Bury Me Broken

True Patriot Acts, LA Times op by Richard Kaye

Richard Kaye, assistant professor at Hunter College pens in the Los Angeles Times on true patriot acts:

Defenders of the Patriot Act insist that patriotism entails giving up some individual privacy to guard against the possibility of a terrorist attack from within or without. But patriotism also concerns a love of privacy and free speech and, not least important, a spirited willingness to defend those ideals.

Patriotism consists of multiple, positive actions on behalf of the United States — registering voters, working in an AIDS hospice, volunteering at a disadvantaged school or raising questions about the Bush administration's full-throttle militarism. Almost no one today discusses the idea of national service that would require young people of different ethnicities and economic backgrounds to come together for community projects, not military ones. The most disturbing aspect of the New Patriotism is its suggestion that dissent about the war in Iraq — or even a simple questioning of progress there — is unpatriotic.

Patriotism was not always so jingoistically defined. As the Princeton political scientist Maurizio Viroli argues in "For Love of Country," it was once a positive public virtue. According to the civic republican tradition (a tradition that includes thinkers as diverse as Machiavelli and Rousseau), patriotism was love not so much of country but of its republican forms and their traditions.

In Viroli's account, the good patriot makes sacrifices, works hard to preserve republican values and participates in civic life. This version of patriotism emphasizes positive freedom — our ability to act on our own behalf for the sake of the freedom of the republic — as opposed to negative liberty — passively allowing the state to protect us and in the process rob us of our liberties. The patriot works aggressively to defend the freedoms that make a people a republic.

The specter of a passive citizenry surrendering its rights is sadly pertinent — as is the danger of not distinguishing between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism, in the tradition outlined by Viroli, is an activist, participatory ideal. By contrast, nationalism is largely symbolic, and at its worst mere spectacle. (Witness the attempt by Congress to draft a constitutional amendment criminalizing flag burning.)

posted by niteskolar @ 3:08 AM