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine...
...I'm tired of hearing you intellectuals engage in America-bashing," he said...
...It is closely akin to, and perhaps even identical with, nationalism...
...He obviously felt my response was unpatriotic...
...The symbols of the centralized state have been used effectively to redirect the identities of the citizenry...
...Yet that is precisely what we expect people to do when we shut our eyes to the importance of patriotism...
...Mass education and mass culture have also helped debilitate personal and local relationships...
...nation and native are cognates...
...reactionary instinct that ought to be resisted and ultimately destroyed, or does it express, in however muted or distorted form, commitments that must help underpin any just society...
...Most of my students agreed, but one young man who had worked in an electronics factory for the last five years was visibly angered by my response...
...Individuals who are deprived of the opportunity to interact and identify with immediate neighbors will never be induced to empathize with the sufferings of an abstract humanity...
...They scorn patriotism as a political evil—a scourge that ought to be eradicated...
...We must introduce programs that lift some of the economic burden from individuals while making them more aware of the role the community can play in promoting their welfare...
...Modern industrial capitalism has undermined the significance of many of these relationships...
...The disintegration of local communities because of capital flight and other vicissitudes of modern capitalism has left many people feeling powerless and insecure...
...Such conflicting claims lead some of us into peculiar political contortions: Patriotism among citizens of powerful nation states is wicked and deplorable...
...Among the exploited, patriotism is an instrument of justice...
...It is one thing to scoff at the patriotic sentiments of ordinary Americans...
...From such efforts, a more securely grounded human identity might well emerge...
...We are born into particular localities and regions, languages and dialects...
...The challenge that confronts us is not to eradicate patriotism but to reconstitute it as a positive force...
...Regional, state, and neighborhood authorities should plan self-sufficient systems in housing, transportation, industry, and agriculture—systems designed to meet human needs in ways that can't be, or usually aren't, conceived by professionals and bureaucrats...
...Many people turn to militant patriotism because they know of no other way to assert identity...
...among the advantaged, patriotism is a tool of aggression, obstructing recognition of our common humanity...
...patriotism in the Third World is virtuous and admirable...
Vol. 50 • July 1986 • No. 7
