Fact: The sentence imposed by the court martial in that story would have had the same effect on the defendant even if the story had been set in the worst totalitarian entity ever concocted by history or fiction because any country, any homeland, is better than no homeland at all.

Fact: The message that the story conveyed was not patriotism but distrust of one’s mentors and courts — specifically it conveyed the message to never expect so much as a sequitur response to any expressed protest.

If only Mann (and others) had made a similar statement about the other half of Nazi ideology. If only they had denounced unbridled and amoral socialism (the only kind). Somehow the “excesses” of Nazis were ascribed to the Germans while the nationalism of other Europeans never led them to mass murder, while the normalcy of mass murder in socialism was never ascribed to socialism even thought the socialists killed more people (and with genocidal intent) than the Nazis.

The idea that WWII was caused by German nationalism (yes, that’s where I place the emphasis) is such a common misconception that it might easily be a Marxist-inculcated lie (we know who’s been educating the kids for the past few decades).

Nationalism doesn’t call for world conquest, nor does socio-economic theory, nor does religion; but couple any of those to imperialism and you get precisely that.

Nationalism + imperialism: Germany’s Nazism.

Socio-economic theory + imperialism: Marxism.

Religion + imperialism: Islam.

Nationalism should never have gotten a bad name. It was only unthinking superficiality, most probably aided by Marxist educators with their ax to grind, that made it so. But the deeper thinker will realize the truth that WWII was imperialism that ran amok.

In WWII it was imperialism, and in the Cold War it was imperialism, and right now it’s imperialism. The fact that the imperialism is tied to a different base doctrine changes little.

Those who think they escape the mindset of Nazism by embracing either the Marxist or the Islamic agenda don’t realize their “clean” ideology is in fact a kissing cousin to the reviled Nazism. And why? Because they share the component that drives people to desire to subjugate all outsiders: Imperialism.

Most everyone thinks they are a patriot…

I’d have to disagree there. I’ve met many people (too many!) who consider themselves “citizens of the world”, not beholden to the United States nor even particularly grateful to the United States.

It’s difficult to get through to such people. They don’t know how very good they have it here (although some should certainly know better); nor do they seem to understand how very fragile our way of life can be. They seem to believe that their civil rights, taken for granted here, will be taken for granted everywhere else too, merely because that’s the way it should be. “They laugh at scars who never felt a wound”, as Neo once quoted.

(I do sometimes point out that those civil rights were very much in question, in the United States, within living memory. I had relatives who, after fighting in WWII and returning home, had to change their names to have any hope of landing a job. My grandmother was able to vote when she came of age; my great-grandmother was not.)

Is there a way for such people to see the light, other than being “mugged by reality”? I’d like to think so, but I haven’t seen it.

respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline

Regarding patriotism: In Europe “nationalism” was loyalty to a region, a prince, and perhaps a culture on a continent where nations had grown from realms in a wilderness to States that occupy every square micron, every barn of territory. Patriotism was thus loyalty to a one State and against its neighbors.

In the USA, patriotism is usually not “my country against those other guys.” It has been, in the War of 1812 and the War With Mexico. But when other nations have been involved, it is usually the case that the USA has been attacked (or believes it has been).

Most of the time, American Patriotism is loyalty to an idea, loyalty to principles, loyalty to the same things that provide the claim for American Exceptionalism: We hold these truths to be self-evident …. We The People of the United States of America ….. That is a very different thing morally, psychologically, and in its effective tendencies toward good and ill. We have never sent abroad a Napoleon, a Tamurlane, or a Caesar.

And that is why the European disrepute for European patriotism should not be applied to American patriotism. They are different categories and characters of things.

Speaking of Europe and France opening eyes: my niece is in Ireland now, after having spent her semester abroad in France. She was shocked and sweetly surprised to find that the French she talked to “really like Americans, Aunt Beverly!” I told her it was mostly the “chattering class snobs” who griped about us.

She’s also learning that life in these United States is pretty comfy and spacious; she spent the winter in Ireland without central heating. Heh. I told her to take a hot water bottle to bed like the English do, or two on really bitter nights; she was grateful.

My friend Minna went to the Eastern Bloc when she was in high school, in 1977, with her high school glee club. I don’t know how that came to be. I do know that when those teenagers flew home, and saw the STatue of Liberty, they spontaneously broke out singing “God Bless America”, with tears in their eyes.

Minna said, “It was so grim over there; it was scary. People were afraid to talk to us — teenagers — because the secret police were watching everyone. The food was horrible, and the cities closed up after dark. All the architecture was gray, cement block stuff. We couldn’t WAIT to get home.”