Robert Jensen : 'Greatest Nation' Rhetoric Comes Roaring Back

The burden of being exceptional. Captain America graphic from Statue Marvels.
American exceptionalism:
'Greatest nation' rhetoric roars back

By Robert Jensen / The Rag Blog / January 4, 2011

My greatness as a writer is simply a fact.

You don’t agree? Well, then obviously you are churlish or malevolent.

If I were serious about such a claim of superiority, now would be the time to stop reading -- on the reasonable assumption that I’m a dull-witted bore with no capacity for critical self-reflection. What applies to individual declarations is also true of nations, yet in the United States such statements about our greatness are common.

Rich Lowry of the National Review closed out 2010 with a particularly bombastic piece reasserting U.S. greatness. Though Lowry is a conservative, his argument is conventional: The United States has brought prosperity to the world, protecting all that is decent against evil. Yes, we’ve had to muscle others out of the way on occasion, but that was necessary to bring order and liberty. Yes, we’ve made some mistakes along the way, but those are all safely in the past and, besides, they have to understood in context.

His conclusion: “Our greatness is simply a fact. Only the churlish or malevolent can deny it, or even get irked at its assertion.” (“Yes, the Greatest Country Ever.”)

This expression of American exceptionalism is unexceptional in U.S. political history, but it roared back stronger than ever in 2010, especially in the rhetoric of the Tea Party movement. As it becomes harder to ignore the United States’ decline as an economic power -- which will limit the capacity for imperial marauding around the world -- the inclination of most mainstream politicians to assert our greatness will intensify.

Those of us with radical or progressive politics need to challenge these kinds of slogans when we talk with friends, family, and co-workers. In my 2004 book Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity, I offered common-sense responses in plain language, and as we get ready for a more right-wing Congress and the political discussions that lie ahead, I thought it would be helpful to revisit some of those points.

With the permission of publisher City Lights Books, I have posted online two chapters from that book -- one that deconstructs “the greatest nation” rhetoric and another that challenges the concept of patriotism.

It is neither churlish nor malevolent to want to honestly assess the accomplishments and failures of one’s country. Rather, it is the obligation of every citizen.

[Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. He is the author of All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, (Soft Skull Press, 2009) and Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); Jensen is also co-producer of the documentary film Abe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing, which chronicles the life and philosophy of the longtime radical activist. Robert Jensen can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.]

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Howard Zinn on the 4th of July : Put Away the Flags

Image by Darren Wamboldt / Shutterstock / Journal of the American Enterprise Institute.
The self-deception of exceptionalism:
Put away the flags

By Howard Zinn / July 3, 2010

[People's historian Howard Zinn died on January 7, 2010. This piece was originally distributed by the Progressive Media Project in 2006. Though Zinn was writing during the presidency of George W. Bush, the message is certainly no less relevant today, as we observe the Fourth of July weekend throughout the land.]

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.

Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours -- huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction -- what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.

Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.

That self-deception started early.

When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession."

When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: "It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day."

On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our "Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence." After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: "We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country."

It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to war.

We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, "to civilize and Christianize" the Filipino people.

As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: "The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness."

We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.

Yet they are victims, too, of our government's lies.

How many times have we heard President Bush tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for "liberty," for "democracy"?

One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail in 2004 that God speaks through him.

We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.

We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.

© 2010 The Progressive

[Howard Zinn (1922-2010) authored many books, including A People’s History of the United States, Voices of a People’s History (with Anthony Arnove), and A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.]

Source / The Progressive / CommonDreams

• Also see "BOOKS / Jonah Raskin on 'The Bomb': Howard Zinn Speaks From the Dead" / By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / May 2, 2010.

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Culture Wars : 'Take Our Country Back'

Confederate flag at Tea Party March on Washington, September 12, 2009. Image from Think Progress.
Latest culture war in America:
Nationalism in dangerous form

Many fear that they have lost the country that was bequeathed to them -- and to them alone -- like an old pocket watch from their grandfather.

By Leonard Zeskind / The Rag Blog / April 12, 2010

At first glance it seems inexplicable: Confederate battle flags waving in Washington state and Washington, D.C., when the issue is health care.

Placards that read, “America is a Christian Nation,” appearing in marches when the stated concern is the federal deficit.

Barack Obama labeled a “Lying African,” when presidents from Democrat Woodrow Wilson to Republican George H.W. Bush have raised taxes without being dubbed aliens.

Where does the anger come from to call congressmen hateful names?

The answer resides inside the tea party anthem -- oft-repeated since the protests on Capitol Hill last September -- “Take Our Country Back.” Many fear that they have lost the country that was bequeathed to them -- and to them alone -- like an old pocket watch from their grandfather.

Theirs is a patriotism in which the common good devolves down to the individual privileges of property and wealth. It is a nationalism in which race is implicit, rather than explicit.

The crowds singing “Take It Back” might be all white, but when a black or brown face shows up it is welcomed as a sign of the “non-racial” character of their all-white cause.

From this medium of contradictory beliefs about “real Americans” and inglorious fears of “dispossession” has sprung a movement that is still developing and has not yet reached its final form.

Certainly, there are coldly dispassionate ideologues in this mix:

• The conservative Republican operatives who train these new activists to become the foot soldiers for the party’s election campaigns.
• The Ayn Rand libertarians who conflate Keynes with Marx, and a capitalist welfare state with socialism.
• The old-line segregationists who regard every piece of federal civil rights law as an abrogation of states’ rights.
• The hard core white nationalists who join the tea party movement hoping to convert its implicit whiteness into an explicit and coherent racism.

By themselves, these highly defined political strands are not strong enough to challenge the status quo. Intertwined with each other and with the chaotic mix of passions described above, however, the tea party movement has proven more powerful than expected.

It has transformed the political discourse and has systematically defied common-sense explanations.

While the tea parties have emerged during a period of economic distress, and unemployed job seekers are certainly in their midst, polling data tells us for the most part these people are not suffering financially themselves. According to a CNN survey in February, a full 66 percent of “tea party activists” said they made more than $50,000 a year.

Neither is this some form of populism, similar to the revolt by 19th century farmers. In this instance, the opposition to political and economic elites is predicated on the supposition that those at the “top” are using their power to serve those at the bottom, at the expense of those in the middle.

This is a form of Middle American nationalism more akin to that expressed by Gov. George Wallace’s 1968 presidential campaign than to the rarified blue-blood conservatism of William Buckley.

In the end, tea partiers are not engaged in a civil discussion with fellow Americans about public policy. Rather they are fighting a culture war against people they regard as enemies. The questions are whose America is the “real” America, and whether our society will remain open and democratic.

That is a decision all of us must make.

[Leonard Zeskind, author of Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream, is president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. Zeskind blogs at www.leonardzeskind.com/. This article was also published by the Kansas City Star.]

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Reborn on the Fourth of July or Patriotism Once More Revisited

Fading Glory
On Patriotism.
[revised annually on the 4th of July]
By David Hamilton / The Rag Blog / July 4, 2008

Defending the patriotism of America’s internal critics is a time honored ritual, necessary because the warmongers invariably call it into question. Barack Obama is embroiled in this exercise now. The assumption shared by all parties in this debate is that being unpatriotic is a most odious characteristic. But patriotism is typically just a euphemism for nationalism. It is exemplified by the unqualified stance that right or wrong, one supports one’s country’s actions in the international arena. Nationalism was once progressive in relation to colonialism, but the era in which it is a force for good ended long ago.

Support of your country’s actions irrespective of the consequences for others is immoral. Germans are particularly well schooled on this point. Hitler was rabidly patriotic, and in reaction to the horrors he instigated under that banner, Germans are now the world's most avid internationalists, and along with France, the nucleus of the European Union, the world’s most successful example of the transcendence of nationalism

Nationalism may be justifiably seen as the root cause for the loss of 100 million lives in wars of the 20th century. It was the central issue in both WWI and WWII. As the result of the excesses of nationalism, in 1945 Europe lay in ruins with over 50 million people having died unnecessarily in the preceding 5 ½ years.

Using patriotism to mask aggression is now virtually monopolized by the USA. During the past 40 years, instances of countries other than the US invading another country are rare. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq did invade Kuwait after the US ambassador told him the US would have no problem with such a move. The US client state, Israel, has occupied the territory of all of its Arab neighbors, although in some cases they were attacked first. Turkey, another close US ally, has occupied part of Cyprus and attacked Kurdish rebels in the border area with Iraq. During the same period, the USA has attacked Iraq twice, Panama, Nicaragua, Grenada, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Serbia and Libya. Now the US is threatening Iran and bombing along the Pakistan border.

This list does not include lethal CIA operations in many other countries. During this same period, Europe, the cradle of nationalism, has transcended it by establishing the European Union. As a result, there have been decades of peace between European nations, a historically unprecedented feat. A war in Europe is now almost unthinkable.

Patriotism is very often no more philosophical than the unity among Crips and Bloods or Longhorns and Aggies. Such tribal allegiance is based more on the male competitive instincts, testosterone run amuck, than on principle. Although it might be praiseworthy to go to war in support of values such as freedom, justice and democracy, in war these are typically just propaganda themes brandished by warmongers as rationalizations for aggression.

Hopefully, in the 21st century human society will evolve to the point where allegiance to universal human rights transcends allegiance to country and where international institutions will be the sole legitimate agencies to enforce international law. Such laws would include prohibitions against unilateral military actions by one country against another under any circumstances. Use of military force would only be legitimate if authorized and controlled by a United Nations reformed to remove the victors of WW II from their undemocratic dominance within it.

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