DISPATCHES by Hank Kalet: Defining the true meaning of patriotism
“Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let me label you as they may.” — Mark Twain
I have a small flag hanging from a post in the flower bed in front of my house.
It’s a Colonial-style flag – 13 stars in a circle and all that. I put it up Saturday in honor of Flag Day and as a way of commemorating what I think is important about this country as we approach the 227th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
This small act may surprise some who read this column regularly. I am no nationalist, not someone predisposed to a knee-jerk “my country right or wrong” response to world events. I didn’t support the war with Iraq, do not support the direction President George W. Bush is taking our country and find the incessant flag waving and belligerent attitude of people like country singer Toby Keith distasteful.
Some would say I am un-American, but I see myself as a patriot in the truest sense of the word.
To those who ask why, I offer this comment from the novelist James Baldwin:
“I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
But my form of patriotism has been out of style in these jingoistic days when talk-show hosts — and some in the presidential administration — stamp any dissent as treason (the only crime specifically mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, one punishable by death) and brand as traitors any public figure who disagrees with the president.
It is a “chill wind” that blows, as Tim Robbins said in April to the National Press Club in Washington shortly after the National Baseball Hall of Fame canceled the 15th anniversary of his great film, “Bull Durham,” because he and his common-law wife — and film co-star — Susan Sarandan were outspoken in their opposition to the invasion of Iraq.
It is this chill wind, this deformed version of patriotism that calls for boycotts of French products because the French government refused to support our war with Iraq.
It is this chilly patriotism that leads radio stations to boycott the Dixie Chicks for comments critical of the president.
It is this patriotism that forces critical journalists off the air or to the back of the White House pressroom where they can be ignored during presidential press conferences.
It is an unthinking patriotism, one that ignores what has made the United States a beacon of freedom to the rest of the world.
It comes from the same dangerous place that has engendered some of the worst violence in our history, a crowd mentality that brooks no dissent and that despises protest.
It is just this sort of patriotism that the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw was lampooning when he wrote, “Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.”
And it is the kind of patriotism that Albert Einstein was thinking about when he wrote:
“Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how passionately I hate them!”
Who can blame him, really, having witnessed the brutality of all the various nationalisms that, like a plague, infected Europe and then the rest of the world during the middle of the last century. Every German who gave his life for the Third Reich, who participated in the genocide of the Jews and other ethnic groups in Europe, saw himself as a patriot, as defending the sanctity of the fatherland. Every Italian who got swept up in the terror of Mussolini’s fascism saw himself as a patriot.
Osama bin Laden sees himself as a patriot to his extremist Islamic cause. The Taliban saw itself as patriots, the defenders of Afghan’s religious purity.
But this is fascism and nationalism masquerading as patriotism and degrades the true patriotic impulse, which grows not just from love of country but respect for its ideals.
“Patriotism,” as journalist Sydney J. Harris wrote, “is proud of a country’s virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues,” he wrote in 1982. “The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country’s virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, ‘the greatest,’ but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.”
Elsewhere he wrote:
“The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.”
That is why I view Tim Robbins as a greater patriot than Attorney General John Ashcroft, why I think U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich and U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold maybe among the most courageous and patriotic politicians in America. They understand, as the historian Henry Steele Commager wrote, “America was born of revolt, flourished in dissent, became great through experimentation. Our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past while we silence the rebels of the present.”
Happy fourth.
Hank Kalet 