I admit I'm coming in on the tail end of this discussion, after coming across Michael Lind's post yesterday about patriotism/immigration, and I hope I'm not retreading too much old ground.  You say:

When you’re in a tough policy spot—not so uncommon!– patriotism doesn’t tell you exactly what to do.  There’s no formula for automatically settling hard questions.   Still, this doesn’t mean that patriotism is useless, either morally or tactically.  Neither reformers nor radicals can dispense with one of the strong human attachments—to nation.  America’s history is indeed messy.  Anyone know a national history that isn’t?  Or any history of any transnational institution whatsoever, for that matter?  Which International?

This conception of patriotism seems to be a proxy for loyalty to the group, for protection from outside dangers and to maximize gains from cooperation.  Loyalty to group can provide benefits to everyone in the group, and is for that reason often a good thing for the people in that group.  What I guess I'm not sensing is how what you're saying could not be applied just as well to any number of other communal groups—family, municipal or state community, religious group, ethnic group, transnational group (e.g., EU, Latin America, Muslims), etc.  What makes loyalty to nation different qualitatively from loyalty to other groups, besides happenstance of birth?  I think this is one basic gripe me and other one-worlders have with patriotism and the nation-state system generally.  I am always surprised at how deeply engrained the instinct to patriotism is with such little apparent empirical support.  Can anyone explain to me why the location of someone's birth matters from a moral philosophical point of view? 

I feel like much of Europe has been disabused by hard experience of the idea that patriotism is innate and fundamental.  Same with religion—until recently, belief in God was viewed much the same way that patriotism is today, as a prerequisite to being considered a rational, feeling human being. 

So here's my question: What makes patriotism a universal human value?  What makes it anything more than "O'Doyle rules!" (Billy Madison) on a much wider scale? If this has already been hashed out elsewhere, I'd appreciate any links to the discussion.

Also, this liberal/leftist distinction makes no sense to me, since I am a liberal and a leftist.  I have not yet become aware of this schizophrenia I am supposed to be feeling.  Maybe I'm laboring under a false consciousness.

Again, there are several problems.

 Gitlin describes "patriotism" as "a disposition toward fellow-feeling, duty, and public improvement" -- but this is a definition, not of patriotism but of altruism.  Rather than defining patriotism upfront as loyalty to nation in ideology and sentiment, he defines it in two phases -- first as altruism and then, by a logical sleight of hand similar to Michael Lind's, eliminates internationalism or universalism, leaving patriotism by default.  For someone who places such a high value on patriotism, that's a pretty weak approach.

An outlook that is humanist need not only focus within international institutional frameworks, although there are many, like WTO, which are badly flawed and need to be challenged from an internationalist perspective.  People will support those specific programs that best protect their jobs, but these must be formulated by progressives, eg, a priority on the protection of rather than threat to environmental and labor standards in the adjudication process on international trade, with an internationalist and humanist perspective guiding the thinking even if not the 'campaign for king of the universe.   And no perspective that does not meet that litmus test will make any headway among the broad spectrum of progressives, including in Democratic Socialists of America.  Patriotism is all well and good as long as you identify the national with the human interest.

Then there is the cheap shot -- one unworthy of someone with Gitlin's sophistication "a liberal hopes and a leftist sneers".  MANY leftists sneer, but so do many liberals, including Gitlin sneering at the Left!  Often the issue in politics is more who and what you sneer at rather than whether you sneer.  The notion that the Left revels in bad news is a stencil copy of exactly the meme that the Repugs (again, I use the term as long as they systematically deploy the epithet "Democrat Party", one that the Democrats have been letting them get away with) have thrown at the Democrats.  Gitlin is just passing it along, like someone passing bad cards in Hearts to the Left.  I don't think that Arundhati Roy (often accused of being an 'antinational' in India just as Gitlin attacks her as antiAmerican) or Noam Chomsky or other admirable leftists could be fairly described, on the whole, as "sneering", certainly not any more than Gitlin or most liberals.  

And many liberals do not hope -- what they do is to cravenly toe the line, credentialling their 'taking off their britches and selling out under ice' by taking stances for progressive things where those stances on their part have no impact, all the better to credential some reactionary message.  And what do such liberals pine for?  Golden parachutes baby, golden parachutes.  Like the liberals in response to McCarthyism, the Kennedy assassinations or even the historically more-faithful-than-The Life of Emile Zola-to historical fact movie JFK, or their failure over 30 years to seriously pursue alternative energy, including in the first years of the Clinton Administration, or their cravenness on a variety of other key issues, including in particular US imperialism in the post-Cold War issue.  And I know from firsthand experience the gap between liberal posturing-for-credentialling and liberal 'doing the job' by getting with the program in practice.   So even though many of the attacks on liberalism in the 60s (but not all) were indeed very shallow, and from people less worthy of progressive respect than, say, the Kennedys (when the chips are down), there is still plenty to say about liberal individuals and institutions, and their failures. 

And incidentally, there is nothing wrong in saying 'I told you so' when you were right all along.  That really isn't the same as sneering -- it's demanding credit where credit is due, because, especially when someone does other than 'getting with the program and justifying the lying', they had better demand the credit that is due or they won't get it, pure and simple!  To sneer, to celebrate 'worse is better', like Gabriel Kolko rooting for Bush in 2004 because his imperialism is less sustainable than Kerry's, is different from pointing out that Kosovo is still a mess, indeed so is Panama, that the US gained nothing from the atrocious war against civilians in Central America, or from the overthrow of Allende and Mossadegh, let alone the Indochina War or the current fiasco in Iraq.  What Gitlin is saying is that the Left should shut up, not when we are wrong but when we are right!  It is the perfect accompaniment to the doctrine of aggressive wars of (perceived) opportunity palmed off as defensive 'pre-emptive' wars, even while opposing the latter.

Progressives need to organize around fundamental principles rather than 'triangulating' to win elections at all costs.  To the extent that the latter is at all appropriate, it is the task of mainstream Democrats.  Those who, like Pavlov's dogs, will respond in a knee-jerk way by the manipulation of symbols and rhetoric of loyalty to nation can, at least in the short run, perhaps be won over that way.  While I agree that what I call a 'US out of North America' attitude is not one progressives should project or inwardly embrace (indeed it contradicts internationalism and humanism, in a perverse way), I think progressives should organize around the principles that progressive politics are truly based on, on what makes most progressives progressive (aside from imputations of arrogance and egotism to progressives.).  Alternative energy is something to pursue, and to show people how they are benefitted by it.  Universal health care is for people, and most progressives support it not because it 'makes America stronger', although it would make our companies more competitive, and progressives do indeed point that out.

 It is particularly noxious in an era when important institutions like the UN are insufficiently supported to sneer at internationalism as a perspective.  And the logic of why the US should be urged (not a popular position among progressives I will admit) to support more vigorous action, including a no-fly-zone, towards Darfur is transparently tortured when there is an effort to base it on 'national' interest.  You end up talking about national 'spiritual' or 'moral' interests, where the internationalism or humanism is embodied in the 'spiritual' or 'moral' part.

I think the whole exercise is phony, and it tends to unnecessarily drive a wedge between liberals and progressives, rather than unite us.  But then again, from a strategic standpoint, if not a career one, I suppose that identifying with progressive ideas has become a liability to the smart money.  And in the age where even critics of the media are silent about the lockdown of Votergate 2004 (and Votergate Ohio 2005), the smart money -- for that reason and not any moral validity, may be right, within its own parameters at least.

And the description of 'Leftists' underscores my characterization of Gitlin, criticized by some, as antiLeftist.  He is antiLeftist and proud of it!

Dave B,

I think the problem you are having with this concept stems from thinking too much in the abstract.  The question isn't whether patriotism to ANY country is of value, it is whether patriotism to THIS country is of value (or for that matter, any functioning liberal democracy).  You are quite correct to question whether patriotism to ANY country, where you just happen to be born, is of value.  That is purely based on chance. 

However, lots of people, whether they immigrated here or were born here, choose to love this country for reasons that have nothing to do with chance.  America is deeply flawed (because we are made up of human beings) but our model of governance has a lot to offer.  That is something to be proud of.  Because of that, we are a stable, functioning, reasonably wealthy country.  When other countries have successfully adopted a similar model, they have also done well.  However, that model is only successful to the extent that the majority of people in those countries work to maintain it.

Having lived in neighborhoods with a high immigrant population, I have observed that most low-skilled (ie uneducated) laborers do not know how, initially, to operate as full citizens in a participatory democracy.  They know how to work hard, keep their heads down, and stay out of trouble.  They distrust the police, the banking system, and most governmental and financial institutions.  (Thus, it is never hard to find a thriving black market.)  I am not talking about ILLEGAL immigrants.  I am talking about the legal ones.  One world sound great in theory, but in practice, at this point, you would get violence and chaos.

To oversimplify, the liberal hopes; the leftist sneers.  Faced with bad news, the liberal has a sinking feeling, saying, "I was afraid of that"; the leftist has a weirdly triumphant feeling, saying, "I told you so."  I harbor both impulses.  But I don’t respect the second one.

This strikes me as a fairly slanderous statement.  The "left", as I understand it, is a broad political movement concerned primarily with economic and class matters, with leveling imbalances of economic power in society, and with the consequent liberation of economically oppressed groups within that society.  It's focus is on the relationship between wealth and power; between capital and labor; between poverty and injustice.  There have been in the past, and still are, plenty of optimistic, hopeful, happy warriors on the left.  In most countries the left would be referred to with some term containing "social" - for example "socialism" or "social democracy", etc.  However, most of these expressions are forbidden, dirty words in America - so we have to say "left" when we talk about these political orientations.

 
Liberalism is a poitical ideology concerned with the political rights and social habits we think of as constituting "liberty" and "liberality" - freedom of speech, freedom of worship, tolerance, freedom of association, freedom to trade, and restraints on the law-making and police powers of government.  Liberalism and leftism are both concerned with oppression, but the emphasis in liberalism is on the particular kinds of oppression we associate with political power; the emphasis in leftism is on kinds of oppression we associate with economic power.
 

While most of the various leftisms took shape during the industrial age, when the connections between property, wealth and oppression became glaringly obvious, liberalism is an earlier movement that took shape in reponse to the oppressions wrought by monarchical governments rooted in traditional aristocratic and religious power.  Where liberalism addressed economics, it was much more concerned by restrictions on free commercial activity than by the ways in which all of that free activity could generate economic inequalities which produce other kinds of oppression.  Liberals have tended to argue that oppression is best relieved by designing the right kind of political system; leftists have tended to argue that, no matter what the political system, power inevitably falls into the hands of the wealthy. and that liberation from oppression requires positive measures designed to equalize society's members in economic terms.

 
The Democratic party has been characterized, during its modern history, by an unsteady fusion of liberal and leftist ideas.  Since both outlooks focus on freeing human beings from various kinds of oppression, there is prlenty of room for harmony between leftism and liberalism.  But there is also a lot of tension.  There are varieties of liberalism that are given to a completely laissez faire approach to economics; and there have been varieties of leftism that embraced thoroughly illiberal, even totalitarian politics.

There is also today a global leftist movement.  That movement is concerned with economic inequality as practiced on a global basis, and is thus particularly concerned with the particular forms of oppression associated with imperial power.  But since the United States is the reigning imperial power, it is very difficult for Americans themselves to be part of this movement.  They tend to be rejected by the vast majority of their fellow citizens, are regarded as vaguely or explicitly traitorous, and find few outlets for their activism within conventional electoral politics.  Many are thus given to frustration, anger, and negativism because they have no hope of making their voices heard on the national stage, and are confined to certain universities and marginal activist groups.  Americans who are associated with this movement are often drawn away from constructive political engagement - and toward more amorphous, millenarian, reactive views such as "anarchism" or "libertarian socialism".

 
Again, there is nothing inherently pessimistic about leftism.  During high times for leftism, it is an optimistic and progressive force.  But  leftism of both the national and global varieties are not experiencing high times.  Professor Gitlin seems to have identified a certain optimism/pessimism split in his own psychology, and has unfortunately chosen to label that split as a "liberal/left" split.  This is a very imprecise and misleading choice of terms, and an insult to constructive leftists. 

My two cents for what it's worth.  I used to be a centrist.  But this Administration has destroyed the center, in my opinion.  America has moved so far to the right that even the concept of a "center" in political life today is meaningless to me.  The policies of the Republicans are so egregious that there is no compromise with them -- if anyone thinks otherwise, I'd like to know your suggestions.

I am progressive/left DEFENSIVELY, in reaction to what has happened.  I think you would be surprised to see where the center has gone after five years of this Republican madness.  Too much damage has been done.

It would not be in accord with American values as I understand them to load the costs of global climate change onto poor countries, island countries, and/or others with long, perilous seashores (like Bangladesh).

OK, throw in Florida too, Miami and the Keys will be underwater at even 1 Meter sea level rise link and most of southern Louisiana to boot. This in the next 50-100 years, or less.

For complete sea level rise maps see  Department of Geosciences
University of Arizona

"What I guess I'm not sensing is how what you're saying could not be applied just as well to any number of other communal groups—family, municipal or state community, religious group, ethnic group, transnational group (e.g., EU, Latin America, Muslims), etc. What makes loyalty to nation different qualitatively from loyalty to other groups, besides happenstance of birth? "

Choosing to be loyal to country is a choice to support the actual real society and community in which you exist and live and which supports you.

Loyalty to ethnic and religous group is a choice you make based on identity.

That is, you are loyal to the group because you perceive them to be people like yourself and therefore supporting them is emotionally the same as supporting yourself.

And I would point out, that all the worst conflicts we face in the world today flow from this kind of loyalty -- Rwanda, Darfur, Yugoslavia, etc.

Iraq too is falling apart into civil war largely because people's loyalties are very often more closely tied to tribe and religious sect than to nation.

So you want to dismantle that? Without anything to replace it?

But then, that is the REAL distinction between the Left and liberals.

The Left is great at deconstructing things, at tearing things down, but hasn't a single constructive thing to offer.

And it's obvlivious to the effects of tearing down existing social constructs. The logic seems to be that such and such social constructs are immoral or evil, therefore removing them will solve all problems.

The world isn't that simple.

As to why patriotism is such a deeply engrained instinct, I will say this.

Most people instinctively think they owe some modicum of loyalty to the society that provides their roads, educates their children, police's their streets, defends their interests, protects their borders and provides social services in time of individual or communal need.

What's so crazy about that? Furthermore, isn't it reasonable to expect that such loyalty -- barring some clear, significant betrayal -- would be something rather more significant than only offering support when your country does everything you like and gets everything right?

Are we liberals and leftist to be nothing more than "sunshine patriots."

     "But in the meantime ... "    -- John Lennon, "Beautiful Boy"

             As long as you think of politics as a horserace -- at Paddy Power I would probably not put my money on the Left in the US -- then the Left necessarily comes up short. Indeed, I'm not sure I would bet on liberals winning out either.  But the argument in principle that the Left is simply wrong in the solutions that it offers combines interestingly with the issue of patriotism -- implying an elective affinity between patriotism and a generic rejection of Leftist politics, regardless of the 'patriotism' felt or expressed by progressive/leftists.  I think that arguing the merits of Left politics is something to be done when someone like Chomsky, who I would like to see invited to be a guest at the table for one, comes to expound and to defend his views and positions.  I noticed that when Bernie Sanders was here, the arguments about the worthlessness of Left politics were not, to my recollection, put forward in such abundance.

          But in the highly popular and longstanding 'condemnation of the extremes' meme, remember that at one time racial and gender equality were 'extreme' positions, and what is considered 'extreme' on the Left today may someday be considered quite pedestrian.  So the logic about the 'extremes' doesn't really work out fully when you look at history.  Much of it comes from the definition of brutal governance as 'extreme', so the logic is somewhat self-fulfilling.   That is not to deny that there are totalitarians on the Left and on the Right, nor is it to embrace them.   Simply put, the argument about the merits of politics is inextricably bound up with arguments about 'patriotism', as in the facile efforts by Gitlin and others to dismiss out of hand the very notion of universalist humanism as a guiding ethical touchstone.

       The question of 'fighting the Repuglicans' (again, I call them that as long as they systematically deploy the epithet 'Democrat Party') for the center is fine for the Democrats seeking to win elections in swing districts.  But that doesn't vitiate the value of those progressives who spearhead opposition to imperialism in principle, who insistently focus on ecological issues that are ignored or only narrowly addressed in the mainstream, or to focus on those issues that mainstream Democrats (who have failed even to meaningfully stand up to the label "Democrat Party!") don't dare raise -- such as "conspiracy theories" of the Kennedy assassinations and about pervasive, mainly underground, repression in the US.

      Like most on the Left, I voted for Kerry and, when voting, generally support the Democrats nationally.  (I rejected those Leftists who followed Nader in 2000 at the time, particularly when he made that noxious remark about Roe v Wade being overturned 'merely' returning the issue to the states, which is also inaccurate).  There is plenty of room for progressives to tactically support more liberal or even centrist politicians in particular situations.  Nor is it necessary for centrists and liberals to embrace radicals in response, but real protection of civil liberties comprehensively (in practice nonexistent, eg in my own experience, including currently) and refraining from simply fostering a bash-the-left approach, as Gitlin, of all people, does is not too much to ask of the mainstream Democrats. 

It would also be nice if they had just a little bit of spine as a Party in support of their stated principles -- eg, having pointed out right away rather than waiting five months to deconstruct the flimsiness of the flipflop spin.  My main critique of the mainstream is their failure in practice to live up to their own broadly stated principles, rather than directly confronting them for not being radical.  Howard Dean, after all, was a centrist Democratic governor who had always opposed the war, and was widely supported by many progressives.

        Finally, about NightprowlerKitty, I think you miss his point that the 'center' is not a fixed point, but is itself being forcibly wrenched to the right.  "Centrism" is not a set of principles.  Principles inhere in specific ethical choices underlying one's positions on the issues.  So in a sense, he isn't 'running away' but holding his ground in principle, as the ground is being washed away underneath, in terms of power politics.

Dan K: 

Professor Gitlin seems to have identified a certain optimism/ pessimism split in his own psychology, and has unfortunately chosen to label that split as a "liberal/left" split.

Agreed.  However the problem is deeper.

Again, there is nothing inherently pessimistic about leftism.  During high times for leftism, it is an optimistic and progressive force. But  leftism of both the national and global varieties are not experiencing high times. 

 

 It isn't just that there is "nothing inherently pessimistic" about leftism but that leftism is inherently, by definition, an optimistic and progressive force.  Words have meanings and whether or not one agrees with optimism or progress, that is part of what has always been understood to be the concept of "leftism". Another part is support for the oppressed against their oppressors both domestically and globally.

We are currently in a period where there is no significant organized left and a pessimistic and reactionary pseudo-left is able to pass itself off as left merely by using radical sounding rhetoric.

Although non-existance as a significant organized movement can hardly be described as "experiencing high times", I also disagree with any implication that lack of progress and lack of cause for optimism is the problem either within the USA or globally.

On the contrary, the problem is that what were once radical leftist views are now relatively mainstream, but a new radical leftism has not yet emerged.

In particular, the Republican party, which nobody could accuse of being "leftist", and which also denies being "liberal" has gone a long way towards abandoning the previous bipartisan support of propping up autocracies and Greater Israel chauvinists in the middle east.

Looking for a suitable Democratic party candidate to defeat a black woman running for President on a platform of spreading democratic revolution is "hard times" for liberals and Democrats, but why should the left feel sad about that?

Leftists are instinctively opposed to all the oppressive and reactionary regimes whose demise causes such despair among liberals and conservatives - including Taliban Afghanistan and Baathist Iraq as  well  as Gorbachev's  Soviet  Union  and  coming  soon  clericalist  Iran  and capitalist  China.

Even Christopher Hitchens, who tends towards liberal pessimism seems to be getting cheerier these days. It's quite fun watching the pseudo-left denouncing Republicans from the right and means they won't be able to confuse and obstruct the development of a genuine left for much longer.

I think there's been fairly common agreement that nationalism is generally not a good thing. In fact, Serbian nationalism played a part in the ethnic strife in Yugoslavia.

However, we've been making a distinction in these discussions between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism being the name we have used for simple loyalty to country as compared to nationalism, which isn't simply loyalty but an assertion of national superiority.

Since you recognize that loyalty to nation has it's good side then it sounds like we agree that patriotism is good and nationalism, not so much. 

Leftists are instinctively opposed to all the oppressive and reactionary regimes whose demise causes such despair among liberals and conservatives - including Taliban Afghanistan and Baathist Iraq as  well  as Gorbachev's  Soviet  Union  and  coming  soon  clericalist  Iran  and capitalist  China.

<p>I'm not entirely sure where Arthur Dent is coming from but this quote resonates with me. As a leftist, I'd assumed that the Left was always, always, always opposed to fascism.  I know that I still am, but I'm no longer sure whether that is true of the Left.</p>

<p>For me the move towards support of the Iraq War and the neoconservative position a la Hitchens has been pretty natural, though disconcerting to my progressive friends.</p>

But not irrevocably, if we are willing to give up on some precious myths of the far left, such as those cloudy flogs above, and look to practical matters and regain the respect of serious people. And to me, 'serious' people means the vast majority of Americans of all classes and stripes.

No sneering, Mellish!

One of the things that really disheartened me about the quality of the discourse coming from so many of my Leftist friends after 9/11 (you can take me, in shorthand, as having followed a Hitchensite path) was that if I tried to make a case for something like invading Afghanistan I was invariably told that the sheeple were being fooled into that by Fox News.  Those two phrases-- Karl Rove hadn't been invented yet as the supreme boogeyman-- short-circuited any discussion; I don't have to listen to what you say because you're one of the sheeple brainwashed by Fox.  (As if a TV network which came along in the 35th year of a 40-year-trend toward conservatism, and which reaches half a million people a day, was responsible for everything.)  That's on the intellectual level of Tom Cruise talking about psychotherapy (and of course in its most extreme cases there are many things about, say, Chomsky-worship that resemble the cults of L. Ron Hubbard or various other lone supergeniuses who Explain Everything, but I give most people on the Left credit for at least arriving at their opinions honestly and thoughtfully, and preserve a distinction between a certain degree of groupthink, unquestionable in many Leftist OR Rightist enclaves, and outright brainwashing).

So attitude is a real problem.   The Left is about as charming to the broader voting public as a hemorrhoid, and its undisguised contempt for the sheeple is part of the reason why; you can't argue effectively with someone you regard as having no arguments, merely programming.  But the other reason why liberals would be a lot better off detaching from the hard Left is that there just ain't that much of it!  It may be noisy but as the columnist Mark Steyn writes in the Chicago Sun-Times this morning:

"You couldn't help noticing it was followers the anti-war crowd seemed to be short of on the third anniversary. The next weekend half a million illegal immigrants -- whoops, sorry, half a million fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community-- took to the streets, and you suddenly realized what a big-time demonstration is supposed to look like. These guys aren't even meant to be in the country and they can organize a better public protest movement than an anti-war crowd that's promoted 24/7 by the media and Hollywood."

Liberals will start to regain ground when liberals find issues that not only don't match up exactly with the fights of their youth in the 60s, but issues that didn't have 60s equivalents at all, and mean something today.  You let me know when that happens....