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The Changing Face of Patriotism
10 Questions For Ann Coulter
The Changing Face of Patriotism
But pollsters tend not to ask what people mean when they say they are patriotic. The meaning of patriotism has always been a moving target. It has meant different things to different people at different times in history. Like the flag, it is open to reinterpretation.
Over the past two centuries, patriotism has been invoked to make the case for all sorts of things: military sacrifice, conscientious objection, unity, dissent, inclusion, exclusion, anti-Communism, anti-Catholicism, tax cuts, a living wage (not to mention cigars and shopping).
"Who was the patriot in 1861?" asked Walter Berns, an emeritus professor of history at Georgetown University. "Robert E. Lee or Ulysses S. Grant? In a way, it depends on how you define patriotism. If patriotism is simply a kind of filial piety, my country right or wrong, then the case for Lee can be made."
"Because, as Lee himself said, he could not raise his hand against his family, his children, his state," Professor Berns said, referring to Lee's decision to decline the offer to command the Union Army. "If, on the other hand, patriotism means devotion to a particular political idea, then clearly Grant was the patriot and Lee was not. That, in a sense, is part of the problem that we face even today."
To some, patriotism is unquestioning loyalty to the nation. To others, it carries with it expectations that the government will give something in return. Women have experienced patriotism differently than men. Blacks and Indians have experienced it differently than whites.
In good times, the patriotic reflex weakens. In times of crisis, patriotism thrives.
What about anxious periods, like the present? David M. Kennedy, a professor of history at Stanford University, finds that periods of chronic anxiety have been known to produce "patriotism of quite a cranky sort."
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, for example, anxiety about immigration spawned the American Protective League, an anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant group. The Ku Klux Klan was revived. But there was also a surge of reform under Theodore Roosevelt.
"These moments of anxiety, it seems to me, have both an unlovely and quite a progressive and productive face to them potentially," Professor Kennedy said. As for today, he said the full patriotic potential is not yet clear. So far, the record is mixed.
"On the one hand, we get what some would say is the overreaction on the part of the Justice Department about how much tolerance and diversity we can afford," he said. "On the other hand, you have gestures by the president toward inclusiveness."
There are a number of things that Americans say they agree on. They tell pollsters they believe in God, like their jobs and think extramarital sex is almost always wrong. And in many, many polls, nine out of 10 people describe themselves as either patriotic or proud to be American.
In a poll last September by ABC News and The Washington Post, 91 percent said they were extremely or very proud to be American. Two percent were not at all proud. Ninety-seven percent said they were very or somewhat proud of the armed forces. Two percent were not.
A poll last August by the Pew Research Center found that 92 percent of people agreed "completely" or "mostly" with the statement "I am very patriotic." Six percent disagreed. The percentage of people agreeing completely, 54 percent, was almost the highest in two decades.
Not all groups are equally ardent. Some researchers find that older people, white people, conservative Republicans and rural people are more likely to call themselves highly patriotic; younger people, African-Americans, liberals, urbanites and college graduates are slightly less likely.
"But we can get tripped up if we only look at the `extremely' patriotic," said Karlyn H. Bowman, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a research group in Washington, who studies public opinion. "If you look at the `extremely' and `very,' they all look pretty much alike."
The word patriot began as a neutral term, meaning fellow countryman. But the rebellion and upheaval of 17th-century England changed that. Patriotism came to imply adherence to certain principles — the rights of the citizen and opposition to tyranny.
"That's why the rebels in America in the next century called themselves patriots," said Amy Fried, a political scientist at the University of Maine. "So patriotism has a sense also then in the 18th century to do with support for citizens against the overweening and inappropriate powers of the state.
"You don't really start to get the support-for-the-state ideal until the late 19th century, which is a time of the expanding role of the United States in world affairs."
Historians say the Civil War also reshaped the definition. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 broadened it from simply a willingness to die for one's country; it began to encompass the idea that the government must live up to the principles of the Declaration of Independence.
"That creates two different traditions that we have had that constantly are in struggle against one another," said Cecilia Elizabeth O'Leary, the author of "To Die For: The Paradox of American Patriotism" (Princeton, 1999). One implies unquestioning loyalty; the other entails democratic participation and an insistence upon upholding the ideals that the country represents.
During the Spanish-American War, she said, those two traditions could be seen in both the willingness of Americans to fight in Cuba and an anti-imperialist movement in the United States in response to the United States' invasion of the Philippines.
In the 20th century, she and others say, the unquestioning form of patriotism found its expression in turn-of-the-century nativism, the Red Scare, the internment of Japanese- Americans during World War II, McCarthyism and the Vietnam-era slogan "America, love it or leave it."
The more reciprocal notion of patriotism was evident in the Double V campaign by African-Americans during World War II. They argued for not just a victory against fascism but a victory against racism and inequality at home.
After Vietnam, Watergate and the cold war, patriotic culture seemed to fade. Its expression became commercial: What to buy? Many have also remarked on a dwindling of civic engagement, a sinking of the level of political discourse.
In response, one group, the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington, began a campaign several years ago to encourage a "new patriotism" — one that carries with it a commitment to remain engaged in public and civic life.
"It simply means love and devotion to one's country," Richard C. Harwood, the group's founder, said of the word patriotism. "If you're truly devoted to something, you stick with it even when you don't like it. And you try to do what is good and right."
Not everyone is equally sanguine.
"The Samuel Johnson line is still the best and the truest: `Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,' " said Alan Ehrenhalt, the executive editor of Governing magazine. "Not because there is not such a thing as genuine patriotism. But it tends to get buried under tons of claptrap. The vast majority of the time, people invoke patriotism in defense of principles that they can't logically defend in any other way."
Source: Janny Scott, The New York
Times, www.cnn.com/virtual/editions/europe/2000/roof/change.pop/frameset.exclude.html
So what's the new book about?
The idea of the book is that liberals have a tendency to take the position most disadvantageous to their country. This isn't anything new. They have taken patriotism off the table as a topic for political debate. And they've done that by invoking McCarthyism, a myth of their own creation.
Are you prepared for people to freak out when they realize you're trying to rehabilitate Joseph McCarthy?
On the basis of doing my research, I've noticed that liberals have been hysterical about McCarthy for 50 years and no one's been arguing back. So now that someone's arguing back, yes, I'm expecting candlelight vigils.
In Treason you say, "Liberals' principal contribution to the war on terrorism has been to bill themselves as a corrective to 'jingoism.' Their real goal is too appalling to state out loud." Care to state it out loud?
They are rooting against America. I don't think there is any other way to explain hysterical claims of a civil-liberties emergency in this country every time John Ashcroft talks to a Muslim. No serious person thinks that we are in the middle of a civil-liberties crisis. We have just seen thousands of fellow Americans slaughtered by legal immigrants to this country. And John Ashcroft has detained several hundred illegal immigrants?
Your tone can be a little shrill sometimes. Don't you think that what we need right now is unity, not more acrimony?
What we need now is to fight the war on terrorism, and liberals don't want to. I think it's more important long term that we have two parties, both of which want to defend the nation.
Do you see a way forward for Americans to come together politically, as a country?
Oh, yes. I do. The Democratic Party has got to go away. It's got to just hang up its stirrups. I really think it has functionally gone the way of the Whigs, and it's just a matter of enough Democrats figuring that out. Can't both parties agree on the defense of America? I mean, it was not like this in World War II. The Republicans were not constantly taunting F.D.R., "Well, he doesn't have Hitler yet! He doesn't have Hitler! Where are these alleged death camps?" The country pulled together! Both parties!
Are you concerned that President Bush may have exaggerated evidence for the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
No. People who love their country ought to be more concerned about what happened to those weapons. Are they in Syria? Are they in al-Qaeda's hands? Are they going to end up in New York? And instead, all we get is female taunting from the Democrats.
Did you say female taunting? What does that mean exactly?
[Laughs.] I think your readers will understand it.
Treason came out shortly after Hillary Clinton's book. Whose is going to sell better?
I was not happy to find out that her book — her three ghostwriters' book — was coming out a few weeks before mine. But I'm completely confident that among real readers, in any fair fight, I could beat her. And also that more people will actually read my book.
What's your take on the Supreme Court's ruling that antisodomy laws are unconstitutional?
Gay sex may well be a mystery of life, but I'll be damned if I can find it in the Constitution.
Do interviewers try to provoke you into saying outrageous things just because you're Ann Coulter?
No. I do that on my own.
Source: Shonna Valeska, Time Magazine,
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030714-463080,00.html
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