I’ve been thinking about American patriotism, particularly my own. (Blame July 4th.) Americans are obviously very patriotic, especially compared to Europeans, Canadians, and others in what we would think of as similar countries. I don’t believe in blind obedience to one’s country. Maybe “because that’s where I’m from” is a good reason to root for a sports team, and some sort of superficial patriotism can be justified on that ground, but I think deeper patriotism really is irrational without a better reason. There are a lot of things that cause people to be patriotic that I really think are horrible reasons for caring about the US, but I still feel very patriotic, and I’ve been thinking about what exactly makes me feel that way. I would be very interested to hear what other people think of these, or what reasons you have.
First, let me eliminate some things from consideration. There are a lot of good things about the US that aren’t particularly unique. (It’s a democracy, capitalist, has a generally not corrupt government, and so on.) These things are good, but inspire in me more a sense of general satisfaction than real pride. There are also a huge number of admirable historic achievements. These are quite impressive – first modern democracy, moon landing, arguably saving the world in both the second world war and the cold war, etc. I don’t want to downplay these at all. They’re huge. Nevertheless, I’m really interested in what it is about the US as it exists today that makes me proud of my country, and “it did something great a couple decades ago” just doesn’t do it.
That said, there are a couple things (and I could easily be missing some) that I really am proud of. One, overly generalized, is the level of rights given to our citizens. For all the controversy over the Patriot Act and other moves in the opposite direction, the US still has much greater levels of civil liberties (broadly defined) than most places. For example, take the amount of time someone can be held without charges. In the US, it’s 48 hours. In France, it’s 6 days. In Ireland it’s 7. Britain just extended it to 42 days (!!), though there are some extra safeguards after 28 and it’s very controversial. Even with the deep impact of terrorism, the US remains judicious here. (Good analysis here, hat tip to UK Liberty.)
Another good example is freedom of religion. Many modern, liberal democracies still have established religions. I have my problems with the Pledge of Allegiance, and there are plenty of current threats to this, but as it stands the US government is very separate from religious matters. At the same time, the actions that many “secular” governments take around the world (think of things like headscarf bans in France, Germany, and Turkey) would be totally anathema to almost all Americans. This is related to a larger point about social acceptance and a sense in which the government stays out of things in a good way. While France bans headscarves, Britain is having a debate over allowing people to opt into Sharia law. France and Canada use legislation to carefully protect the French language. Other countries seem to be having a lot of difficulty with how to deal with this whole category of issues, while the US seems to have, for the most part, figured it out. General laws and regulations apply to everyone, regardless of culture/religion, and the government generally stays out and lets assimilation occur on its own, gradually, like it should.
Probably the most important thing to me in this category is free speech and political participation. The US respects a level of free speech unheard of in the rest of the world, where hate speech is routinely banned. (The NYT had an excellent article on this.) Extremist political parties are also frequently outlawed. This seems utterly insane to me, but would surprise almost no one anywhere else in the world. In most modern liberal democracies, there is a belief that there are some basic ground rules and foundational beliefs that you have to accept before engaging in political debate – things like the equality of all people and the support of democracy as a form of governance. It’s not that Americans don’t believe in those things being supremely important. It’s just that we don’t believe the way to deal with those who don’t agree is to silence them. We let them speak and then outvote them. This seems clearly better to me. If those who think these crazy things are a small minority, letting them vote doesn’t hurt. If they’re a majority, it just fails to make any sense. The idea of a democracy governing a country where most are opposed to the rules of governance is self-contradictory.
I’ve also decided that I’m pretty proud of our foreign policy. This is obviously going to be a controversial choice. There is no shortage of stupid American foreign policy. It’s important to remember, though, that after the Cold War the US was left as a superpower unrivaled by any other power on earth. This won’t be the case forever. Europe will unify, and China and India will grow. For the time being, though, the US is really alone in this position. The old “power corrupts” saying isn’t totally wrong. A country with the power the US has will always tend a little towards the pushy side. There will always be unnecessary wars. They’re bad, but if they are wars against tyrannical dictators that then establish (or at least try to establish) democracies in their place, there’s at least a bit of silver lining. If you really think having the US as a global superpower is awful, imagine what would have happened if the USSR had won the Cold War or a rising China supplants the US. Extraordinary rendition would be the least of your concerns. For all the shortcomings, I think the US has been a lot more responsible with it’s power than almost any other country on earth would have been. It’s easy to say “Wouldn’t it be great if it was Sweden that had massive power?”, but that power would instantly transform Sweden into a somewhat different country. Given all the corrupting influences and temptations that power has, I think the US has done a pretty good job remaining a responsible international player whose presence benefits the world.
There’s obviously a ton here. Each thing I mentioned really is worthy of at least a full post on its own. I’m also sure I missed some things. Nevertheless, I think this is a reasonably good start. I’d be curious to see what others think.
Tags: civil liberties, foreign policy, free speech, law, patriotism, religious freedom