21 Responses

1. In a comment to Brian’s post at Balkinization I said the following:

   “Might we make a distinction for some purposes between patriotism and nationalism? I feel some connection to this country and its institutions, but especially the Constitution. Moreover, given the choice and opportunity, I would choose to live here rather than anywhere else (although I admit to not being that knowledgeable about the intimate living conditions in many countries). This sentiment I would christen “patriotic,” whereas nationalism is a rather different beast, often dependent on a mythological politics of identity of some sort in which one’s peculiar form of identity trumps all others. More of course could be said, but suffice to say I’m concerned about any conflation of a reasonable patriotism with a xenophobic, particularist, racist, etc. nationalism that diminishes, demeans or denies the humanity of “the Other.” The patriotism I have in mind here would be perfectly compatible with a sophisticated sort of cosmpolitanism (e.g., Nussbaum or Caney). I too look forward to the withering away of the State, but for now I’m only a philosophical anarchist and the affection I have for my country is perfectily compatible with an equivalent sentiment by others for their country. And this affection for one’s country does not entail any necessary endosement of this or that party or government in power.”

   Brian’s response to myself and others with similar sentiment did not seem to recognize the importance of our Constitution (Although not a sacred text, comes pretty damn close to one: with good reason our Constitution has survived as long as it has. It is not surprising that a Dorf on Law commenter nominated it for one of the ‘Seven Legal Wonders of the World’ [go to Dorf on Law and scroll down a bit]). Perhaps I have a highly stipulative definition of patriotism and I’m well aware that many on the Left have of late seen fit to dismiss patriotism of any sort, but I simply can’t follow them here. I do think there are many aspects of our country that are unique and worthy of imitation or emulation (not blind or mindless, but well-considered…) and my patriotism is wedded to those qualities: as you note Roger, this has first and foremost to do with the principles and values found in our Constitution.

   Brian is of course a brilliant legal theorist and scholar and has been very supportive of my work (what little there is), reading and thoughtfully responding to whatever I’ve sent him, so it’s hard to be so strongly opposed to his position as articulated in this post. Perhaps he’ll re-consider in light of the comments or if the political climate in this country significantly changes, or perhaps not: in any case, I do, in some sense, love this country and remain a patriot, and this will in no way impede or prevent me from speaking out whenever I think the government or its agents have violated in letter or spirit the values and principles enshrined in our Constitution over the course of our country’s history.

   6.20.2007
   at 10:06 am EST Patrick S. O'Donnell

2. I also want to comment on Roger’s important point that, “If there were no states, there would have to be some other collectivity to serve the function of the state. It might be a microcosm of a state, such as a tribal or feudal system, or a macrocosm of the nation-state, such as a world federation.” Indeed, the point is that the state is a solution to a coordination problem and, for now at any rate, remains the best practical and viable solution to this problem. Moreover, as Robert Goodin notes, “whereas compelling people to do their individual moral duties might be impermissible, it is perfectly permissible to compel people to play their necessary parts in discharging collective responsibilities. That permissibility of compulsion arises from the fact delinquents actually hinder others from discharging their own responsibilities under a coordination scheme.”

   As Roger implies above and Goodin makes explicit, “‘providing for the common defense’ and ‘promoting the general welfare’ represent two of the most central spheres of state activity.” So, for example, “if we take seriously the proposition that individuals have a moral duty (albeit an imperfect one) to protect others’ economic security, then it is their duty to create and sustain some scheme for coordingating aid-giving efforts within their group. Once some such collective scheme has been organized, the group has the right to use such force as necessary for compelling compliance with that coordination scheme, again within the limits set by its nature as a coordination scheme. Here that merely means that it must not exercise such for against anyone as to leave him less able to discharge his aid-giving duties that he would have been in the absence of such a coordination scheme in the first place.’ (From Goodin’s Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy, 1995). Christopher Heath Wellman would say that this is a nonpaternalistic model of state coercion: “I want to insist that a state is justified in nonconsensually coercing me (even if I am not benefited and/or would genuinely prefer to take my chances in the state of nature) because the state’s uniform coercion over all those within its territorial borders is the only way for it to rescue any of us from the perils of the state of nature. [Such an account of] political legitimacy is nonpaternalistic, then, because it insists that my state justifiably coerce me only because this coercion is a necessary and not unreasonably burdensome means of securing crucial benefits for others.”

   Furthermore, as Russell Hardin reminds us, “We generally coordinate on creating insititutions for constraining certain classes of behaviour and then the institutions implement the constraints. In an extreme statement of this dual structure of choice, James Madison argued that an advantage of the particular form of representative government proposed for the United States in its new constitution was the ‘the total exclusion of the people in their collective capacity from any share’ in the government. That is to say, popular sovereignty [as such, in the literal sense; in the sense that disturbed the likes of Plato and Aristotle] stopped at the adoption of the constitution. It must seem perplexing to anyone committed to popular sovereignty that this was an argument made in public to win popular support for the constitituon.” And, as Hardin eloquently if not persuasively argues, “Creating a constitution is itself primarily an act of coordination on one of many possible ways of ordering our live together, not an act of cooperating in an exchange or prisoner’s dilemma [as, say, with the contract metaphor; but see the work Gerald Gaus for a defense of such a metaphor].” (See Hardin’s Liberalism, Constitutionalism, and Democracy, 1999).

   I would suggest that the titles below enable one to make any number of arguments by which to construct a justification of the state that counters Brian’s claims and insinuations about its relative necessity. As Christopher Heath Wellman has said, “I am not an anarchist because I believe political states provide vitally important benefits that are not to be secured in their absence, and they supply these benefits without requiring their subjects to make unreasonable sacrifices. This defense of statism openly depends upon the truth of three claims: (1) political states supply crucial benefits, (2) these benefits would be unavailable in the absence of political states, and (3) states can render their services without imposing unreasonable costs upon those they coerce.”

   Edmundson, William A. Three Anarchical Fallacies: An Essay on Political Authority. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

   Edmundson, William A., ed. The Duty to Obey the Law: Selected Philosophical Readings. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.

   Finnis, John. Natural Law and Natural Rights. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1979.

   Freeman, Samuel. Justice and the Social Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

   Gaus, Gerald F. Justificatory Liberalism: An Essay on Epistemology and Political Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

   Green, Leslie. The Authority of the State. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1988.

   Klosko, George. The Principle of Fairness and Political Obligation. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992.

   Kraut, Richard. Socrates and the State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.

   Wellman, Christopher Heath and A. John Simmons. Is There a Duty to Obey the Law? Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

   6.20.2007
   at 1:32 pm EST Patrick S. O'Donnell

3. Roger,

   Among the standards I try to live up to as a scholar are these: pay close attention to the facts and try to scrutinize the stories we tell to insure that we are not being fooled by mystification.

   You say to me that “your country loves you, even if you don’t know it. You are its raison d’etre.”

   Sorry, but those statements smack of pure mystification. Indeed, mush of what you wrote consists of abstractions glorifying the state.

   Of course states provide important services, and I have an obligation to pay taxes and support others in the community, which I do willingly. But none of this requires loving my country.

   Read about the history of the state–read the two books I mention in the post–and you will understand better my position.

   Brian

   6.20.2007
   at 3:21 pm EST Brian Tamanaha

4. Brian sounds like he believes there’s nothing worth dying for. That’s a nice sentiment to hold when others die to protect your family from crime, fires, and foreign enemies. Ingratitude is the greatest of sins and repugnant behavior.

   Of course “countries” don’t love — only human beings “love” in that self-sacrificial way that makes love worthwhile. Anyone who thinks the UN or some other uber sovereign is any more enlightened than the US is drinking Lennon’s utopian Imagine Kool-Aid. States don’t kill people — people kill people. The state is just another weapon or tool that can be used for good or “evil” (or ill if “evil” makes your skin crawl — we do hate to judge). Given the chance (hypothetically of course) feudal lords, tribal chieftans, suzerains, sheikhs, et al. would’ve killed or cleansed or genocided or democided just as many with the tools of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution — there just wouldn’t have been as much bureaucracy to make it as efficient or count the bodies.

   6.21.2007
   at 3:22 am EST Troy

5. Having had Professor Tamanaha as my torts professor at St. John’s I have to say I admire his grasp of tort law, but deeply and passionately disagree with his position in this issue. I love this country and the opportunity it’s provided my family after escaping the ravages and tyranny of communism after WWII. Now, any reasonable person would acknowledge that the US has numerous and deep-seated problem and challenges, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth loving.

   When I tell my kids (when I can get them to listen) about Hamilton, Madison, the other Founders, the Federalist papers, the proper role of government and the rule of law, and our history I marvel at it all. I love the “idea” of America — the sense that this country, perhaps alone out of all the countries of the world looks not, fundamentally, at one’s race/religion/ethnicity in determining whether one is “an American” but at what one believes.

   So, while I wish the good Professor did love his country, I don’t begrudge him his ambiguity and lack of ardor. But there are things worth dying for, and this country, my country, for all its warts and problems is one of them in my opinion.

   6.21.2007
   at 1:54 pm EST Quasi-reasonable

6. Patriotism is over-rated, and it’s frequently an excuse to get someone else to shut up or fall in line with some ridiculous adventure that politicians in power have dreamt up. The term is most frequently a substitute for “nationalism” in the mouths of those who use it so frequently. All too often patriotism is equted with getting killed for your country (see quasi-reasonable above), which frequently means getting killed in wars that have little or nothing to do with our nation’s vital interests.

   I’ll be more apt to respect the term and those who use it when patriotism includes acts like paying your taxes, voting, speaking out against injustice, following the news, arguing with your friends over the fate of our country, etc., etc., and more than just hanging a flag outside your doorway, putting your hand over your heart, or getting misty-eyed at the Star-spangled Banner.

   By the way Mr. Alford, you’re completely wrong about Mr. Tamahan. He’s not protesting the virtues of patriotism. He’s protesting it’s excesses, and the ease with which it slides of the tongues of those who don’t have the first idea of what it means. I’m not eager to see the state whither away, but neither do I consider the state a proxy for the “idea” of America, which is truly the only thing worth fighting for.

   6.21.2007
   at 4:09 pm EST Xanthippas

7. “By the way Mr. Alford, you’re completely wrong about Mr. Tamahan. He’s not protesting the virtues of patriotism.”

   He’s not protesting them because he doesn’t believe there are any. Mr. Tamanaha [notice the spelling] does not appear to believe there are any virtues whatsoever with patriotism. That’s an important part of the argument, as the comments to his post attest. The duties or obligations of citizenship he refers to are severed from any notion of patriotism. I take that to be a central part of the argument.

   6.21.2007
   at 6:27 pm EST Patrick S. O'Donnell

8. Incidentally, in this country at any rate, if you pay your taxes and perform other obligations of citizenship you are not at all blameless for what politicians in power, agents of the state, etc. in fact do when they exercise power ostensibly on our behalf. Their power is in large measure given them and they are allowed to keep or increase it in large measure owing to what we consent (e.g., voting) or acquiesce to: by apathy or inaction, what have you.

   And it’s political ideologies: nationalism, fascism, Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, communalist religious identities, etc., and messianic foreign policies (from colonialism to the Monroe Doctrine, and beyond) that provide the essential fuels for the fire of violence: the State and its agencies allow access to the technologies of power that enable such violence to be that much more lethal, “efficient,” genocidal. After all, the nation-state was in significant part a response to the religious wars that wracked Europe; unfortunately, its consolidation saw the emergence of nationalism and later, other ideologies, which used the vehicle of the State for their own violent purposes and ends. Thus I think Brian’s focus or preoccupation with the State is misplaced, or, rather, he accords it a centrality as a variable it does not deserve in an explanation of the kinds of violence that concern all of us. As regards the State, I think we can find room for what Gandhi called active loyalty (a species of patriotism?) as well as the sacred right of disobedience.

   6.21.2007
   at 6:56 pm EST Patrick S. O'Donnell

9. In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a “party line.” Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.

   In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.” Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

   “While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.”

   The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics.” All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find — this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

   excerpted from George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language,” 1946.

   6.22.2007
   at 11:25 am EST Garth

10. the critical flaw in patriotism, nationalism or any ism for that matter is the element of uncritical thought.

    the ism itself declares an obvious bias that the speaker should take great pains to explain away by justifying, logically, the course of action suggested.

    what exactly does Bush mean when he says America is at war with terror?

    utter nonsense.

    6.22.2007
    at 12:06 pm EST Garth

11. In my opposition to the Bush administration’s war in Iraq (among other things) I understood my position to be well thought out, exemplifying both critical thinking and active opposition (signing petitions, joining protest marches, discussing reasons for opposition with others, etc.). At the same time, I understood it to be patriotic inasmuch as I was acting out of fidelity to the values and principles incarnate in our country’s Constitution. So, I would say it was part of my patriotic duty to oppose the war in Iraq.

    The war goes on not because of those whose reflexive patriotism is unthinking and purely emotional, because they wrap themselves in the flag and claim those who oppose the war are un-American. After all, polls would suggest such folks are a clear minority in this country and any explanation that blames these individuals is tantalizingly simplistic but misdirected. No, the war began and continues because too many people are preoccupied with their personal lives, don’t routinely listen to the news or read newspapers (yet they won’t miss Entertainment Tonight), care more about, as Cindy Sheehan noted, who will be the next American Idol or what’s the latest video game to hit the market, or how much a gallon of gas costs, than human beings perishing in Iraq. In short, the war does not hit home in a personal way for most Americans to care to the point of moving them to do something that might make a difference. Bring back the draft, make the war personal for more than the families and friends of the soldiers fighting today and I suspect things would change in a heartbeat.

    There remains in this country what Erich Fromm called a “pathology of normalcy,” for “the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.” Both the Hebrew prophets and Plato would understand Fromm’s contention that the average American individual is “enveloped in a welter of delusions that are butressed or reinforced by convention, consensus, or the prevailing social order,” showing symptoms of an often willful estrangement from the truth (Daniel Burston). With ample reason, Fromm saw our “fear of freedom” symptomatically expressed in low-grade, chronic schizoid tendencies, manifest in conspicuous consumption, atrophy of conscience, and a bewitchment by technology that is given exquisite expression in a binge and purge cycle of indulgent hedonism and Puritan remorse and self-righteousness. Many if not most Americans appear riven by social, economic and personal insecurities (hence the temptations of ideology) that rule out consistently rational engagement with their social and political world.

    6.22.2007
    at 1:07 pm EST Patrick S. O'Donnell

12. Patrick,

    I think you are being a little unfair on the great unwashed masses. The tide has turned against Bush. His approval ratings are in the dumps because of his policies. Congress’s approval ratings are in the dumps because they can’t rein in Bush.

    Aside from voicing their disapproval of Bush, there’s not a lot that can be done when you have a President and VP stubbornly willing to buck the public and congress and the will of the people.

    Also consider, the media competition and bias of so much that’s out there. The internet in some ways may have acted as a release valve for pent up anger against Bush, diverting activists on-line and away from the streets.

    There is no doubt that Herr Bush has been a disaster for this country of historical proportions. Vote fraud, media manipulation, blatant fear mongering… I agree the voters are, always, ultimately responsible, but the deck has always been stacked against the Johnny Punch Clocks of this world.

    6.22.2007
    at 2:31 pm EST Garth

13. Thus I think Brian’s focus or preoccupation with the State is misplaced, or, rather, he accords it a centrality as a variable it does not deserve in an explanation of the kinds of violence that concern all of us.

    Fair enough. But the ideologies you listed are rooted in far more fundamental human psychology, a psychology which is perhaps not best served by a political system wherein nation-states are the primary actors. I still find it hard to argue against the proposition that the state is a central problem, as the facillitator of intolerant ideologies. After all, a tribe of communists would be hardly as effective at killing people as a modern nation-state of communists. Tamahana’s point is that if you remove the machinery of the state, the death toll drops. Unless you’re arguing that intolerant and hostile ideologies will fade away before the state, then you’re not really arguing with his point.

    6.22.2007
    at 2:46 pm EST Xanthippas

14. We can’t do away with the machinery of the state (although state sovereignty is certainly not as strong as it once was) until such time as we have something to replace it. There is no evidence whatsoever available for the proposition that “if you remove the machinery of the state, the death toll drops,” as our world remains a world of nation-states, for better and worse. Meanwhile, other political structures that take us beyond a ‘purely statist world order’ and that possess some and/or different properties of sovereign states might be envisaged and constructed, including and perhaps most urgently, global political institutions. On the argument for this, please see Simon Caney’s Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), Chapter 5, “Political Structures,” pp. 148-188. Brian acknowledges the collective action problems (for the common good, public welfare, etc.) states address and solve, so any responsible critique of the state (like that of the better anarchists of yesteryear) must come up with some plausible proposal for alternative institutions to accomplish all of the positive things states do qua states. I think we need to go back and look at why states evolved in the first instance, for I suspect we’ll discover not a few of the reasons that legitimated or justified their emergence remain relevant today, as I implied above in an earlier comment.

    6.22.2007
    at 4:26 pm EST Patrick S. O'Donnell

15. 
    Your country seeks to protect your safety, your economic well-being, your property, and your freedoms.
    

    Yeah right!!! You tell it to us, those Americans who lived abroad. Those who Kissinger said it was OK to kill as long as it was done quickly and quietly. You tell that to sister Joan MacCarthy, who went to the US Embassy in Argentina to pleed for a fellow priest who had been kidnapped by the military and then the Embassy called the cops on her (A NUN).

    Truth is our government does not really care of it’s people, unless it is someone important. Wake up!

    6.23.2007
    at 4:59 pm EST ceuz del sur

16. When a soldier fights to defend the country, he is not fighting for a cold, manipulative object of his affection. He is fighting to protect your freedom, including your freedom to profess disloyalty or infidelity.

    No he’s not – no one fights for his country – he fights for his buddies and the men next to him.

    6.25.2007
    at 6:31 pm EST r4d20

17. Patriotism is for losers. It is for all of those pathetic sheeple who have made the decision to trade their soul for some crumbs to be doled out by the state.

    Xanthippas is on the right track. Contrary to the assertions of those who submit that religion is the leading cause of war and has been resposible for the most murders in history, it is THE STATE that has unleashed the most savage degradtion of man. The state has certainly taken ownership of murder as it is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world when it comes to mass murder, genocide, making the world safe for democracy, fighting wars on terror, fighting wars on drugs, fighting wars on poverty and when it it just plain “enforcing the law.”

    The state is anti-thetical to civilization. We do not enjoy electricity becasue of the state. The nation state did not invent electrcity. Nor did it invent the radio or automobile. The state did not invent trains, although the vast majority of public high school histroy classes would suggest that, without the state’s subsidies and supervision, we would never have had a transcontinental railroad constructed. Does it not bother you “patriots” that the construction of the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific was nothing but a gigantic rent seeking catastrophe, the highlights of which included the mass murdering of native americans, the biggest scandal of the 19th century and a monument for generations to come of how to fleece the “patriotic masses” out of their hard earned labor so that the “patriotic leaders” and their supporters can get rich? Meanwhile, shouldn’t a real patriot point out that James Hill built the Great Norhtern Pacific Railroad without a dime of filthy state money? Or that Mr. Hill PAID the indians either to buy or lease their land? Or that he did not coerce Irish and Chinese immigrants to be slave laborers?

    Troy, a sentiment worth discarding is the foolish non-sense that somebody has died to protect Brian’s family from crime, fires and foreign enemies. Do you really think that the cannon fodder that have perished in Iraq actually were protecting Brian? From what? The IRS? The DEA? The FBI? Homeland Security? Name me one active duty cop or military boy who died trying to keep the IRS from seizing another American’s home. Name me one cop or pentagon puke who died trying to prevent the fire bombing of Dresden oR the delivery of atomic presents to Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Name me one cop or jarhead who died trying to prevent the bombings of Laos and Cambodia? Are you familiar with the massacre at Sand Creek on November 30, 1864? How about the massacre at Wounded Knee? How about the massacre of the village of Chief Black Kettle in 1868 at the hands of Yellow Hair? Name me one “brave” soldier who died trying to prevent these war crimes” Even in death, people forget that Custer was ATTACKING a “hostile” encampent with the intent to do great bodily harm to women and children. I am so glad that he and 263 other murderers got theirs that day.

    In the end, all those who support the nation state will get theirs as well- as it should be for any person who coddles the forces of collectivism. Humanity’s greatest hope is in the rejection of the coercion principle, that is a renunciation of any nation state that claims that it has a right to initiate force…..no MATTER WHAT THE PROFERRED JUSTIFICATION IS TO THE CONTRARY, INCLUDING DIRE WARNINGS FROM THOSE WHO PRACTICE STATECRAFT THAT THERE MAY BE MUSHROOM CLOUDS.

    P.S. The framers, by and large, were not exactly the flag waving patriot types. In my humble opinion, they would regard patriotism as practiced by the flag waving, hero worshiping of caesar’s minions that is in vogue today with UTTER CONTEMPT.

    May you live,

    IN LIBERTY

    6.25.2007
    at 7:38 pm EST Liberty Mike

18. Okay. What do you mean by country? I walk down the street every day and see the people I live next to and I know which ones had the George Bush for president sign and I consider them my enemies, not my countrymen. They are for the destruction of habeus corpus, the torture of innocents, and they are mainly for the redistribution of my working hours (the conservatives call it wealth, but I call it the time of my life) to the utterly wealthy, of which they often imagine they are a part. But of course they aren’t. They are the dupes of these people. So the question comes? What country? This is certainly not the country I grew up in. Things have changed. When I was young, living in the Wichita, the rightwingers were those Birchers who rean the American Opinion bookstores (of which there were three in Wichita). We knew they were crackers, insane, off the deep end. Those days have gone away and now those people are, apparently, the people who pick the republican nominee for president. Mitt Romney wants to double the size of Guantanamo. And he’s the leading candidate in Iowa. Things have changed. I live in Illinois where the Republicans used to be honorable men like Jim Thompson. But something has happened. You can’t be a Republican unless you show unabridled hatred for those who do not believe what you believe. Sure there are people on the left like that. I hated them thirty years ago and I hate them today. But be honest, they represent almost no actual power in this culture, whereas those on the right who would kill thems what disagree with them (see Free Republic, pretty much any day of the week) they elect presidents, they changed our world. See the supreme court decisions this week. So, what’s to love? I used to love the idea of the United States of America. I loved the myth and the reality of Abraham Lincoln. I knew FDR was a manipulative reprobate, but I loved him too. I even loved Richard Milhous Nixon, despite the fact that he took us down the rabbit hole.

    I knew when he was running for pres in 2000 that GWB was the bad one come to visit the end of the democracy upon us. Tell me this isn’t true? Tell me I’m just a sad old hippie rebel who can’t really judge what’s happening. I’d really like to believe that, but I don’t. I see the end. But what did Phil Ochs say (a true f=ing patriot, if you don’t know it)? “But just before the end/even treason might be worth a try/this country is too young to die/I believe the war is over…”

    So I say, get a gun and prepare for the real civil war that is being created by these new “republicans” that bear no relationship to the republicans of my youth. “The frontiers are my prison.”

    6.25.2007
    at 9:35 pm EST TimOh

19. “Representative democracy means that our elected officials are trying (albeit imperfectly) to look out for your interests, your benefits, your needs, and your wants. Your country seeks to protect your safety, your economic well-being, your property, and your freedoms.”

    I think most Conservatives would disagree with much of this. As near as I can tell, esp. from reading Andrew Sullivan’s blog, they believe that the only function any government should have is defense. They most particularly object to what they would describe as the “nanny” or “welfare” functions you list.

    But, taking a larger view: Nationalism and patriotism are certainly responsible for at least as much violence as religion. Since, however, governments, of one kind or another, appear to be essential to human society, it is not unreasonable to ask what, if anything, we owe the government, and I see no reason why we shouldn’t apply the same criteria we use with respect to family,friends or acquaintances: only as much respect as it deserves based on its behavior. And there is little or nothing about the current government’s policies that deserves either respect or support.

    6.25.2007
    at 10:51 pm EST lc

20. Evaluating the state as a useful organizational tool vs. ascribing anthropomorphical qualities of “love” to it are quite different. As you note, public servants swear to uphold the Constitution, not the “state”, and even here we need laws and Congressional hearings to protect us from wholesale circumventing and raping of Constitutional mandates. “Love” from government officials? Let’s say there might be here and there a certain fondness and leave it forgivingly at that. Certainly some soldiers fight for duty and love of country, sometime meaning even those people they disagree with. But the “country” is not the “government”, nor is the “country” entirely rational or consistent in its outpouring of emotion. Ascribing a “universal ethic” to our “country” is one of the reasons we’re in our current mess – we act as if somehow our system is light years ahead of the selfishness of the rest, instead of the typically self-serving and only occasionally philanthropic interaction we have with both the rest of the world and our own citizens. You might say the “country” “loves” in fits – those intermittent periods when the population awakes and notices how its government is despoiling the nation and much of the world, and reigns it in to more palatable levels of behavior. If we presume less perfection from our governments including ability to love, and treat them as the imperfect cyborg creature of convenience they are, we might get approximations of “love”, or at least electric sheep.

    6.26.2007
    at 5:56 am EST Desider

21. Like most qualities, patriotism (love of country and desire to sacrifice for it) is good in moderation. It becomes destructive in its excess and in its lack. Of course there is the need to move beyond self-interest, and expand the circle of people we accept as part of our country. A state, after all, is defined by the people who comprise it, along with the land they take up. If we can’t expand that sense to enough “others,” we have civil war and chaos of the sort that’s common to stateless parts of the world.

    But if we have an excess of patriotism, all of professor Tamanaha’s critiques apply. The danger here is of allowing love of your fellow countrymen to blind you to rational thought. You end up with something like Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, or Iran.

    The trick is maintaining a healthy balance. For myself, I love my country. I work on my relationship with it, talk to it, let it know I appreciate it. But I also don’t let it beat me, and won’t put up with it if cheats on me.

    6.26.2007
    at 7:13 am EST Tel

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