Saying Goodbye to Patriotism

In a review that I wrote this past summer of a book about the history of wartime restrictions on U.S. news media, I faulted the author for accepting American myths about the nobility of our wars and their motivations. I challenged his uncritical use of the term patriotism, which I called "perhaps the single most morally and intellectually bankrupt concept in human history."

By coincidence, the galley proofs for the piece came back to me for review a few days after September 11. I paused as I reread my words, thinking about the possible reactions given the reflexive outpouring of patriotism in the wake of the terrorist attacks. I thought about the controversy that some of my antiwar writing had already sparked on campus and beyond. I thought about how easy it would be to take out that sentence.

But I let it stand, for a simple reason: The statement was true on September 10, and after September 11 I’m more convinced it is true.

I also believe that nestled in the truth of that assertion is a crucial question for the U.S.-based peace movement, one that we cannot avoid after 9/11: Are we truly internationalist? Can we get beyond patriotism? Or, in the end, are we just Americans?

That is a way of asking whether we are truly for peace and justice. I mean the statement to be harsh because the question is crucial. If in the end we are just Americans, if we cannot move beyond patriotism, then we cannot claim to be internationalists. And, if we are not truly internationalist in our outlook – all the way to the bone – then I do not think we can call ourselves people committed to peace and justice.

My dictionary defines patriotism as "love and loyal or zealous support of one’s own country." I will return to that, but it also is important to look at how the word is being used at this moment in this country, where there are two competing definitions of patriotism circulating these days.

The cost of questioning church and country
by Joseph Wakelee-Lynch

In April 1918, a month after the U.S. entered World War I – the war to end all wars – a prominent Episcopal voice against war was silenced. Bishop Paul Jones, serving the then-Missionary District of Utah, was forced to resign his post.

Religious support for the war was strong even before the U.S. entered the conflict. In 1916, the Episcopal House of Bishops lauded those who promoted peace, but the bishops made it clear that Christians should be ready to serve the state in time of crisis:

"[America] must expect of every one of her citizens some true form of national service, rendered according to the capacity of each. No one can commute or delegate it; no one can be absolved from it. National preparedness is a clear duty."

In 1914, when Jones was selected by the House of Bishops to lead the Utah district, he was already a prominent advocate for peace. He believed war couldn’t be reconciled with Jesus’ teaching. He advocated an aggressive Christian response to conflict and acknowledged that Germany was in the wrong.

"I believe most sincerely that German brutality and aggression must be stopped," Jones said before the House of Bishops in 1917, "and I am willing, if need be, to give my life and what I possess, to bring that about. …

"I have been led to feel that war is entirely incompatible with the Christian profession. … Moreover, because Germany has ignored her solemn obligations, Christians are not justified in treating the sermon on the mount as a scrap of paper."

In 1917, vestry members at Utah’s two largest and most prosperous parishes, joined by the District Council of Advice, organized a campaign against the bishop. They charged that Jones shouldn’t speak as an Episcopal leader but as an individual, particularly because his flock disagreed with him, and that his views had harmed the church’s work in Utah.

Jones refuted the charges and research by Douglas G. Warren shows that Jones enjoyed significant clergy and lay support in his district. Many Episcopalians supported the war, but they believed Jones had the right to speak as bishop and that he had not harmed the church’s work. Yet, after a convoluted process of examination, the bishops finally asked for his resignation.

In April 1918, Jones complied. In his letter of resignation, Jones argued that the House of Bishops by its action was stating that war is not an unchristian thing and no bishop may preach against it if the government and the church have accepted it.

"These conclusions I cannot accept;" he wrote, "for I believe that the methods of modern international war are quite incompatible with the Christian principles of reconciliation and brotherhood, and that it is the duty of a Bishop of the Church, from his study of the word of God, to express himself on questions of righteousness, no matter what opinion may stand in the way."

Jones, who died in 1941, never again served as bishop. But his work for peace continued. He was a founder of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and its secretary for 10 years. He helped found the Episcopal Pacifist Fellowship, now the Episcopal Peace Fellowship. During World War II, he helped resettle Jews and others who fled Nazi Germany, and he argued for greater understanding in relations with Japan.

Jones’ legacy today may be more important than before, says David Selzer, EPF chairperson.

"In a time of particularly high patriotism, Bishop Jones was loyal to the sense of seeing the Gospel as the Gospel of peace rather than the Gospel of vengeance."

–Joseph Wakelee-Lynch is a writer and editor in Berkeley, Calif.

It’s easy to get a handle on this use of the word. Just listen to the president of the U.S. speak, or watch TV. This view of patriotism is simple: We were attacked. We must defend ourselves. The only real way to defend ourselves is by military force. If you want to be patriotic, you should – you must – support the war.

I have been told often that it is fine for me to disagree with that policy but that now is not the time to disagree publicly. A patriotic person, I am told, should remain quiet and support the troops until the war is over, at which point we can all have a discussion about the finer points of policy. If I politely disagree with that, then the invectives flow: commie, terrorist-lover, disloyal, unpatriotic. Love it or leave it.

This kind of patriotism is incompatible with democracy or basic human decency. To see just how intellectually and morally bankrupt it is, ask what we would have said to Soviet citizens who might have made such an argument about patriotic duty as the tanks rolled into Prague in 1968. To draw that analogy is not to say the two cases are exactly alike but rather to point out that a decision to abandon our responsibility to evaluate government policy and surrender our power to think critically is a profound failure, intellectually and morally.

Many in the peace-and-justice movement, myself included, have suggested that to be truly patriotic one cannot simply accept policies because they are handed down by leaders or endorsed by a majority of people, even if it is an overwhelming majority. Being a citizen in a real democracy means exercising judgment, evaluating policies, engaging in discussion, and organizing to try to help see that the best policies are enacted. When the jingoists start throwing around "anti-American" and "traitor," we point out that true patriotism means staying true to the core commitments of democracy and the obligations that democracy puts on people. There is nothing un-American, we contend, about arguing for peace.

This may be the best way – perhaps the only way – to respond in public at this moment if one wants to be effective in building an antiwar movement; we have to start the discussion where people are, not where we wish people were. But increasingly, I am uncomfortable arguing for patriotism, even this second definition. And as I listen to allies in the peace-and-justice movement, I wonder whether that claim to patriotism-as-critical-engagement is indeed merely strategic. Critical questions come to mind: Are we looking for a way to hold onto patriotism because we really believe in it? Is there any way to define the term that doesn’t carry with it arrogant and self-indulgent assumptions? Is there any way to salvage patriotism?

I have come to believe that invoking patriotism puts us on dangerous ground and that we must be careful about our strategic use of it.

At its ugliest, patriotism means a ranking of the value of the lives of people based on boundaries. To quote Emma Goldman: "Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others."

People have said this directly to me: "The lives of U.S. citizens are more important. If innocent Afghans have to die, have to starve – even in large numbers – so that we can achieve our goals, well, that’s the way it is." We may understand why people feel it, but that doesn’t make such a statement any less barbaric.

But what of the effort to hold onto a kinder and gentler style of patriotism by distinguishing it from this crude nationalism? What are the unstated assumptions of this other kind of patriotism? If patriotism is about loyalty of some sort, to what are we declaring our loyalty?

If we are pledging loyalty to a nation-state, what if that nation-state pursues an immoral objective? Should we remain loyal to it? If our loyalty is to a specific government or set of government officials, what if they pursue immoral objectives or pursue moral objectives in an immoral fashion?

Some suggest we should be loyal to the ideals of America, a set of commitments and practices connected with the concepts of freedom and democracy. That’s all well and good; freedom and democracy are good things, and I try to not only endorse those values but live them. I assume we all try to do that.

But what makes those values uniquely American? Is there something about the U.S. or the people who live here that makes us more committed to, or able to act out, the ideals of freedom and democracy – more so than, say, Canadians or Indians or Brazilians? Are not people all over the world – including those who live in countries that do not guarantee freedom to the degree the U. S. does – capable of understanding and acting on those ideals? Are not different systems possible for making real those ideals in a complex world?

Freedom and democracy are not unique to us; they are human ideals, endorsed to varying degrees in different places and realized to different degrees by different people acting in different places. If Americans do not have a monopoly on them, why express a commitment to those ideals by talking of patriotism?

An analogy to gender is helpful. After September 11, a number of commentators have argued that criticisms of masculinity should be rethought. Though masculinity is often defined by competition, domination and violence, they said, cannot we now see – realizing that male firefighters raced into burning buildings and risked their lives to save others – that masculinity can encompass a kind of strength that is rooted in caring and sacrifice?

Of course men often exhibit such strength, just as do women. So, the obvious question arises: What makes these distinctly masculine characteristics? Are they not simply human characteristics?

We identify masculine tendencies toward competition, domination and violence because we see patterns of different behavior; men are more prone to such behavior in our culture. We can go on to observe and analyze the ways in which men are socialized to behave in those ways, toward the goal of changing those destructive behaviors.

That analysis is different than saying that admirable human qualities present in both men and women are somehow primarily the domain of one gender. To assign them to a gender is misguided, and demeaning to the gender that is then assumed not to possess them to the same degree. Once we start saying "strength and courage are masculine traits," it leads to the conclusion that woman are not as strong or courageous. To say "strength and courage are masculine traits," then, is to be sexist.

The same holds true for patriotism. If we abandon the crude version of patriotism but try to hold onto an allegedly more sophisticated version, we bump up against this obvious question: Why are human characteristics being labeled American if there is nothing distinctly American about them?

If Americans argue that such terminology is justified because those values are realized to their fullest degree in the U.S., then there’s some explaining to do to the people of Guatemala and Iran, Nicaragua and South Vietnam, East Timor and Laos, Iraq and Panama. We would have to explain to the victims of U.S. aggression – direct and indirect – how it is that our political culture, the highest expression of the ideals of freedom and democracy, has managed routinely to go around the world overthrowing democratically elected governments, supporting brutal dictators, funding and training proxy terrorist armies, and unleashing brutal attacks on civilians when we go to war. If we want to make the claim that we are the fulfillment of history and the ultimate expression of the principles of freedom and justice, our first stop might be Hiroshima.

Any use of the concept of patriotism is bound to be chauvinistic at some level. At its worst, patriotism can lead easily to support for barbarism. At its best, it is self-indulgent and arrogant in its assumptions about the uniqueness of U.S. culture.

This is not a blanket denunciation of the U.S., our political institutions, or our culture. People often tell me, "You start with the assumption that everything about the U.S. is bad." But I do not assume that; it would be as absurd a position as the assumption that everything about the U.S. is good. No reasonable person would make either statement.

That does raise the question, of course, of who is a reasonable person. We might ask that question about, for example, George Bush, the father. In 1988, after the U.S. Navy warship Vincennes shot down an Iranian commercial airliner in a commercial corridor, killing 290 civilians, Bush said, "I will never apologize for the U.S. of America. I don’t care what the facts are."

I want to put forward the radical proposition that we should care what the facts are. If we are to be moral people, everything about the U.S., like everything about any country, needs to be examined and assessed.

There is much about this country a citizen can be proud of, and I am proud of those things. The civil liberties guaranteed (to most people) in this culture, for example, are quite amazing.

There also is much to be appalled by. The obscene gaps in wealth between rich and poor, for example, are quite amazing as well, especially in a wealthy society that claims to be committed to justice.

This need not lead to moral relativism. We can analyze various societies and judge some better than others by principles we can articulate and defend – so long as they are truly principles, applied honestly and uniformly. But we should maintain a bit of humility in the endeavor. Perhaps instead of saying "The U.S. is the greatest nation on earth" – a comment common among politicians, pundits and the public – we would be better off saying, "I live in the U.S. and have deep emotional ties to the people, land and ideals of this place. Because of these feelings, I want to highlight the positive while working to change what is wrong."

We can make that statement without arrogantly suggesting that other people are inherently less capable of articulating or enacting high ideals. We can make that statement and be ready and willing to engage in debate and discussion about the merits of different values and systems.

We can make that statement and be true internationalists, people truly committed to peace and justice. If someone wants to call that statement an expression of patriotism, I will not argue. But the question nags: Why do we need to call it patriotism? Why do people hold onto patriotism with such tenacity?

When I write or talk with the general public and raise questions like these, people often respond, "If you hate America so much, why don’t you leave?"

But what is this America that I allegedly hate? The land itself? The people who live here? The ideals in the country’s founding documents? I do not hate any of those things.

When people say to me "love it or leave it," what is the "it" to which they refer? No one can ever quite answer that. Still, I have an answer for them.

I will not leave "it" for a simple reason: I have nowhere else to go. I was born here. I was given enormous privileges here. My place in the world is here, where I feel an obligation to use that privilege to be part of – a very small part of, as we all are only a small part – a struggle to make real a better world. Whatever small part I can play in that struggle, whatever I can achieve, I will have to achieve here, in the heart of the beast.

I love it, which is to say that I love life – I love the world in which I live and the people who live in it with me. I will not leave that "it."

The America I love is not this administration, or any other collection of politicians, or the corporations they serve.

It is not the policies of this administration, or any other collection of politicians, or the corporations they serve.

The America I love is not wrapped up in a mythology about "how good we are" that ignores the brutal realities of our own history of conquest and barbarism.

I want no part of the America that arrogantly claims that the lives and hopes and dreams of people who happen to live within the boundaries of the U.S. have more value than those in other places. I will not indulge America in the belief that our grief is different. Since September 11, the U.S. has demanded that the world take our grief more seriously, and when some around the world have not done so we are outraged.

But what makes the grief of a parent who lost a child in the World Trade Center any deeper than the grief of a parent who lost a child in Basra when U.S. warplanes rained death on the civilian areas of Iraq in the Gulf War? Or the parents of a child in Nicaragua when the U.S. terrorist proxy army ravaged that country? Soon after 9/11, I heard a television reporter describe lower Manhattan as "Beirut on the Hudson." We might ask, how did Beirut come to look like Beirut, and what is our responsibility in that? And what of the grief of those who saw their loved ones die during the shelling of that city?

Certainly we grieve differently, more intensely, when people close to us die. But the grief we feel when our friends and neighbors became victims of political violence is no different than what people around the world feel when their friends and neighbors die. Each of those lives lost abroad has exactly the same value as the life of any one of us.

September 11 was a dark day. I still remember what it felt like to watch those towers come down, the darkness that settled over me that day, the hopelessness, how tangible death felt – for me, not only the deaths of those in the towers but also the deaths of those who would face the bombs in the war that might follow, the war that did follow, the war that goes on.

But I also believe there is a light shining out of that darkness that can lead Americans to our own salvation. That light is contained in a simple truth that is obvious, but which Americans have never really taken to heart: We are part of the world. We can no longer hide from that world. We cannot allow our politicians, generals and corporate executives to do their dirty business around the world while we hide from the truths about just how dirty that business really is. We can no longer hide from the coups they plan, the wars they start, the sweatshops they run – from the people they kill.

That is the paradox: September 11 has sparked a wave of patriotism, which has in many cases been overtly hateful, racist and xenophobic. A patriotism that can lead people to say, as one person wrote to me, "We should bomb [Afghanistan] until there’s no more earth to bomb."

But the real lesson of September 11 is that if we are to survive as a free people – as decent people who want honestly to claim the ideals we say we live by – we must say goodbye to patriotism. Patriotism will not relieve our grief, but only deepen it. It will not solve our problems but only extend them. There is no hope for ourselves or for the world if we continue to embrace patriotism, no matter what the definition.

We must give up "love and loyal or zealous support of one’s own country" and transfer that love, loyalty and zealousness to the world, and especially the people of the world who have suffered most so that we Americans can live in affluence.

We must be able to say, as the great labor leader of the early 20th century Eugene Debs said, "I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world." I am with Debs. I believe it is time to declare: I am not patriotic. I am through with trying to redefine the term to make sense. There is no sense to it.

That kind of statement will anger many, but at some point we must begin to take that risk, for this is not merely an academic argument over semantics. This is both a struggle to save ourselves and a struggle to save the lives of vulnerable people around the world.

We must say goodbye to patriotism because the kind of America the peace-and-justice movement wants to build cannot be built on, or through, patriotism.

We must say goodbye to patriotism because the world cannot survive indefinitely the patriotism of Americans.

Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, a member of the Nowar Collective (www.nowarcollective.com), and author of Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (www.peterlangusa.com). He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu. A version of this article was given as a talk to the Peace Action National Congress on November 10, 2001.