When I think about why I love my country I don’t think about the reasons some people love it more. One thing I’ve done in my life is to study my country and learn about all it’s shortcomings. That has taken some of the lustre off, but it actually deepened my fondness for this place. I will not wake up one day, after having read about some particularly unsavory piece of nastiness, and experience disillusionment. I love America with all its warts because I believe that progress is possible within this system. It’s not the kind of love that blindly insists that America is the only great country in the world or that it is in some sense the best country. But there is a sense in which America created and bestowed principles that much of the world has adopted to its advantage and the rest of the world has not adopted to their detriment.
I usually do not bother to mention this positive legacy of America because I think it is abused to make excuses for our failings and because I think the distinction has mostly outlived its usefulness. I think Europe, parts of East Asia, Canada, and Latin America have learned and adopted the most important American principles and they no longer need our instruction. In fact, I believe many of them have taken what’s good in our system, thrown out much that is bad, and have matured politically to the point that they have more to teach us than we have to teach them. This is particularly true in the post-Cold War era, where America has begun to succumb to some of the temptations of empire that bedeviled the British before us.
It’d be nice to erase the Bush years from history, but even if we could do that we’d find that the seeds of disaster were germinated in the Clinton years and planted during the late 20th-Century. That history is beyond the scope of this essay, but it’s important to remember that Bush may have driven us off course but we were headed down the wrong road to begin with.
The essential goodness of America is found in its founding documents and in the imperfect struggle to live out the meaning of our creed (in other words, through the progressive movement acting within the construct of our founding principles). Even the sometimes stultifying effect of our two-party system provides the context within which we can achieve progress with stability.
Yet, respect and love for this country doesn’t mean loving it for right or wrong. It means a dedication to the proposition that wrongs can be righted, eventually, by following the principles of our system. That is why Glenn Beck’s kind of patriotism seems like the opposite of love. His love is the love of the besotted. It’s all surface-level and fantasy. One day Glenn Beck will wake up and discover that his princess is a pumpkin or his prince is a frog. But, that too, will be a fantasy because pumpkins and frogs are worthy of love, warts and all.
Glenn Beck’s brain is a pumpkin and I wouldn’t insult frogs by comparing any part of them to him.
Now that the US has entered upon the path of empire, and a crumbling one at that, it is easy to discern her warts and blemishes along with her almost insufferable pride in being God’s chosen nation. Somehow, I don’t think the people of Guatemala, or Vietnam, or Iraq or Iran subscribe to that naive belief. I don’t think the original inhabitants of this continent agree either with America’s so called destiny.
Can our people summon the old magic of a just and unselfish society? I sure hope so because I think the current economic problems will usher in an age of agony. We are soon to see what we are really made of and what kind of country we are at crunch time.
I agree with the general thrust of your comment.
“Now that the US has entered upon the path of empire…“
The US entered upon the path of empire a very long time ago, and every administration since has moved it farther along that path. It is good that George W. Bush helped many Americans realize the path their country is on, but that path did not begin with Bush and will not end with Bush.
BooMan, I appreciate your sentiment and the thoughtful manner in which you arrive at it. However, I think, when tempted to wax paternalistic toward the rest of the world in regard to the principles America has bestowed on them, you would do well to consider whether the word “inflicted” might be more appropriate in most cases. Consider, for example, the American Indians, the Hawaiians, the Pakistanis, the Iranis, the Iraqis dating back to the ’60’s, and countless others upon whom the United States has “bestowed” its principles to their great detriment.
Go ahead and love your country, but ask others before you decide whether they have received a net benefit as a result of your country’s involvement in their affairs.
I’m so sorry. I do not “love” my “country”.
Or do I?
Exactly what do you mean, Booman?
Love is not love,
where it alteration finds.
BULLWINKLE!
P.S. I grow weary with your bait.
I’m so sorry, Ed J.
I suffer from The Truman Show Delusion. TSD.
It’s all the rage!
The TSDS. Truman Show Derangement Syndrome.
Who can I sue?
Sorry. You make me sick.
I’m interested in learning which presumably admirable principles America has created and bestowed.
there are none.
So which country, in your estimation, HAS created or bestowed admirable principles?
You presume wrong.
Why is it necessarily the case that ANY country has both created and bestowed admirable principles?
there are many alternate worlds where it’s possible that no country, nation, or tribe has created valuable principle that they then bestowed on others. This isn’t one of them.
Countries are not generous by nature. They act in their own perceived best interest, and rarely if ever bestow anything on others. At best they impose things in their own interest and without regard to the interest of the imposee, and in the best situation the imposee may realize some benefit from what is imposed.
There is no question that throughout and even before history some human beings and groups of human beings have conceived valuable principles that other humans and groups of humans chose to adopt, and possibly improve upon, or modify to suit their own situations. That is not at all the same as a bestowal.
O, there ARE, are there?
Prove it!
I think the United States, due to its principles, has bestowed some excellent benefits, both tangible and intangible upon its citizens. It is entirely normal and there is nothing wrong with someone loving his country as a result of the benefits it has bestowed on him.
One should be very cautious, however, of extolling one’s country for “bestowing” any great benefits outside its borders. Countries act in their own perceived interests and rarely if ever reflect on or care how their actions will affect others. At the very least one should find out from the bestowees whether they feel what they have received from the United States has been bestowed or inflicted upon them.
It is much more the lack of principles than the honoring of principles that afflicts the world. Find a nation that has a history of grievance with the United States and you will find a nation that lacks the institutions that we espouse and that has found us to be uncertain to outright hostile allies in their efforts to procure those principles for themselves.
On the other hand, find a nation that considers itself a steadfast friend of the United States and you will find a nation that owes, through inspiration or outright assistance, its freedom and form of government to the generosity and sacrifice of the United States.
But wherever you look, you’ll see that the ideals of Jefferson and Madison and Hamilton and Paine and Franklin are used to define what is right and what is not right. Where we sacrifice those principles, as we so often do, to the cause of greed or expediency or stability, we make enemies. Ironically, according to our own founding principles, this is as it should be.
BooMan, I recognize the good intentions and sentiments behind this statement, and on your first and last two sentences we are in agreement. As for the stuff in between, it represents pretty typical self-centered, paternalistic, presumptuously self-congratulatory, liberal American thinking, and I hope I can address it without appearing to be attacking.
First, there is this: “Find a nation that has a history of grievance with the United States and you will find a nation that lacks the institutions that we espouse and that has found us to be uncertain to outright hostile allies in their efforts to procure those principles for themselves.”
It is good that you are willing and able to acknowledge that there are countries that have legitimate grievances against the United States, and that those grievances are caused by the United States’ thwarting of those countries’ efforts to set up systems of government of their own choice. Then it leaps at one that it is not really about the United States’ thwarting other countries’ efforts to set up systems of government of their own choice, but rather systems of government just like that of the United States. In other words, it is not about recognition that other countries have a right to choose their own systems of government independently of you, but it is really just all about you, the United States, and the automatic assumption that every nation across the spectrum longs to have the same institutions that you espouse, and desires to become, of course with your “inspiration and assistance”, a kind of “mini you”. And, of course, they could not possibly accomplish any of this without your interference – excuse me, assistance.
There is no consideration at all for the possibility that other nations might 1) wish to and be capable of independently designing and constructing their own government and social institutions, 2) might find different institutions than yours more suitable for them. And of course there is no appreciation for the possibility that other people know what they want and what will work best for them and that, left without interference, most nations will arrive, one way or another, at the best means of governance for themselves, and that those means of governance might be different from what you would choose.
There is also no consideration for the possibility that that in fact the institutions you espouse may not be universally suitable due to all kinds of things, including but not limited to geography, demography, historical and current circumstances (good example here is Palestinians, who have lived four decades under an occupation that aims to gradually force them out of and take over their land), social structures, and customs. It does not seem to occur to you at all that other nations are desirous and capable of devising, without your assistance, institutions quite different from your own that are in fact more suitable to them and their circumstances than yours would be.
The second thing that leaps at one is the odd phrase “uncertain to outright hostile allies”. Perhaps this is a careless bit of writing – something we all get caught in from time to time – but somehow the idea of “hostile allies”, turns out to be a very elegantly apt, if unintentional, description of the relationship of the United States with much of the third world in general, and the entire Arab and Muslim worlds in particular. This looks like one of those unintentionally truthful “slips of the tongue”.
As for your second paragraph, I would like to see a list of those “steadfast friends” who owe their freedom and form of government to “the generosity and sacrifice of the United States”. And it would be particularly interesting in those cases to examine who, exactly, believes what, if anything, they owe to “the generosity and sacrifice of the United States” as opposed to their own efforts independently, if not in spite of, anything the United States has done.
PS we cannot also overlook the unfortunate assumption that what the United States is doing in every case is assisting in the implementation – or imposing – its principles of governance, when in most cases it is doing nothing of the kind, despite its protestations that this is its goal.
it’s not hard to find them, Hurria. You actually have to be deliberately myopic not to find them.
I wanted to know which countries YOU believe owe their freedom and form of government to the sacrifices of the United States.
You can start with these:
Those are pretty words, but unless they are followed by actions that match them, they are empty words.
As I suggested before, perhaps you ought to try convincing people outside your borders that those words really mean anything at all. Convince, just for starters, the indigenous peoples of the territory that became the United States, the Hawaiian people, the people of central and south America, the people of the Philippines, the people of Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, East Timor (for your assistance of Indonesia in its genocidal invasion), Egypt (for your staunch support of the brutal dictator Mubarak), Haiti, and of course, the Palestinians who two years ago learned everything they need to know about your real interest in democracy for anyone but yourselves. I promise you that to those people and so many others all over the world they would think you were mocking them with those words.
Amyarta Sen, the Indian economist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in part as a result of his having advanced the idea that the validity and efficacy of any government is more properly based not on what rights it may have written into its laws and its constitution but rather on the degree of access the populace has to mechanisms to uphold and enforce those rights and freedoms on their own behalf.
As someone who has spent a fair amount of time in other lands around the world, I am almost always happy to return home to America, the land where I was born. And there is much I appreciate here. Having said that, I continue to find embarrassing the notion of ‘American Exceptionalism’ that so many people seem to embrace so obsessively. And it is my opinion that the hubris contained in this notion winds up being a major contributor to the thinking that ultimately supports the degree of impunity with which American aggression against others is carried out not only internationally but also against segments of the population of our own country at home.
It’s pretty easy to articulate great principles. Stalin issued a terrific constitution back in 1936 [I think], but of course in practise the words meant nothing. Let’s not forget that the idea that “All men are created equal” is an ancient one, or that, in the case of our own constitution, the ‘men’ who directly benefitted from this declaration were white men only. Women and people of color and foreigners were not included in the definition of those ‘men’ who deserved equal treatment. And even today, in the dawning of the 21st century, the inequity of how this basic right of equality is ‘bestowed’ in our own country is still a deliberately engineered part of our society and should be an enduring embarrassment to us all.
that’s why you have to look at two things simultaneously. You look at the principles, and then you look at their implementation. Finally, you look to see if the system is robust enough to accomplish progressive change without disorder or revolution.
Very well said, sbj.
There IS much to appreciate about life in the United States, among which is the fact that it is the place one is used to and therefore most at ease in.
I find American exceptionalism not only embarrassing, but deeply annoying at times angering, and alarming. It is irrational, and extremely deep-seated – so much so that even the views of most liberal and progressive Americans toward their country’s place in the world are largely based on it, as we can see here.
It is particularly distressing and concerning to see it in the very paternalistic version in which it is so eagerly embraced by Americans who consider themselves liberal or even progressive. And indeed, the hubris that by necessity goes hand in hand with – indeed, gives rise to – the notion of American exceptionalism leads inevitably to the notion that the United States has not just the right, but the obligation to determine for others how they will run their affairs and live their lives.