For Memorial Day: on nationalism and patriotism
[NOTE: Both are more threatened in this country now than ever before in my lifetime, due to a frontal assault from the left which controls the media and educational system as well as the federal government. The following is a repeat of a previous post, slightly edited and updated.]
The story “The Man Without a Country” used to be standard reading matter for seventh graders. In fact, it was the first “real” book—as opposed to those tedious Dick and Jane readers—that I was assigned in school.
It was exciting compared to Dick and Jane and the rest, since it dealt with an actual story with some actual drama to it. It struck me as terribly sad—and unfair, too—that Philip Nolan was forced to wander the world, exiled, for one moment of cursing the United States. “The Man Without a Country” was the sort of paean to patriotism that I would guess is rarely or never assigned nowadays to students – au contraire.
Patriotism has gotten a very bad name during the last few decades.
I think this feeling gathered more adherents (at least in this country) during the Vietnam era, and certainly the same is true lately. But patriotism and nationalism seem to have been rejected by a large segment of Europeans even earlier, as a result of the devastation both sentiments were thought to have wrought on that continent during WWI and WWII. Of course, WWII in Europe was a result mainly of German nationalism run amok, coupled with a lot more than nationalism itself. But the experience seemed to have given nationalism as a whole a very bad name.
Here’s author Thomas Mann on the subject, writing in 1947 in the introduction to the American edition of Herman Hesse’s Demian:
If today, when national individualism lies dying, when no single problem can any longer be solved from a purely national point of view, when everything connected with the “fatherland” has become stifling provincialism and no spirit that does not represent the European tradition as a whole any longer merits consideration…
A strong statement of the post-WWII idea of nationalism as a dangerous force, mercifully dead or dying, to be replaced (hopefully) by a pan-national (or, rather, anational) Europeanism. Mann was a German exile from his own country who had learned to his bitter regret the excesses to which a particular type of amoral nationalism can lead. His was an understandable and common response at the time, one that many decades later helped lead to the formation of the EU. The waning but still relatively strong nationalism of the US (as shown by the election of Donald Trump, for example) has been seen by those who agree with Mann as a relic of those dangerous days of nationalism gone mad without any curb of morality or consideration for others.
But the US is not Nazi Germany or anything like it, however much the far left may try to make that analogy. There’s a place for nationalism, and for love of country. Not a nationalism that ignores or tramples on human rights (like that of the Nazis), but one that embraces and strives for and tries to preserve them here and abroad, keeping in mind that—human nature being what it is—no nation on earth can be perfect or anywhere near perfect. The US is far from perfect, but has been a good country nevertheless, always working to be better, with a nationalism that traditionally recognizes that sometimes liberty must be fought for, and that the struggle involves some sacrifice.
So, I’ll echo the verse that figured so prominently in “The Man Without a Country,” and say (corny, but true): …this is my own, my native land. And I’ll also echo Francis Scott Key and add: …the star-spangled banner, O long may it wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. Those lines from the anthem express a hope that has been fading. But even though things are looking dim for both liberty and courage these days, it is not over.
When I looked back at my original, longer version of this post, I saw that it was written on Memorial Day in 2005, not that long after I began blogging. Seems longer ago than that. This is another portion of what I wrote then, and although I was describing my post-9/11 thoughts, I think it’s especially appropriate now [updates in brackets]:
I’d known the words to [our national anthem] for [over sixty years], and even had to learn about Francis Scott Key and the circumstances under which he wrote them. But I never really thought much about those words. It was just a song that was difficult to sing, and not as pretty as America the Beautiful or God Bless America (the latter, in those very un-PC days of my youth, we used to sing as we marched out of assembly).
The whole first stanza of the national anthem is a protracted version of a question: does the American flag still wave over the fort? Has the US been successful in the battle? As a child, the answer seemed to me to have been a foregone conclusion–of course it waved, of course the US prevailed in the battle; how could it be otherwise? America rah-rah. America always was the winner. Even our withdrawal from Vietnam, so many years later, seemed to me to be an act of choice. Our very existence as a nation had never for a moment felt threatened.
The only threat I’d ever faced to this country was the nightmarish threat of nuclear war. But that seemed more a threat to the entire planet, to humankind itself, rather than to this country specifically. And so I never really heard or felt the vulnerability and fear expressed in Key’s question, which he asked during the War of 1812, so shortly after the birth of the country itself: does that star-spangled banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
But now I heard his doubt, and I felt it, too. I saw quite suddenly that there was no “given” in the existence of this country–its continuance, and its preciousness, began to seem to me to be as important and as precarious as they must have seemed to Key during that night in 1814.
And then other memorized writings came to me as well–the Gettysburg Address, whose words those crabby old teachers of mine had made us memorize in their entirety: and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Here it was again, the sense of the nation as an experiment in democracy and freedom, and inherently special but vulnerable to destruction, an idea I had never until that moment grasped. But now I did, on a visceral level.
We certainly feel the threat now, don’t we?
This is another instance of the ‘transzie tendency’. It’s not that the ruling elites of the West have no allegiance to anything bigger than themselves. If anything, their passionate devotion exceeds the intensity of the typical American nationalist, because the latter more often than not also acknowledges higher authorities (i.e. God). The seculari transzies mostly lack this, and so they elevate their own political devotion to that status.
The thing is that they are not in allegiance with their own nations, but with a _semi-imaginary_ world-nation, or world ruling class. It’s so inchoate that even they would have trouble defining the thing they give emotional loyalty to.
In America, conservatives have often accused the libs of being dedicated to Government for its own sake. That’s sort of true, but too shallow. They want the Federal Government to embody the American wing of the globalist entity that they actually feel loyalty toward, and when it does they want that power to be unstoppable.
If the nationalist factions manage to gain control of the Federal Government in a solid way, you’ll see the American Left suddenly turn on it out of loyalty to the World. Of course the World means the educated elite lefty governing/academic/business/intellectual class of the West, but even they don’t fully realize how parochial their own loyalties are…or how alien their supposed fellow-travelers in China, Russia, India, the Middle East, Africa, etc. really are.
It’s not just the USA. For ex, right now there’s an election due in the UK on July 4, which the Tories (the UK version of the GOP) are favored to lose bigly. In 2019 they won a huge surprise victory on the foundation of ‘getting Brexit done’ and reducing immigration and so on.
But the Tory leadership _wants_ open borders immigration, just as the GOP leadership does, and for precisely the same reasons. They ended up settling on business-wing technocrat Sunak as their leader, and he embodies precisely what the Tory voting ranks have come to detest over the past few decades. The UK London Metro elite/Business Wing, more or less.
Maybe a miracle will still save the Tories, but it looks bad for them, and it’s 100% self-inflicted.
In Germany, the SPD and the CDU are their versions of the Democrats and the Republicans, respectively. Both are watching in horror as the AfD gains popularity year after year by espousing German nationalism and reduction to immigration, and so on. Sound familiar? They (and the Greens and FDP, which is their version of the GOP Business Wing, at first blush) have teamed up to try to lock the AfD out of power, revealing their shared agendas.
In Ireland, Fine Gail and Fiana Fail have been moving more and more into being two faces of one thing, trying desperately to apply an agenda that looks pretty much out the Davos/NGO class playbook, against an increasingly restive electorate.
Variations on this same story are visible all over the West. The ruling elite agenda is deeply, deeply unpopular.
I see the United States operating as the most open, free, egalitarian, diverse, accepting, fair, and honest country in the world. Prove me wrong.
Neo: thanks. Beautifully stated. I cannot hope to improve on your words, but let me add the idea that “nationalism” is a way to channel or structure our need —as sentient creatures— to authorize/validate our conduct and direct our action. As Bob Dylan said, “You got to serve somebody”. If not nations, then tribes, or coreligionists. I like nations because that is a stratum between cloudy abstraction and a local parish.
Think also of the quips: “he who believes nothing, will believe anything.” So let’s not chuck, too quickly any way, what can organize our passions. Some readers will freak at this. But personally I am OK with it. Is it just old age that makes me less circumspect, more willing to take a bullet for a flag?
Good column Neo
I feel it’s slipping away, sure I will see it go by the wayside or maybe be revived but have doubts that will happen. The Marxists have been working on students for decades, ( see just about every university) turning that around will be a monumental task.
Lee greenwood forty years ago had that refrain ‘does the flag still stand for freedom’ for those who were educated in public schools under constructivist auspices since the 80s that might not be obvious
The Left’s cultural destruction of American nationalism is intentionally facilitating the rise of tribalism in the foolish assumption that they can successfully ride upon the tiger’s back .
Flag needs to be upside down.
Like you, Neo, in my childhood at about the same time, I never thought of the USA not being here, or of becoming something else. We need to redouble our efforts to, as the Constitution says, “form a more perfect Union,” and, as Mr. Lincoln said, to see that governance by the people endures.
Neo, I think you overestimate the anti-nationalism and anti-patriotism in this country.
No, the merdia are certainly all down on it, as are the liberal idiots.
But the election of Trump in 2016, and the 75 million REAL votes he got in 2020 say that neither is absent from the nation.
This is one of those “Why you need to speak up, publicly”, kind of things, even in places where *most* others will shout you down and insult you.
There are others, less brave, who feel that they are alone in their sentiments. Hearing even one other person stand up to be counted is a valuable statement to the hearts of those too timid to step up and fight.
You might find this of interest… she was born in Portugal, and grew up there, then immigrated here.
WHAT COMES AFTER
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2024/05/24/what-comes-after/
OBloody:
I don’t think I said anything about the extent of patriotism and nationalism among the citizens of the US. What I said is that it’s tremendously threatened, in particular by our educational system. This has been true for several decades, and the upshot is that the younger generations have much less of it than the older ones. That doesn’t mean it’s gone; far from it. That’s why Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” appeals to so many people.
I’m a lifelong basketball fan, and it’s Memorial Day.
That’s not enough reason, but it’s all I’ve got as an excuse to note that Bill Walton died today. He was one of the sport’s best players, an announcer with a uniquely infectious personality, and someone with a knack for spreading good cheer wherever he went, even though he suffered from chronic pain.
Now he’s gone, and I feel old — make that older. RIP.
Claire Lehmann has argued that Nationalism is an antidote to Racism (she actually said THE antidote)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpmoAnvnbTw&t=128s
I think there is some truth in this: a larger, geographical & historical allegiance may reduce people’s need for sub-national tribal alliances.
re the case of Germany: it’s interesting that Anne Frank’s father, Otto, served in the German Army under the Kaiser’s regime and received a field promotion to Lieutenant. During the Third Reich, Otto Frank and his family were thrown into concentration camps.
Nationalism can be dangerous–as the case of the First World War demonstrates–but racism and tribalism are worse.
…Bill Walton died today.
Cornflour:
I didn’t catch that. Sorry to hear it.
Walton won the Sixth Man award in 1986 with the Larry Bird Celtics lineup, which was an honor and a glory for Walton. He retired a few years later due to accumulated injuries.
You’re right. Walton is one of the most upbeat people around. I watch a lot of Celtics videos and it’s always great to see him tell stories from those days.
Marvelous post.
Those who chastise nationalism work overwhelmingly to misrepresent it and mislead (which is their omnipresent degenerate and dishonest MO).
Yoram Hazony and his group of right-of-center intellectuals have been trying for over a decade now to resurrect the idea of nationalism and its positive aspects.
These are the people who, recently, were not allowed to convene at a meeting in Belgium by the mayor of Brussels.
https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1794721734337437924?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1794721734337437924%7Ctwgr%5Eeddd40d53c18ad2ef7850c2f78a86aab426a61d8%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Famy-curtis%2F2024%2F05%2F26%2Fus-fleet-forces-commander-says-non-citizens-trying-to-infiltrate-military-bases-n2396628
Interesting quote attributed to Charles de Gaulle: Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.
Too much code as i am constantly reminded
https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1794721734337437924?
For those with understanding this was what powers boothe explained to the wolverines
https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-pakistani-government-official-was-one-of-bidens-largest-donors/
Almost no Memorial Day programming on broadcast or cable yesterday.
There’s a billboard in town that reads: “Tired of chaos? Restore democracy. Vote Democrat.” Unbelievably clueless.
Jefferson was a slave owner so was francis scott key what else needs to be said
Conversely lord bellmore who was colonial governor in virginia sought to employ blacks in his army so hes an abolitionist now?
“…wolverines…”
Pretty weird…
But it gets weirder…
“…Radical Leftist Rashida Tlaib Speaks At Conference Connected With Terrorist Group”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/absurd-radical-leftist-rashida-tlaib-speaks-conference-connected-terrorist-group
…and weirder…
“FBI Director Met With Hamas Supporters Asking Him to Lock Up Jews”—
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fbi-director-met-with-hamas-supporters-asking-him-to-lock-up-jews/
File under: The New Normal(TM)…
“It was exciting compared to Dick and Jane and the rest”
I remember those horrible books. Another awful idea from the teacher colleges. They tried to teach reading by the whole word method, like Chinese ideographs, as if English wasn’t a phonetic language(mostly).
I didn’t read “Man Without a Country” in school, but we watched a movie version. I remember how the naval officers couldn’t tell him anything about the US. He had made a US flag and a ship’s officer finally told him that he could sew on another star on it.
Mann had been one of those “amoral nationalists” in the First World War. He wanted to be a patriot and a conservative in contrast to his more radical brother Heinrich, who was considered a Frenchified radical, but the predominant German conservative tradition of the day was assertively nationalistic and not appreciative of Europeanism or fixed moral values. After the war, Mann saw where Germany was going and changed his thinking.
In its early years, the EU (EEC) was able to reconcile “national individualism” with “the European tradition.” Those days are over. That’s largely because of the power-hungry EU bureaucracy and the national elites that support it, but also because countries aren’t as distinctive as they once were. The world is growing ever less diverse.
So often now people just accept the labels the media put on things. “White supremacy,” “White nationalism,” “Christian nationalism.” I think our current arguments aren’t so much about “nationalism” as much as about a properly national perspective. It’s not about the nation being everything, but it’s about having a proper respect for the nation, its people and their interests and values.
There is much to the nationalism vs. patriotism distinction, but it’s not as clear as it once was. Politicians like Biden and Macron want their countries to play major roles on the global stage and wrap themselves in the flag, even as they undercut the things that make their nations distinctive and their governments responsible to the people.
well as I’ve pointed out before, the one who built the foundations of the eu, was not jean monnet, it was aldo spinelli italian communists, like the democracy party, in italy, only the torygraph really noted this once,
}}} Neo: … and the upshot is that the younger generations have much less of it than the older ones.
And I’m saying to you, I do believe there is a hidden undercurrent that certainly runs against the apparent direction that things are going, among the young.
It’s helped a lot by them seeing how the government is ephing up their lives — they’ve been taught to believe in The Government As THE Solution to all ills, but now they’re seeing for themselves how ephed up they are making things, and are actually Getting A Semblance Of A Clue.
Yeah, there is a large percentage of zombie liberals whose brains are just flat out shut down, but that’s way less than half. There are a lot of young people who either have figured out what Gen-X figured out (“You can’t trust governments”) or have begun to grasp this as the existing admin lies and lies and overreaches in so many ways.
This is going to be an interesting — in the manner of the apocryphal Chinese Curse — election year.
I wish I encountered more people warning everyone about faked videos.
I suspect they are looking to make a last minute, last-week-of-October “faked video” drop that is damning, is short (15-30s) and will, AFTER the election, be demonstrated as a total fake. If people are aware of how much video faking by AI has improved in the last year, and are prepared for the possibility, they are much much less likely to be taken in by such a lie.
This vid (linked to it before) shows how much things have improved in just the last year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXpdyAWLDas
It’s three months old. So the question is, how much more can they improve between three months ago and September, or about 7 more months from THAT video, especially if they have a cadre of people prepared to do something really obnoxious. It can be boosted quite a bit by making it look like a surreptitious phonecam vid, which would allow them to “move the camera about” to crop out any blatant fakery-indicating flaws.
Remember, as the Black Nazis and Black Founding Fathers crap showed a few months back, there’s quite a few liberal SOBs involved in pushing AI further.
It seriously would not have to be much, as little as Trump supposedly using the “N” word and saying some other obnoxious, clearly racist things. Or other things, like “confirming Trump plans Nazi type reforms” and suchlike, thereby “confirming” things the Merdia have been “warning everyone about” for the last 6 months. :-/
Anything that can get the middle, which is leaning strongly towards Trump, to make a knee jerk reaction against him… for a week or so.
@ OBH > “I do believe there is a hidden undercurrent that certainly runs against the apparent direction that things are going, among the young.”
QED.
https://notthebee.com/takes/is-this-the-most-iconic-photo-of-2024
@ OBH > “Anything that can get the middle, which is leaning strongly towards Trump, to make a knee jerk reaction against him… for a week or so.”
A prescient warning, but not enough people will heed it.
See, for example, how hard it is to change people’s minds about Israeli actions in Gaza AFTER the initial false news reports, even when the Hamas-hoaxes are revealed only days, or even hours, later.