The Necessity of Contingency

There's a series of fascinating, intellectually stimulating posts by Will Wilkinson, Daniel Larison, Matt Frost, and Reihan Salam.

I had written something very long and nonsensical about all this, but what I have to say boils down to this -- life is full of attachments and affections that aren't strictly rationally defensible and there's nothing wrong with that. Indeed, life would be terribly dull without such attachments. But what distinguishes the liberal's approach to his patriotism from, well, the wrong approach is that a liberal will recognize the contingency of it. Most people love the country where they were born and raised and think it's the finest in the world. Intelligent people don't lose that love, but they do recognize that, in fact, they love their country because they were born and raised there and not because it is, in fact, the finest in the world. That doesn't mean you stop loving your country, but it does mean that you open yourself up to other kinds of affections both bigger and smaller than "the nation" and also recognize that there's a circumscribed relevance to this sort of thing.

But a cosmopolitan in the real world doesn't become one by purging himself of particularist affections, rather he multiplies them and recognizes that others have affections of their own and that these sentiments are all owed a certain amount of respect and consideration.

Lurking behind really dogmatic professions of universalism, especially in the political arena, tends to be an especially rancid form of nationalistic hubris -- think of George W. Bush proclaiming that American interests and American ideals are one and the same and also completely congruent with the demands of the universal human yearning for freedom.

Comments

But what distinguishes the liberal's approach to his patriotism from, well, the wrong approach is that a liberal will recognize the contingency of it.

That is precisely why liberalism is the same thing as fascism. See, Mussolini said something similar, or maybe it was FDR.

Posted by Thers | April 1, 2008 12:31 PM

What a lovely post. Matt, you've just sold a book.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | April 1, 2008 12:34 PM

MY, you should read (or re-read) "The Moral Animal."

Posted by John McCain: More of the Same | April 1, 2008 12:41 PM

What you're failing to ask is why love a country at all?

A country is an organization that exists to better the lives of everyone in it. Supporting it makes good, reasonable sense. Anything that goes beyond reason is an open, blinking-neon-light invitation for the unscrupulous to exploit. If you install a button, don't be surprised if people go push it for all sorts of bad and selfish reasons.

Oh, but if you don't love it, then you wouldn't support it in a critical situation? Well, why not? To take the most extreme situation, soldiers do not, by and large "die for their country"; they die in the performance of their jobs, trying not to let their colleagues down. Three or four generations of my family have been in the military, back at least to one who fought the Russians in the Crimean War, and so far as I've been able to find out, not a single one of them had any patience with patriotic dreck. They all seem to have been pretty stubborn about finishing a job they started, though.

Nationalism, patriotism, racism, sexism -- all variants of the same tired old tune, "my group is better than your group, just because, and I'll hurt you if you disagree!"

Posted by sunsin | April 1, 2008 12:46 PM

Matt, you have managed to cram a considerable amount of self-congratulation into this post, and it may even be accurate in your case.

I don't think it is the case for liberalism more generally. While there are a certain number of cosmopolitan liberals in the movement, the majority of its members are interest group liberals. They have not expanded on their love of country to allow for a broader understanding of the world. Instead, they have narrowed their allegiance. For them, Blackness, or the Union, or Title IX is simply more important than nationalism, while both are more important than the interests and desires of foreigners.

There is, indeed, a lot of small-minded nationalism attached to the GOP's flag waving. It does not follow that liberals are necessarily any more open minded.

Posted by heedless | April 1, 2008 12:53 PM

Well, it is a lovely post, but it is false in my case. I am a citizen of a nation for which I have no affection. I may have sympathy for my destitute compatriots, and I may have special knowledge about their circumstances that make it easier for me to have confidence that my efforts can impact them in a positive way than it would be for me to have confidence that my efforts would be fruitful in making life better in Africa, say (for contingent reasons, of course), but that does not mean that I have affection for the nation I am a citizen of.

In fact, I have arrived at cosmopolitanism by way of shedding myself of any traces of nationalism. I do not have any special affection for nations, nor do I think it particularly moral to have those affections. But I do live in the world in which I live, full of people who irrationally hold these affections, and I prefer for those affections to be held in the manner in which liberals (as they are described by Matthew) hold them.

I do have special affection for my family, and I do recognize this as contingent (and this is why I find the liberal version of patriotism that Matthew describes somewhat more appealing than the alternative). But I am not willing to enlarge that very natural circle of affection to an arbitrary middle ground like the nation. Communitarian allegiances strike me as more reasonable than national ones, though they still strike me as somewhat arbitrary.

I prefer to enjoy, celebrate, admire (without any deference to cultural relativism) specific *aspects* of the different cultures around me.

Posted by pedro | April 1, 2008 1:00 PM

Well, it is a lovely post, but it is false in my case. I am a citizen of a nation for which I have no affection. I may have sympathy for my destitute compatriots, and I may have special knowledge about their circumstances that make it easier for me to have confidence that my efforts can impact them in a positive way than it would be for me to have confidence that my efforts would be fruitful in making life better in Africa, say (for contingent reasons, of course), but that does not mean that I have affection for the nation I am a citizen of.

In fact, I have arrived at cosmopolitanism by way of shedding myself of any traces of nationalism. I do not have any special affection for nations, nor do I think it particularly moral to have those affections. But I do live in the world in which I live, full of people who irrationally hold these affections, and I prefer for those affections to be held in the manner in which liberals (as they are described by Matthew) hold them.

I do have special affection for my family, and I do recognize this as contingent (and this is why I find the liberal version of patriotism that Matthew describes somewhat more appealing than the alternative). But I am not willing to enlarge that very natural circle of affection to an arbitrary middle ground like the nation. Communitarian allegiances strike me as more reasonable than national ones, though they still strike me as somewhat arbitrary.

I prefer to enjoy, celebrate, admire (without any deference to cultural relativism) specific *aspects* of the different cultures around me.

Posted by pedro | April 1, 2008 1:01 PM

Well, it is a lovely post, but it is false in my case. I am a citizen of a nation for which I have no affection. I may have sympathy for my destitute compatriots, and I may have special knowledge about their circumstances that make it easier for me to have confidence that my efforts can impact them in a positive way than it would be for me to have confidence that my efforts would be fruitful in making life better in Africa, say (for contingent reasons, of course), but that does not mean that I have affection for the nation I am a citizen of.

In fact, I have arrived at cosmopolitanism by way of shedding myself of any traces of nationalism. I do not have any special affection for nations, nor do I think it particularly moral to have those affections. But I do live in the world in which I live, full of people who irrationally hold these affections, and I prefer for those affections to be held in the manner in which liberals (as they are described by Matthew) hold them.

I do have special affection for my family, and I do recognize this as contingent (and this is why I find the liberal version of patriotism that Matthew describes somewhat more appealing than the alternative). But I am not willing to enlarge that very natural circle of affection to an arbitrary middle ground like the nation. Communitarian allegiances strike me as more reasonable than national ones, though they still strike me as somewhat arbitrary.

I prefer to enjoy, celebrate, admire (without any deference to cultural relativism) specific *aspects* of the different cultures around me.

Posted by pedro | April 1, 2008 1:02 PM

Clarification:

I don't mean to imply that there is something inherently laudable about nationalism or patriotism. It is, as Matt has pointed out, entirely contingent on an accident of birth.

My point is that the majority of liberals have simply replaced one contingent allegiance with another. Most people choose their affiliations for tribal, as opposed to intellectual, reasons, and liberals are no exception.

One sees the same tendency on the conserative side, where Huckabee commanded the votes of evangelical Christians largely because he was an evangelical himself. Their political allegiance was an extension of group loyalty, as opposed to the expression of a considered ideology.

Posted by heedless | April 1, 2008 1:07 PM

Heedless, you are wrong. The proportion of American liberals who don't feel a deep, genuine affection for their country is vanishingly small.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | April 1, 2008 1:12 PM

Most people love the country where they were born and raised and think it's the finest in the world.

Do you really think that's true? I can very quickly think of some very large countries where it's almost certainly false.

It is possible, you know, to make some distinctions between countries based on absolute values, independent of personal affiliation. In most cases, I think you'll find, the US does very well.

Posted by right | April 1, 2008 1:16 PM

"It is, as Matt has pointed out, entirely contingent on an accident of birth."

Only if you are a descendant of slaves. For everyone else, being born here isn't an accident but a direct consequence of decisions made by your ancestors.

And the idea that Bush's claim that there is a universal desire for freedom is "rancid" is nonsense -- there may not be such a universal desire, but to assume that the rest of the world is noble enough to have it isn't rancid; it's merely misguided, based on the same false egalitarianism that informs liberal goals for diversity in academia and employment.

The truth is that what is universal is not the desire for freedom, but the local equivalent of 'interest group liberalism', to borrow Heedless's phrase. Iraqi Shiites don't want democracy for its own sake; they just want it as a means to get their version of Title IX -- a share of Iraq's oil revenues equal to their share of Iraq's population.

Posted by Fred | April 1, 2008 1:32 PM

Hmm. I don't know how much of a given affect is consciously willed/chosen and how much is unconscious/instinctual/unrational. I am not sure how one could tell the difference or trust the self-analysis. Etc.

There certainly can be degrees or quantities of affection for one's native or foreign countries. and the reasons don't have to profound or rational. I prefer Ireland to Iceland partly because I prefer Rory Gallagher to Bjork, and this may be contingent on tastes in music not completely under my control. I shouldn't need to defend it.

There can be lots of reasons to like America more than not. It's really big, for instance. I think I would also prefer Brazil or Russia to living in Luxembourg. This preference might even be contingent, and I might feel differently if born in Luxembourg.

Posted by bob mcmanus | April 1, 2008 1:34 PM

Lemuel,

I'm in perfect agreement with you. I just couldn't figure out a way to say "Of course, I'm not questioning liberals' patriotism," without coming off as though I was, well, questioning their patriotism.

It's not that liberals don't love their country (You see why I couldn't just come out with this sort of thing? It sounds so condescending.), they do. But when they critique (as Matt does in his post) blind nationalism, they are not, by and large, doing so from a position of superior enlightenent and understanding. Instead, they have a competing, contingent affiliation (race, class or gender, usually) which comes into conflict with their nationalism on certain issues.

From a distance, this can look like principled disagreement, but it's not quite the same thing.

Posted by heedless | April 1, 2008 1:35 PM

Heedless, you are wrong. The proportion of American liberals who don't feel a deep, genuine affection for their country is vanishingly small.

Are you saying that the proportion of American blacks who share Reverend Wright's view of America is "vanishingly small"? If that's true, why didn't Obama pick one of the many patriotic black churches?

Posted by Harry | April 1, 2008 1:41 PM

It also means you strive to make your country the finest country possible because you care about it, recognize its short comings, and love it enough to want to fix them.

In other words, you support Barrack Obama.

Posted by MNPundit | April 1, 2008 1:44 PM

The bone of contention in all of these linked comments is the distinction between patriotism and nationalism. Apologists for patriotism inevitably reserve the word nationalism as a catch-all term for the dark side of people's love for their country while cherishing "true" patriotism. Libertarians like Wilkinson, who disavow patriotism, inevitably refuse to tar all patriotism with its excesses and refuse to accept that they owe any debt at all to the country that made their free and prosperous lifestyle possible.

I think both of these attitudes are deluded and self-serving.

Love of country can be dangerous. It drives people to follow orders, support stupid leaders who start foolish wars, harrass immigrants, beat down protesters, spy, torture, murder, and God knows what else. They don't do these things because they've crossed some invisible line between good patriotic sentiment and bad nationalistic sentiment. They do these things because they love their country, believe it is worth defending, believe it is an honorable thing to serve their country, and those sentiments influence their decisions. Those sentiments also built everything we love about this country in the first place. Two sides of the same coin.

Matt's right-- the key is not to reject patriotism but to try to acquire some perspective. Love of country is contingent on our circumstances of our birth and its benefits are contingent on the ends to which it is mobilized.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | April 1, 2008 1:47 PM

Intelligent people don't lose that love, but they do recognize that, in fact, they love their country because they were born and raised there and not because it is, in fact, the finest in the world.

Huh?

This seems to me to be completely wrong. In fact, I'd say that people who believe that they "love their country" for the sole reason that "they were born there", rather than that their country is "the finest in the world", are not in fact patriotic. That is, a person who believes that they inhabit a really bad country is just not patriotic, regardless of the fact that he or she was born there.

In contrast to what Matthew writes, I'd say that the basis of the "contingency of patriotism" is that there is no single definition of "the finest in the world". Where you are born affects the criteria by which you judge "the finest in the world". But if, under the criteria you use to judge "fine countries" (as such criteria are informed by the society into which you are born), you still think your country is very bad, then you are simply not patriotic.

Posted by Al | April 1, 2008 1:54 PM

I've begun to realize that my irrational attachement to my family is illiberal and particular. I've decided to emigrate to Matt Yglesias' family.

Posted by Ikram | April 1, 2008 1:56 PM

LaFP,

That was a great explanation of everything that was right about Matt's post. Thanks.

I still say he's wrong that liberals have better perspective on this issue than conservatives. It was a crude bit of partisanship attached to an otherwise powerful statement of moral philosophy.

Posted by heedless | April 1, 2008 1:56 PM

This post will prove wrong all those anti-Semites who claim that Jews are just rootless cosmopolitans, with no attachment to the countries they are nominally citizens of. If you consider that the last war American Jews supported and volunteered for in anything close to their proportion of the population was World War II, one wonders whether they would have done so at all if the Nazis weren't killing Jews.

Is that why they leave the war fighting to dumb Micks like McCain? No wonder they prefer Obama, whose idea of service was shaking down more tax dollars for inner city blacks in Chicago.

Posted by Juan | April 1, 2008 2:05 PM

heedless, there may be individual liberals for whom your claim is true, but the overarching liberal philosophy is one that specifically and purposefully encourages a "broader understanding" of what it means to "love one's country." This is one of the main components of the liberal mindset with the caveat that other, interest-group-related advocacies are part and parcel of looking out for the interests of individuals and bettering their lives.

And Al is just trying to pick a fight rather than saying anything coherent. Try again next time, Al.

Posted by Tyro | April 1, 2008 2:06 PM

There's a certain consistency to Juan's embittered stupidity he repeatedly displays.

Posted by Tyro | April 1, 2008 2:10 PM

Where you are born affects the criteria by which you judge "the finest in the world". But if, under the criteria you use to judge "fine countries" (as such criteria are informed by the society into which you are born), you still think your country is very bad, then you are simply not patriotic.

Double Huh? So if you disagree with the "criteria" that "the society for which you are born" tells you you should use to judge your country as "fine"...isn't also quite possible you could also agree your country is fine, but for different reasons?

I don't think that I have to agree with my land-born society on the reasons they think my country is or is not "fine" in order to be a patriot.

Posted by AKBY | April 1, 2008 2:11 PM

Matt,

What you're describing isn't patriotism - it's multiculturalist relativism applied on an international scale. The key, as you point out, is contingency - the notion that our affections and affiliations are mere accidents of birth. That they are not rationally defensible. And that while, perhaps, we needn't eradicate them, we do have to abandon any notion that any particular affiliation, and what it represents, might be superior to others. In this construction, cosmopolitanism is no more than a euphemism for relativism, whereas the belief that one's particular loyalties might have more than a "circumscribed relevance" is necessarily equated with universalism.

I dissent, most adamantly.

First, let us dispense with false dichotomies. To assert that there is something uniquely wonderful about this nation is not to affirm that it needs to be spread universally, if necessary by force of arms. I love this nation precisely because it is unique, because its unique history has resulted in a combination of values, people, and culture that is irreproducible. It is my patriotic nationalism which leads me to label efforts to mindlessly replicate the American system abroad the purest folly. Similarly, I can multiply my particular loyalties and respect the views of others without plunging into the abyss of relativism. To understand that the Iraqi is bound to be as patriotic as the American - and, for example, as resentful of foreign occupation - is not to affirm that I can see no distinction between the two loyalties other than an accident of birth.

You suggest that patriotism is something akin to loyalty for a sports franchise - a childish passion that, as we grow older and wiser, is best put in perspective. I would counter that patriotic nationalism represents our best hope for a better world. It's not that without attachments "life would be terribly dull" - it's that without attachments, collaboration and cooperation would be all but impossible. Man is rarely moved to action, much less to self-sacrifice, by appeals to reason. It is our shared commitments and loyalties that bind us together, and enable us to act in common purpose. There is, to be certain, a danger inherent in the application of any force, and since few forces are as powerful as nationalism, the danger multiplies accordingly. But that's a reason not to treat all nationalisms as equally worthy, not a reason to renounce it entirely. We are witnessing, in Iraq, what happens when a nation-state ceases to command the loyalties of its people. It enters into a period of chaotic anarchy, when more basic loyalties assert themselves - religion, sect, tribe, clan, family. The problem nationalism solves, then, is one of spatial geography - it enables coexistence. How it solves that problem is of the utmost importance. In America, we tend to insist upon the affirmation of a common set of ideals, but to otherwise countenance diversity. France allows diverse origins, so long as its citizens embrace cultural uniformity. Germany, at mid-century, built an ethnic nationalism of the most virulent kind. Not all nationalisms are equal, and I refuse to cede them blindly "a certain amount of respect and consideration."

As for cosmopolitanism, I would suggest that it offers a fool's paradise. It works well enough, provided that no one else cares intensely about anything, either. But when the cosmopolitan comes face-to-face with the fanatic, he finds himself defenseless. He cannot sway him by the lights of cool reason. He cannot convince the fanatic that his affiliations are mere accidents of birth, not worth taking seriously. He discovers, too late, that his vaunted cosmopolitanism is itself a most extreme form of universalism - it presupposes that all people can be brought to view the world much as he does. That all ideologies are prepared to sign a non-aggression pact. But they're not. And given that our very human need to affiliate, to belong, is among our most basic impulses, it behooves us to direct that need along productive channels. To find causes worth supporting, nations worth defending - and pour our energies into that pursuit.

Posted by Cynic | April 1, 2008 2:16 PM

This whole thread just shows the weakness of the concept of "proposition nations". Historically, nations were inextricably tied with nationalities/ethnic groups/tribes: to be born in England wasn't considered an "accident" -- it meant you were English. Not just because you were born in England, but because your parents were ethnically English, as were their parents, and so on. Same if you were born in France, or Japan, or wherever. America is unique in that it isn't named after a national/ethnic group but merely a geographic place.

Now, European countries, having seen the worst extrapolation of nationalism in two devastating wars, have attempted to move in the direction of being "proposition nations". How has that worked out? Do the North African Muslims in the Netherlands, Britain, or France feel the same loyalty to those countries as those whose ancestors have lived there for centuries? Of course not; in many cases, they feel no loyalty at all.

Posted by Steve D. | April 1, 2008 2:18 PM

That is, a person who believes that they inhabit a really bad country is just not patriotic, regardless of the fact that he or she was born there

That is just plain wrong. No one could be more of a patriotic Russian than Solzhenitsyn. No one could be more aware that the Soviet Union was a "really bad country" under Stalin. There is no contradiction between loving your country and hating the regime.

Posted by Pithlord | April 1, 2008 2:18 PM

Cynic, your error is in assuming that nationalism is the only way to fulfill the need of many people to "belong." The focus on national identity is precisely what caused Europe so many problems in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Posted by Tyro | April 1, 2008 2:24 PM

"Cynic, your error is in assuming that nationalism is the only way to fulfill the need of many people to "belong.""

What are the other ways, Tyro, besides religion? Fraternal organizations like The Elks? Organizations with military-style comradeship like the police and fire departments (who have a loyalty to the communities they protect that's akin to patriotism)?

The fatuousness of Matt's brand of cosmopolitanism is that it wouldn't even exist without the patriotism and quasi-patriotism of the men who keep him and his correspondents safe.

Posted by Juan | April 1, 2008 2:35 PM

Tyro:

My point wasn't simply that is solves the need to belong - a bowling league might do the same. My point was that it addresses that need in a manner that resolves the problems of spatial geography. We live near people who are unlike us. That's true of everyone - there's always some means of differentiating one man from his neighbor. Nationalism suggests that a people can unite on the basis of their shared residence within a set of geographic boundaries, turning that problem into its own solution. If you know of another means of doing this, I encourage you to share it.

The nationalist upheavals in Europe that scarred the past two centuries seem to have placed nationalism in disrepute. I think that's regrettable, and profoundly misguided. As I argued above, embracing ethnic nationalism in a nation that's not ethnically monolithic will invariably lead to deplorable results. But that shouldn't discredit all forms of nationalism. Like most powerful forces, it can be used for good or for ill. That it has sometimes been used for ill in the past shouldn't lead us to disregard its potential for good. I would suggest that liberals would be well-served to embrace nationalism as a potential force for good, and to seek to shape the content of nationalistic beliefs in a manner consistent with our values. Geography, after all, is only the starting point - no nationalism ends there. Improving the character of our nationalism and patriotism, not belittling or disparaging it, offers the clearest path forward.

Posted by Cynic | April 1, 2008 2:37 PM

Juan, somehow, previous to the rise of the 19th-century-style nation state people managed. It is perfectly possible that the 20th century managed to "burn out" the worst excesses of nationalism and that we can have nation-states without the attendant world wars, but that presupposes a mindset much like what MattY is talking about: an acceptance that the fact you love your country and identify with it is simply part of the circumstances of your birth, and not anything with any universal applications or interests to many other people outside of your own country's borders.

And, plus, you're forgetting that MattY is embracing patriotism in his own post. But go ahead, pick a fight with a straw man if it gives you something to do and gives you some meaning.

I think the best example is how many of us identify with our home states in America. Many of us feel most comfortable in our states' cities, are happier using and listening to the local accents and terminology, and like the local music, but don't start claiming that the entire USA would be better off if it were just like our home state or that our attachment to the state goes that much beyond the fact that we have an emotional attachment to it owing to our long association with the place. I think that's a rather healthy attitude.

Posted by Tyrp | April 1, 2008 2:43 PM

This whole thread just shows the weakness of the concept of "proposition nations".

"It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force." Federalist Papers, #1

America is the original proposition nation.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | April 1, 2008 2:59 PM

Channelling Richard Rorty on April Fool's Day is just bad karma. Sure, he got it right, but you're still gonna piss people off.

Posted by Eric Scharf | April 1, 2008 3:00 PM

"Juan, somehow, previous to the rise of the 19th-century-style nation state people managed. "

They managed in smaller prototypes like the city-state, the history of which goes back to the dawn of civilization. They didn't manage as rootless cosmopolitans.

Posted by Juan | April 1, 2008 3:01 PM

"America is the original proposition nation."

It is, but it hasn't been tested as such until now, because when it was founded -- and for most of the next couple of centuries -- the overwhelming majority of its citizens shared not just the proposition, but the religious and ethnic heritage that made them amenable to that proposition.

Posted by Steve D. | April 1, 2008 3:06 PM

They managed in smaller prototypes like the city-state

I will leave it to others to snicker at this laughable claim.

However, I will remind you, once again that MattY is arguing explicitly against the possibility of "rootless cosmopolitanism" as a plausible alternative. Is there a reason you insist on continuing to flog this straw man?

Posted by Tyro | April 1, 2008 3:20 PM

Historically, nations were inextricably tied with nationalities/ethnic groups/tribes: to be born in England wasn't considered an "accident" -- it meant you were English. Not just because you were born in England, but because your parents were ethnically English, as were their parents, and so on. Same if you were born in France, or Japan, or wherever. America is unique in that it isn't named after a national/ethnic group but merely a geographic place.

I disagree. Historically, people identified in lots of ways that weren't tied to nations as you describe them here. A "French" person for most of French history saw himself largely through regional identity -- in fact, at the time of the Revolution, 1/2 of the "French" couldn't even speak French -- they spoke Gallo or Picard or Breton or some Langue d'Oc dialect. Italian or German identity was much more regionalized before the late 19th century than you give it credit for. Do Basques living in Spain think of themselves as Basque, or Spanish, or both? It's pretty clear that lots of Belgians think of themselves as Walloons or Flems, not as Belgians per se.

Part of what Europe is doing is to move state and government decision-making above the nation-state level, which in fact can give more breathing room to these sub-nation-state identities.

And people shouldn't forget that in addition to religion and nationality, class and, much more narrowly, craft have been very powerful bases of group identity in the past. The song is called The Internationale for a reason.

It is, but it hasn't been tested as such until now, because when it was founded -- and for most of the next couple of centuries -- the overwhelming majority of its citizens shared not just the proposition, but the religious and ethnic heritage that made them amenable to that proposition.

What the hell was the Civil War then? The PSATs of "proposition nation" testing?

Posted by Pesto | April 1, 2008 3:20 PM

"In this construction, cosmopolitanism is no more than a euphemism for relativism, whereas the belief that one's particular loyalties might have more than a "circumscribed relevance" is necessarily equated with universalism."

That's quite a self-serving rewrite, isn't it? "Relativism" implies an insistence that patriotic loyalties to any nation are equally justifiable, and Matt says nothing of the sort. He also in no way suggests that anyone who disagrees with him about the "circumscribed relevance" of patriotism is "necessarily" a dogmatic universalist. You're projecting your own false dichotomy onto a post that very specifically does not present patriotism and cosmopolitanism as a dichotomy.

For the record, though, I appreciate your efforts to rescue the word "nationalism" from the grave that's been dug for it by American apologists for patriotism. Love of country and the desire for national solidarity are intertwined ideals and it's absurd to try to claim that one is all positive and the other is all negative. The social democracy that liberal Americans admire in Europe owes a great deal to the wave of ethnic nationalism and the monocultural nation-states that sprung up in its wake.

That's not to say I agree with you. In fact, I think ethnic nationalism is an abhorrent ideology which is as disruptive and hard to eradicate in the modern world as an infestation of cockroaches. But one cannot be intellectually honest and deny the positive role such values have often played during the transition from empire to democracy.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | April 1, 2008 3:28 PM

The fatuousness of Matt's brand of cosmopolitanism is that it wouldn't even exist without the patriotism and quasi-patriotism of the men who keep him and his correspondents safe.

And the fatuousness of this cliche is that the people who tend to employ it would all be sitting in darkened shacks with no indoor plumbing penning their patriotic screeds on paper if it weren't for their more cosmopolitan brethren who also contributed to making this country what it is today.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | April 1, 2008 3:45 PM

"What the hell was the Civil War then?"

That's a good question. Do you think if Lincoln though it was really about the viability of the proposition nation that he would have advocated shipping freed blacks back to Africa? Do you think if he thought the virtue of his war was so self-evident he would have had to conscript Americans to invade the South? Do you think that if they believed it, New Yorkers would have rioted against the draft?

Basing the motivation for the Civil War on the Gettysburg Address is like basing the motivation for the Iraq War on one of Bush's speeches to the American Enterprise Institute.

Posted by Steve D. | April 1, 2008 3:48 PM

Most people love the country where they were born and raised and think it's the finest in the world. Intelligent people don't lose that love, but they do recognize that, in fact, they love their country because they were born and raised there and not because it is, in fact, the finest in the world.

Did you catch this very same meme being played up in the last episode of HBO's John Adams in the words between John Adams and King George III? :-)

I believe that part was fictional embellishment to actual happenstance, as per a quick check of what we have from history. It was quite touching, though.

Posted by artappraiser | April 1, 2008 3:55 PM

Steve D., I think that Pesto was using the civil war to illustrate the fact that the United States actually contained a large number of people who had vastly different value systems. The civil war (and the very existnece of a country with both southerners/Confederates and northerners) was a much, much greater test of America's viability as a propositional state than any changes in immigration patterns will ever be.

Posted by Tyro | April 1, 2008 3:56 PM

"The civil war (and the very existnece of a country with both southerners/Confederates and northerners) was a much, much greater test of America's viability as a propositional state than any changes in immigration patterns will ever be."

Are you sure about that? Because the lack of zeal for the war in hotbeds of immigration like New York City seems to demonstrate the opposite: Not only weren't the New York Irish of the original ethnic and religious stock of the country, but they didn't buy into the "proposition" enough to want to risk their lives for it; it was mainly old WASP stock like the 20th Maine Regiment that volunteered for the war.

Posted by Steve D. | April 1, 2008 4:25 PM

That is just plain wrong. No one could be more of a patriotic Russian than Solzhenitsyn. No one could be more aware that the Soviet Union was a "really bad country" under Stalin. There is no contradiction between loving your country and hating the regime.

But that's why I didn't say "regime". I agree that one can love the country and hate the regime. However, yours is a more difficult argument to make in a democratic society, in which the regime presumably represents the will of the people in the country. (That, of course, is not the case with Stalin, where no such presumption about the Russian people can be made.)

Posted by Al | April 1, 2008 4:37 PM

Double Huh? So if you disagree with the "criteria" that "the society for which you are born" tells you you should use to judge your country as "fine"...isn't also quite possible you could also agree your country is fine, but for different reasons?

I must have written my comment unclearly. What I was trying to say is that people have different value systems to determine which countries are "fine" or good. And how people arrive at their value system is influenced by the society and country in which they were born and grew up.

If your value system tells you that your country is good, then you are patriotic. And if your value system tells you your country is bad, you are not.

The "contingency", then, is your value system.

Posted by Al | April 1, 2008 4:43 PM

And the value system is largely contingent on where you grew up, Al, as you concede in the previous sentence. Therefore the fundamental contingency is where you grew up. This isn't really a difficult concept.

One can also think one's country is deeply flawed, yet feel a patriotic appreciation for it in spite of its flaws, just as one can love a family member who commits a crime without thinking he or she is "good." I realize this is a level of nuance that may shock and awe some of the less cosmopolitan members of the audience, but it's true nonetheless.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | April 1, 2008 5:49 PM

Steve D., you view the civil war as the "test" of America's propositional experiment that it passed. I view the civil war as a sign that America started out trying to balance two so vastly different value systems that it almost collapsed, and the country could not possibly face anything worse than that. The difference between north and south in the 19th century is, IMHO, a much greater difference than Americans of Mexican or Asian descent vs. whites.

You say that the immigrants didn't buy into the "proposition" of the USA to risk their lives for it in the Civil War-- the problem was that the entire Confederacy didn't buy into the proposition, or, to be generous, the north and the south in the antebellum era, adhered to vastly different propositions to begin with. Moderate amounts of immigration that end up getting diluted and educated in America over the generations is never going to be able to compete with the vast propositional disparity that we started out with and led to the civil war.

Posted by Tyro | April 1, 2008 6:15 PM

I've never loved this country.

I like living here, and based on what little I know about conditions in many other countries, not to mention the fact that I don't know many other languages, clearly living here as opposed to somewhere else is in my best interests at this point. (Not to mention that I can't afford to move.)

But I've never had an emotional attachment to this country as some sort of abstract or physical entity. And I damn sure wouldn't be stupid enough to die for it.

It's a frickin' country. It has land. It has a bunch of people in it - many of them morons. It has history. Big deal. So does the rest of the planet.

It's chimpanzee thinking: "I'm in this troop, we control the bananas here, so this is what I fight for. Besides, those other chimps aren't the same color as my troop."

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 1, 2008 6:43 PM

I don't have my copy of Nixon Agonistes in front of me, but I recommend the discussion of the "my country, right or wrong" quote.

Posted by washerdreyer | April 1, 2008 6:56 PM

Re: He cannot sway him by the lights of cool reason.

Um, no one can sway a fanatic with cool reason. One of the definitions of fanaticism is that one is impervious to rational argument.

Re: Cynic, your error is in assuming that nationalism is the only way to fulfill the need of many people to "belong."

Thank-you for putting into words what I was trying to sort out about his comments. May I note too that it is quite possible (perhaps even desirable) to have multiple loyalties: not just to a nation state, but also to one's family, perhaps one's employer, to one's religion, to humankind as a whole, or even to the Earth.

Re: They didn't manage as rootless cosmopolitans.

Actually, some of them did. The Roman Catholic Church for centuries, and before that the (late) Roman and Byzantine Empires were all profoundly cosmopolitan, universalizing entities.

Re: It is, but it hasn't been tested as such until now, because when it was founded -- and for most of the next couple of centuries -- the overwhelming majority of its citizens shared not just the proposition, but the religious and ethnic heritage that made them amenable to that proposition.

The Civil War tested the American nation profoundly in this regard. Moreover with the rise of large immigrant (and especially Catholic and Jewish) populations, and with the emergence of the former slaves into citizenship, however limited, America ceased to be ethnically homogenous. Faced with the shared suffering of the Depression, and the shared threat of WWII and the Cold War, we were able to pretend that we were, but we definitely were not.

Re: Do you think if Lincoln though it was really about the viability of the proposition nation that he would have advocated shipping freed blacks back to Africa?

Lincoln never "advocated" this-- he merely considered it as a compromise with the South. He was a generally humane individuial who was appalled at the war's bloddshed. He was willing to consider any idea that would shorten the war while reuniting the nation.

Re: Because the lack of zeal for the war in hotbeds of immigration like New York City seems to demonstrate the opposite

The Draft Riots were a class conflict phenomenon. The rich (and to some extent middle class) could buy their way out. The poor and working class could not do so. "A rich man's war and a poor man's fight" was the cry of those who opposed the draft.

Posted by JonF | April 1, 2008 7:43 PM

Of course Lincoln thought it was about the viability of the underlying ideals of American freedom. The Civil War was fought to stop the territorial expansion of slavery, which Northerners thought would doom free labor in the U.S. and make the country all slave. The record couldn't be clearer. Southerners try to muddy this up because they can't bear the clear connection between the Confederacy and the slave system.

Posted by mq | April 1, 2008 8:39 PM

I've never loved this country.

Yes, but Richard, you think you're a robot.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | April 1, 2008 9:07 PM

Not at all, lemuel - I think I can become better than either a human OR a robot.

As Dr. Tim used to say, to discern someone's intelligence, ask them whether they think they are "robotic". Anybody who gives a low percentage is too stupid to talk to. Anybody who says they're something like 99% robotic is very intelligent. They recognize how much of their behavior is controlled by their species, their genetics, their environment, their upbringing, their culture, human history, etc.

It's the same thing with this vague notion of "heritage". Everybody gets told they "should be proud of their heritage" - like because I have some Scot somewhere in my background, I should give a shit about kilts and bagpipes or the history and culture of Scotland.

Your "heritage", your "culture", even your family, all that doesn't mean squat. It's what you THINK consciously (and to some degree whatever you can program unconsciously) that matters. The less robotically you think, the better.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 2, 2008 2:01 AM

I agree with your take on patriotism. I don't think it is the liberal take so much as the intelligent take--intelligent conservatives would agree. You could say that it is a liberal attitude if 'liberal' is understood in the old-fashioned unabused sense of the word, the quality that all intelligent conservatives would want to associate themselves with.

Posted by Chris Dornan | April 2, 2008 5:48 AM

"I was born
Lucky me
In the land
That I love"

Victoria, The Kinks, 1969

Posted by Luis | April 2, 2008 6:13 AM

Re: Anybody who says they're something like 99% robotic is very intelligent.

Robots are not intelligent. They do what they're programmed to do-- rather like insects. Human intelligence is of a very different order. A 99% robotic person would be an idiot savant.

Posted by JonF | April 2, 2008 6:32 AM

What's with Richard Steven Hack's anti-chimpanzee-ism anyway? I'm not a chimp-lover, but in general I think of them as running the same gamut as humanity (in terms of kindness and cruelty, reason and madness, etc), albeit being less intelligent, stronger, hairier, etc. I guess my point is that RSH seems to assume that everyone else hates or feels contempt for chimps, and then calls things he doesn't like "chimpanzee," but most plain folk of the MY comments section who don't really regard chimps as being particularly awful are just confused and think "what did chimpanzees ever do to Richard anyway?"

Posted by Julian Elson | April 2, 2008 9:26 PM