From: silva@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Holly Silva)
Subject: Re: Americans! *smile*
Organization: Stanford Univ. Earth Sciences
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 00:41:58 GMT

 (Jon Corelis) writes:
>(Holly Silva) writes:
>
>
>>I sense that stock anti-americanism and attendant contempt for 
>>american patriotism is less rooted in any intrinsic European wisdom or
>>modesty than in a fairly petty, vicious desire to see the US in trouble.
>
>   I sense that it is rooted in neither, but is rather rooted in the
>fact that for the past quarter century, with the sole exception of the
>Carter administration, American foreign policy has been consistently and
>thoroughly despicable.  And it is rooted in the fact that American
>jingoists have appropriated the idea of patriotism to support every
>vicious, imperialist, and antidemocratic action of the United States
>government.  When was the last time you heard any American publicly or
>privately invoke patriotism in an appeal for support of the ideals of
>the Declaration of Independence, the values of the Constitution, or the
>Whitmanesque vision of America as a unique and mystical bonding of human
>individualism and fusion?  No:  never since the day I was born has the

	You've never listened to Common Cause or People for the American
Way have you?

>flag of patriotism in my country been run up for any causes other than
>the suppression of progressive dissent, the enforcement of obience to
>establishment dictates, and the furtherance of brutal and selfish
>overseas military adventures.
 	
	And this is very much the fault of our self-hating, craven
Liberal wing. The Left or Liberal side of the political spectrum has
allowed patriotism and pride in America to be exppropriate by the
petty demagogues of the far right during the past quarter century.
I sense strongly that this is due to their belief that all patriotism
is nasty _because_ it is intrinsically sentimental, rather than for 
any more intelligent reason. In my experience, this fear/distaste for
anything which smacks of patriotism is rooted in a lack of intrinsic
American thought on the Left, and in their rather pathetic worship of 
all things European. 
	i.e., the view of all forms of Swedish-style socialism as
intrinsically wonderful, without considering the inapplicability of
much of what they've constructed to our much larger, more polyglot
society.
>
>   In short, American patriotism in our time does not mean love of
>country:  it has come to mean lack of commitment to the common good,
>unquestioning obedience to the chief executive, contempt for the
>Constitution, and a satisfied smacking of lips over the piling up of
>third world corpses.  That kind of patriotism deserves contempt, and the
>people of the world know it.   

	Most of the 'people of the world' today either,

	1) engage in this sort of jingoism themselves: (Serbia, Iran,
	Iraq,  Le Pen's party in France, Russian nationalists in 
	Russia, every nationalist splinter group now active in the
	former Soviet Union.....etc., Argentina in re: the Malvinas/
	Falklands.......etc.)

				or

	2) live in societies which only quite recently eschewed this
	form of behavior: (Germany, Britain, Japan)

	While 'that kind of patriotism' does indeed deserve contempt
it is far from unique to the US. The desire of many both here and
abroad to present American patriotism as a purely vicious vehicle
of American hegemony is,

	1) not rooted in historical reality

			and

	2) borne of an excessive willingness to ignore the hegemonic,
	violent tendencies within their own societies.
--
======================================================================
|| Holly Silva			I have nothing terribly clever to say||
|| Applied Earth Sciences	today.  You're in luck.		     ||
|| Stanford University						     ||
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