[Previous entry: "Italian minister calls for rapists to be castrated"] [Next entry: "Racial admixture can be quantified by analysing an individual's face"]
02/16/2009: "A Liberal Revival of Americanism"
The revival of Americanism on the left is as unexpected as was Obama's victory itself. Since liberals turned against the war in Vietnam 40 years ago, they have struggled to prove that they love their country even while opposing most of the policies of its government. Some abandoned the effort altogether, preferring to don a fresh identity as global citizens. The philosopher Martha Nussbaum argued in 1994 that patriotism is "morally dangerous" because it encourages Americans to focus narrowly on their own concerns and to minimize or disregard those of people in other lands. Meanwhile, conservatives led by Ronald Reagan defined patriotism as the need to stand tall against one's enemies and equated liberty with low taxes and a lightly regulated market. From the invasion of Cambodia to the invasion of Iraq, war protesters pleaded, "Peace Is Patriotic," but few on either side paid them much attention.
Then, quite unintentionally, George W. Bush convinced liberals that they should stand up for their own version of the national creed. They condemned his 2000 election as a betrayal of democracy, achieved only after he lost the popular vote and got an assist from a right-leaning Supreme Court. As the "war on terror" heated up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, liberals accused the president of violating the Constitution by snooping into library and phone records and unapologetically using torture. Then the bloody debacle in Iraq drove many a progressive to dust off the advice of John Quincy Adams that the United States should not go "abroad in search of monsters to destroy" because "she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit."
Gradually, a liberal movement flourished, vowing to "take our country back."
[ People are looking for a way to feel good about themselves, so they've joined patriotism and their leftist inclinations to try to make them more palatable. Leftism however at its core is internationalism, so when they're done being Proud Americans, they'll discard that ruse again and return to agitating for world government. ]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/05/AR2009020501213.html?wprss=rss_opinions/outlook