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Jul. 12th, 2003 02:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jfbThe time for posting American thoughts was a week ago--both because of the holiday, and because the articles I'm going to cite are about to vanish behind the Times's wall of pay. But here's a belated, late-night note.
I've always considered myself a patriot, thanks, no doubt, to my parents. My father has been a professor of political science for as long as I've known him, and was a local and state politician for several years. My mother has been less publicly political, but it's from her that I picked up the habit of threatening to leave the country if a Bush becomes president. The two of them met in Washington while Dad was working in Donald Fraser's office, trying to change the system from within. If memory serves--and mine rarely does--they spent the day before their wedding risking arrest at a political protest.
My earliest heroes--inspired by picture-book biographies--were Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thomas Jefferson. In high school and college I developed an obsession with all subjects American--American history, American religion, American music, American literature. I chose a college for its American Studies program (which I ended up not pursuing). Progressive teachers helped me understand, let's say, the American covenant, and the myriad ways in which Americans have both met and failed that promise over the years.
America's founding principles--that we're all created equal, that our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable, you know, those principles--continue to inspire me and break me down. And thanks both to my travels as an adult, and, again, to my parents for dragging us all over the place every summer with a tent-trailer, I've also got a deep and broad love for the physical reality of the country, for the Grand Canyon and the Great Lakes and the Delaware Water Gap and the strip malls and the cathedrals and the skyscrapers and the fields. For me, the ideas and the geography go hand in hand.
It makes me angry to see the mantle of patriotism coopted by people who aim to alienate us from our rights, who want to heighten inequality, who are willing to let the land that is yours and mine be clear-cut and fenced off and big-boxed. It makes me angry to see them wrap themselves in the flag, and it makes me angry to see people who share my beliefs in what's good and right shy away from the flag because they've let those other people take it away. The flag's "just" a symbol, but it's a symbol of something great, and I hate that they make us forget it.
And here's where this post turns into just another New York Times roundup, because last Sunday's edition featured some articles that spoke to me about how to reconcile my ideas of America with current events.
Frank Rich takes on the flag-wavers:
"Americans like to think of themselves as patriotic," writes Janny Scott. "They have been saying as much to pollsters for years." But that word means different things to different Americans at different times. This article provides a brief history of American patriotism, originally a neutral term that was given meaning by the revolution against England and again by the Civil War:
Not directly on-topic, but thought-provoking, is an article on Supreme Court justices' changing opinions.
For more Independence Day thoughts on LiveJournal, I direct you to my friend![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sethm's birthday essay, and to jmhm's post on how we got here.
(Oh yeah, and a note to my un-American friends: Loving the place I'm from doesn't mean I don't love the place you're from, too. But that's not what this post is about.)
I've always considered myself a patriot, thanks, no doubt, to my parents. My father has been a professor of political science for as long as I've known him, and was a local and state politician for several years. My mother has been less publicly political, but it's from her that I picked up the habit of threatening to leave the country if a Bush becomes president. The two of them met in Washington while Dad was working in Donald Fraser's office, trying to change the system from within. If memory serves--and mine rarely does--they spent the day before their wedding risking arrest at a political protest.
My earliest heroes--inspired by picture-book biographies--were Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thomas Jefferson. In high school and college I developed an obsession with all subjects American--American history, American religion, American music, American literature. I chose a college for its American Studies program (which I ended up not pursuing). Progressive teachers helped me understand, let's say, the American covenant, and the myriad ways in which Americans have both met and failed that promise over the years.
America's founding principles--that we're all created equal, that our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable, you know, those principles--continue to inspire me and break me down. And thanks both to my travels as an adult, and, again, to my parents for dragging us all over the place every summer with a tent-trailer, I've also got a deep and broad love for the physical reality of the country, for the Grand Canyon and the Great Lakes and the Delaware Water Gap and the strip malls and the cathedrals and the skyscrapers and the fields. For me, the ideas and the geography go hand in hand.
It makes me angry to see the mantle of patriotism coopted by people who aim to alienate us from our rights, who want to heighten inequality, who are willing to let the land that is yours and mine be clear-cut and fenced off and big-boxed. It makes me angry to see them wrap themselves in the flag, and it makes me angry to see people who share my beliefs in what's good and right shy away from the flag because they've let those other people take it away. The flag's "just" a symbol, but it's a symbol of something great, and I hate that they make us forget it.
And here's where this post turns into just another New York Times roundup, because last Sunday's edition featured some articles that spoke to me about how to reconcile my ideas of America with current events.
Frank Rich takes on the flag-wavers:
Such flag-waving for personal and corporate profit has gotten so out of hand that last month, when the House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment banning flag desecration for the umpteenth time, I for once found myself rooting for the Senate to follow suit. It would be fun to watch TV executives hauled on to Court TV. If NBC's post-9/11 decision to slap the flag on screen in the shape of its trademarked peacock wasn't flag desecration, what is?and reminds us of another sort of American myth:
Look around our culture, and it isn't hard to find a faith in America that is not defined by government-commissioned flag-waving, political demagoguery or cable news's jingoism-as-marketing-strategy. The most telling American fables don't come in the blacks and whites of our current strident political and cultural discourse, which so often divides Americans into either flag-draped heroes or abject traitors. The great American stories, from Huckleberry Finn's to the Dixie Chicks', have always been nuanced; they can have poetry and they can have dark shadows. They can combine a love of country with an implicit criticism of it.He recommends Seabiscuit and Spellbound as this summer's contributions to that tradition.
"Americans like to think of themselves as patriotic," writes Janny Scott. "They have been saying as much to pollsters for years." But that word means different things to different Americans at different times. This article provides a brief history of American patriotism, originally a neutral term that was given meaning by the revolution against England and again by the Civil War:
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.
Not directly on-topic, but thought-provoking, is an article on Supreme Court justices' changing opinions.
For more Independence Day thoughts on LiveJournal, I direct you to my friend
sethm's birthday essay, and to jmhm's post on how we got here.(Oh yeah, and a note to my un-American friends: Loving the place I'm from doesn't mean I don't love the place you're from, too. But that's not what this post is about.)
