Who Roots for America?
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- Who is so bold as to root for America anymore? Once it was a given, now rooting for America is passé on both sides of the political divide. These days you can get more applause, American applause, by rooting for America to fail than to win.
The GOP wants Obama to lose far more than they want America to succeed—witness their unseemly delight at Chicago’s face-plant in the Olympics vote. If Barry Goldwater were alive he’d have torn the flag pins from their traitorous lapels. The sunshine patriots of the party of patriotism sold their birthright for a mess of morbid revenge.
The right thinks America is them and only them; to the conservatives’ debased base liberals in general and Obama in particular aren’t really Americans. They’re like French, or something. And it’s no great leap from there to wanting America to fail as long as these pinkos are running the place.
But I don’t just want to pick on the right, they’re too easy. The right is in the throes of a nervous breakdown these dark days, it’s hardly fair to expect them to be rational, however disappointing their behavior has been to anyone who roots for America.
The left often seems to find rooting for America as distasteful as dental work, and with far less excuse than the right.
To find actual hate for America among the left, you have to look pretty far into the fringes, into the precincts of “America the warmonger,” “America the ruthless globalizer,” “America the imperial overlord raping the world of its resources and enslaving its poor.”
But a far broader swath of liberals is ashamed of America. They don’t hate the place, they just find it nearly impossible to root for. To them, rooting for America reeks of flag waving, NASCAR and John Wayne.
And flag-waving, NASCAR-loving, John Waynes are everything they’ve been against since the Vietnam war. Yahoo, reactionary, know-nothings who have hijacked and perverted the American dream.
But the left let them do it, they watched in aloof disdain as their opponents grabbed Old Glory. The liberals handed over the flag without a fight, and the conservatives proceeded to wrap themselves in it.
That was a mistake. Liberals should have been the repository of the highest ideals of America, especially during their long exile in the political wilderness. They should have fought hard to claim the mantle of Americanism back from their adversaries. The winning strategy would have been to unwrap the flag from the flag-draped right and stake it proudly on their own, liberal, American ground.
They are paying for that failure now. We all are. The liberals, albeit a weak tea version of liberals, have come into power at long last. They have a chance to remake the American dream in their own image—just as Ronald Reagan did in his, thirty years ago.
They’re doing a poor job of it, so far. The liberals don’t seem to have the courage of their own convictions. They start out compromising to get Republican support, and when they don’t get it they compromise some more.
Why is it that the Democrats, elected with a ringing mandate for change, are so timid about making some? Why are their health care plans so pedestrian? Why don’t they get rid of hate laws like “don’t ask, don’t tell?” Why won’t they tax some fairness into the most unbalanced economy in American history?
I believe it’s because they don’t know how to root for themselves anymore because they don’t know how to root for America. If they did, their arguments would be clear and commanding: Health care is an American right. Fairness to gays is an American right. Economic justice is an American right.
But to say that stuff you have to believe in America, its ideals, its history. You have to root for it.
I have never been a fan of President Reagan, not at the time and not in retrospect. But I like one thing about him. He never let the nation, or the world, doubt where his sympathies lay. He knew you can’t move America unless you root for America.
Contemporary conservatives have forgotten that lesson. Contemporary liberals better learn it fast, if they want to be more than just another failed blip on the arc of decline of a once-great Nation.
The revolution we started in 1776 needn’t end in failure. America is still a place we can make, if we root for it. But who roots for America anymore?
Comment by Richard on 9 October 2009:
Snark: I “root for America.” Rooting does not mean without dissent. In fact it means the contrary and is a responsibility. Because I am not among the bi-polar, conspiracy hytericas I see disagreement - even the loud and/or stupid ones.
Foreign interest are well - foreign interest. As someone said countries do not have friends they have interests.
There are those whomroot against America or enyone from the neighboring tribe - human nature.
Comment by Nicole Jordan on 9 October 2009:
Well, I root for America also. And while I don’t agree with each and everything my party (guess which one!) says or supports, it doesn’t subtract one whit from my patriotism and pride in my country and all we have successfully become over the centuries. Did we start out great? It was a great idea, definitely, but was every step the right one? No, of course not. Most importantly, have we (mostly) tried to become great? Yes, and to confirm that, look back over history, even the history many would rather overlook (oppression, violence, greed, you name it). Look back and see how far we have come. And congratulations to the American President, every American’s president, for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. He is being recognized on this enormous global stage for elevating and turning the global conversation to engagement, to mutual interests, to progress and to peace. Consider before you contradict (no, I’m not thinking of anyone in particular, remember this song may not in fact be about you). Can you take pride in the world’s recognition of a great American? Because if not, then you might not be a “rooter” after all.
Comment by Richard on 9 October 2009:
Nicole: Your mjaut have a point. Can you explain and justify it?
Comment by slowsmile on 10 October 2009:
All…I am, as ever confused by the political arguments, but I’m European and that’s my simple excuse. But some questions. Where does both your trust and American patriotism really lie? With your government or with your citizens or both? And to what extent does the US Constitution, a wonderful document indeed, bear any relevance and influence within modern American politics today?
Comment by Snark Twain on 10 October 2009:
Slow, those questions are fair and deep. So deep they call for their own essay. Luckily, I wrote one back in 2003 that might help. It’s about patriotism and was originally published in a San Francisco newspaper. It appears, in its entirety, below. Enjoy.
PATRIOTISM RECONSIDERED
Patriotism has gotten a bad rep lately, especially around here. San Franciscans are suspicious of patriotism, and perhaps rightly so, when you look at some of the jerks who abuse the noble sentiment.
Patriotism wasn’t always the exclusive property of overweight talk radio Nazis or hold-my-coat posers. Nope—once there was a patriotism of Woody Guthrie, a “This Land Is Your Land” patriotism. A more “democratic” patriotism, if you will.
This is not to be compared to the anti-patriotism of the hard left, which consists primarily of hating America—or, if one is from the wing of the left which doesn’t believe in hate, being deeply ashamed of it.
Personally, I like being patriotic. I’d like to see patriotism reclaimed by the broad middle of American opinion. But for that to happen, we need to understand its true essence.
“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” That’s what Samuel Johnson said, and it is a pretty snazzy phrase. But there are a couple of things worth noting about Dr. Johnson’s jibe. First of all, he said it in 1775—one year too early to apply to us. By 1778 he was saying, “I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.”
That takes some of the shine off Sammy’s quote. I think he was prejudiced.
But, despite himself, Dr J’s bon mot contains hidden wisdom—because of that word “refuge.”
That’s what the best of patriotism is about—refuge. This country was started as a refuge—in fact, America was a refuge before it was a country.
Patriotism is a tie, a tie that binds strangers and makes them more like family. It’s a mutual aid society. In the largest scale, that’s what a nation is—you are part of me and I’m a part of you—it’s the biggest “family” relationship that people have yet been able to sustain successfully.
Some folks claim to have these feelings for mankind in general, even strangers in strange lands. That’s praiseworthy, but it’s not really possible. You may share humanity with the world, but you share citizenship, a set of laws, a tax burden, a similar fate in war, with only your countrymen. And anyway, nobody gets called for jury duty by the World Court.
Our nation is not a refuge if we eat our young, neglect our sick, ignore our old and spit at strangers. It’s patriotic to be better than that.
Patriotism isn’t about being bellicose or throwing your weight around—that’s not a patriot—that’s a bully. It’s not about acting like you’re more American than everybody else. The most American you can be is one.
I’m a patriot because this is one country where you don’t have to be a patriot. I like having the Blame-America-Firsters around. They’re invariably well off, well dressed, nice looking, privileged kids—the heirs of over two centuries of political and economic struggle and success. And like all trust fund babies, they wear their guilt on their sleeves. They remind me to count my blessings; they remind me that you don’t have to be a yahoo to be wrongheaded about America.
I’m a patriot because when we talk about culture wars in America we mean gay marriage or medical marijuana. That’s not culture war—culture war is what happens in the Middle East, Chechnya, Tibet, Indonesia, Sudan. What we have is culture spat.
I’m a patriot because in America you are more likely to be killed for your wallet than for your politics, more likely to be killed for the color of your Nikes than the color of your skin. I’m a patriot because here the most dangerous job is cab driver. There it’s bus driver.
In one square block of any big American city you can find people from nations that despise and murder one other, outside our borders. Here, some magical transformation seems to neutralize those blood hatreds.
It happens like this—one day you are so politically committed that you decide to hike up your robe, bolt on the belt and blow up a disco. But they aren’t hiring down at the Martyr’s Union Hall that morning, so you skip town and go work at your uncle’s grocery store in Queens instead. The next day your best customers are Jews, you can’t be bothered to vote and your kids want to be rappers. The refuge works for yet another family.
And if that’s not something to be patriotic about, I don’t know what is.
Comment by Richard on 10 October 2009:
Snark and Slow:
Snark’s patriotism essay is thoughtful. and well-considered and it is good to know its dating.
I seem to recall widely cast admonitions to the effect that patriotism can be the refuge of the scoundrel, and I can certainly agree.
That shouldn’t neutralize others good intend and purposefulness.
I do argue no government, anywhere can ever be patriotic - only citizens can be. It’s profane to think otherwise.
Admittedly there are those whose intellectual limits are circumscribed by school yard profanity and bounded by neorosis or more likely psychosis rendering there opinion useless, inconsiderable and should be ignored.
But, for those interested and capable of fruitful discourse - this is a good discussion.