From The New York Times, 7/6/03:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/weekinreview/06SCOT.html
The Changing Face of Patriotism
By JANNY SCOTT
Americans like to think of themselves as patriotic.
They have been saying as much to pollsters for years.
Men, women, old people, younger people, rich people, poor people,
whites, blacks, urbanites, farmers:
Nearly everyone says roughly the same thing.
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."
_____________________________________________________
"Patriotism" is a lot more difficult to define than you thought it
was, isn't it.
Harry
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