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本帖最后由 I'm_zhcn 于 2009-4-2 01:08 编辑
http://www.mahablog.com/2006/02/19/patriotism-v-nationalism/
Patriotism v. Nationalism
Barbara O'Brien
Do you remember Sydney Harris? He was a syndicated columnist who died in 1986. I used to love his column. Patriotism is proud of a country’s virtues and eager tocorrect its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimatepatriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. Thepride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country’s virtues anddenies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues ofother countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, “thegreatest,” but greatness is not required of a country; only goodnessis. — Sydney J. Harris
I’ve been struggling with ideas about patriotism v. nationalism. Andthen I looked in Bartlett’s Quotations and rediscovered Sydney Harris.
The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriotis proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proudof his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates afeeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogancethat leads to war.
I miss Sydney Harris. But here’s another good quote on patriotism and nationalism, from some other guy:
Patriotism is a lively sense of collectiveresponsibility. Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on its own dunghilland calling for larger spurs and brighter beaks. I fear thatnationalism is one of England’s many spurious gifts to the world. — Richard Aldington
“Responsibility” seems to be a common theme:
What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? I venture tosuggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility … apatriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but thetranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. — Adlai Stevenson
I’m sure by now you see where I’m going with this: Righties are not patriots, but nationalists. And I’m arguing that one of the basic differences between a patriot and a nationalist is that patriots value responsibility.This includes the citizen’s responsibility to his country, a country’s responsibility to its citizens, and the responsibility of a country andits citizens to the rest of the world.
Nationalists, on the other hand, do not value responsibility. They value loyalty, and their loyalty is a type of tribalism.The loyalty may not necessarily be to one’s fellow citizens, but only to members of their tribe. You know the righties feel absolutely noloyalty to us lefties, for example, even though we are fellow-citizens.
The right Americans are the right Americans because they’re not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans. — Eric J. Hobsbawm (b. 1917), British historian
Further, nationalists feel no sense of responsibility for the actions of their country. No matter what the country does, thenationalist will either justify it or deny it. Just speaking of the wrongdoing of one’s country is “disloyal” to a nationalist.
Cal Thomas is a nationalist, not a patriot. Recently he wrote,
Last Sunday, Gore spoke to the Jeddah Economic Forum inSaudi Arabia. … Gore told his audience, many of whom have been educatedat American universities, that after 9/11 Arabs in the United Stateswere “indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges ofoverstaying a visa or not having a green card in proper order, and heldin conditions that were just unforgivable.” … Gore also claimed therewere “terrible abuses” of the detainees, but he failed to provide anyexamples, and media calls to his office produced none.
Thomas should have called the U.S. Department of Justice. In June2003 the Justice Department’s inspector general issued a report of theresults of an internal, but independent investigation. The reportreveals that the FBI and immigration authorities seized hundreds ofArabs and South Asians after 9/11 and subjected them to severe prisonconditions with barely a nod to due process. A summary of the report ishere. The complete report, in PDF format, is here.
Amazing what three minutes of googling will turn up, isn’t it? You’dthink a “journalist” like Cal Thomas would figure these things out.Anyway, Thomas continues,
For Gore to make his anti-American remarks in SaudiArabia is at least as bad as what Nazi sympathizers said in thiscountry and abroad leading up to and during World War II.
One definition of “treason” at dictionary.com is: Violation ofallegiance toward one’s country or sovereign, especially the betrayalof one’s country by waging war against it or by consciously andpurposely acting to aid its enemies. By any objective standard, Gore’sremarks in Saudi Arabia appear to fit the definition.
Does Thomas not realize an audience of U.S-educated Saudis must haveknown already about the rights violations detailed in the JusticeDepartment report? Or does he think simple brown natives won’t findsuch things out unless we tell them? (Puh-leeze … )
What really ticked off Thomas was that, in his eyes, Gore’sadmission to a pack of foreigners that America had done something wrongwas an act of disloyalty. But acknowledging wrongdoing is an act oftaking responsibility. Taking responsibility is what patriots do.Denying that one’s country is ever at fault is what nationalists do.
And if you really want to find an American aiding America’s enemies, Cal, take a look at the Oval Office.
Seems to me that the easiest way to tell a patriot from anationalist is to apply the “responsibility” test. When the U.S. is atfault, a patriot considers it a duty to speak up and say so. But wherea patriot sees responsibility, a nationalist just sees disloyalty. Thenationalist will say something like “why are you tearing down yourcountry? Why don’t you talk about this bad thing another country did?”I’m sure you’ve heard speeches like that, many times. And the answeris, because I’m not responsible for that other country. I’m responsible for my country. Nationalists don’t get that.
[Update: The Poor Man finds an example.]
This is from the late, great Erich Fromm:
Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, isour insanity. “Patriotism” is its cult. It should hardly be necessaryto say, that by “patriotism” I mean that attitude which puts the ownnation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; notthe loving interest in one’s own nation, which is the concern with thenation’s spiritual as much as with its material welfare—never with itspower over other nations. Just as love for one individual whichexcludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country whichis not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.
Fromm puts patriotism in quotation marks; I assume he is using theword in an ironic sense. But speaking of idolatrous worship, lastThursday Dave Neiwert posted about “The Conservative faith” at Orcinus. Responding to Glenn Greenwald’s must-read post “Do Bush followers have a political ideology?” Dave argues that what passes for current “conservatism” is a kind of political religion, a critter defined this way by Wikipedia:
In the terminology of some scholars working in sociology, a politicalreligion is a political ideology with cultural and political powerequivalent to those of a religion, and often having many sociologicaland ideological similarities with religion. Quintessential examples areMarxism and Nazism, but totalitarianism is not a requirement (forexample neo-liberalism can be analysed as a political religion).
… The term political religion is a sociological one, drawing on thesociological aspects of religion which can be often be found in certainsecular ideologies. A political religion occupies much the samepsychological and sociological space as a theistic religion, and as aresult it often displaces or coopts existing religious organisationsand beliefs; this is described as a “sacralisation” of politics.However, although a political religion may coopt existing religiousstructures or symbolism, it does not itself have any independentspiritual or theocratic elements - it is essentially secular, usingreligion only for political purposes, if it does not reject religiousfaith outright.
Dave Neiwert continues to present, IMO, a solid case that current contemporary “conservatism” is more a nascent political religion than a political philosophy.And this explains much about the righties’ attitude toward Americannon-righties. We are not just the political opposition; we are apostate. We are blasphemers. We are heretics.
One of the most maddening traits of righties is that they cannotwrap their heads around the simple truth that those of us who opposethe Bush Administration have lots of reasons for doing so.How many times has a critic of Bush policy been dismissed as “just aBush hater”? It doesn’t matter what facts or documentation the criticpresents. It’s all swept away with the simple explanation — Bush hater. Or liberal. Which takes us back to Glenn Greenwald’s observationthat anyone who criticises the Bush Regime becomes a “liberal” in theminds of righties, no matter if that individual is as politicallyconservative as cheesy eagle art. Glenn writes,
People who self-identify as “conservatives” and havealways been considered to be conservatives become liberal heathens themoment they dissent, even on the most non-ideological grounds, from aBush decree. That’s because “conservatism” is now a term used todescribe personal loyalty to the leader (just as “liberal” is used todescribe disloyalty to that leader), and no longer refers to a set ofbeliefs about government.
If you understand Bush cultism as a religious faith, then the behavior of Bush supporters becomes, if not understandable, at least recognizable.In their minds, whatever we say is blasphemy; through us, Satan himselfspeaks. The righteous must plug their ears and refuse to listen.
Religion and nationalism do tend to get mixed up together into thesame toxic, warmongering soup. This is precisely what is going on inthe Muslim world; Islam as nationalism. You can find examples of enmitysorting itself into religious/ethnic camps in many parts of Africa,Asia, and around the globe. Perhaps as nation-states become moremultiethnic and religiously pluralistic, the urge to form enemies andmake war is being driven out of the hands of governments and into thehands of charismatic religious/ethnic leaders, like Osama bin Laden. Weshould note that even though encyclopedias still define the word nationalismas “loyalty to a nation-state,” which would certainly apply to most20th-century nationalist movements, nationalists can defy existingpolitical boundaries and organize themselves around an ideal of“nation” that excludes existing borders and governments. But that’s atopic a bit too ambitious for Sunday morning.
Let’s go back to Cal Thomas for a moment. Last week Citizen K of DKos wrote a post called “Cal Thomas: the republican call for Leninism and blasphemy”in which the Citizen argued that righties like Thomas “illustrates thetakeover of American discourse by Leninist ideology.” Citizen K quotesLenin saying that anyone who vacillates from the positions worked outby Soviet political leaders “objectively can have onlyone result … helping the imperialists to provoke the Russian SovietRepublic into a battle that will obviously be to its disadvantage ….”And Citizen K compares this to Thomas’s “By any objective standard, Al Gore’s remarks in Saudi Arabia appear to fit the definition [of treason].” Citizen K concludes,
Because Lenin (and Cal Thomas) are omniscient, anyonewho disagrees with them is “objectively” treasonous. The use of thislanguage by Thomas is no coincidence - the neo-cons are a movement ofLeninists. The essence of Leninism is Power. Lenin was happy to switchback and forth from capitalism (NEP) to communism, from elections tobullets, from a strong war policy to surrender as long as he retainedand built power. The US leninists have the same flexibility. For them,political positions are simply valuable propaganda or not. Balancedbudget/unbalanced budgets, gun control/gun banning,anti-choice/”moderation”, gay marriage bans/hiring Cheney’s daughterfor gay/lesbian outreach and so on. The suckers who kept trying to findhigh minded socialism in Lenin were no more or less gullible than the“conservatives” who look for some “conservatism” in Bush/Cheney’spolicies. The only consistency is Power.
In the Soviet Union, loyalty to the Communist Party and its leaders largely replacedreligion. We aren’t anywhere close to that point here, of course. I dothink it can be argued that, in America, the conservative politicalreligion has largely co-opted (and corrupted) Christianity for its ownpurposes. And I think it can be argued that much of what passes for“Christianity” in America is a political-religious mythos that isChristian on the surface but something else entirely in its heart. Butthat’s another topic a bit too ambitious for Sunday morning.
Later, today or tomorrow, I plan to post something about politicsand psychopathology that ties into this post. But I’ve gone on longenough for now.
Let’s close with some more quotes:
Nationalism is militant hatred. It is not love of our countrymen: that,which denotes good citizenship, philanthropy, practical religion,should go by the name of patriotism. Nationalism is passionatexenophobia. It is fanatical, as all forms of idol-worship are bound tobe. And fanaticism—l’infame denounced by Voltaire—obliterates orreverses the distinction between good and evil. Patriotism, the desireto work for the common weal, can be, must be, reasonable: “My country,may she be right!” Nationalism spurns reason: “Right or wrong, mycountry.” — Albert L. Guerard
Nationalism … is the worship of the collective power ofa local human community. Unlike the faith in progress through science,nationalism is not a new religion; it is a revival of an old one. Thiswas the religion of the city-states of the pre-Christian Greco-Romanworld. It was resuscitated in the West at the Renaissance, and thisresuscitation of the Greco-Roman political religion has been far moreeffective than the resuscitation of the Greco-Roman style ofliterature, visual art, and architecture. Modern Western nationalism,inspired by Greco-Roman political ideals and institutions, hasinherited the dynamism and fanaticism of Christianity. Translated intopractice in the American and French Revolutions, it proved to be highlyinfectious. Today, fanatical nationalism is perhaps 90 percent of thereligion of perhaps 90 percent of mankind. — A.J. Toynbee
Finally,
Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. — George Orwell
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发表于 2009-3-30 14:00
