On Patriotism
squashed talked with a few people about what patriotism meant in America and wrote, at length, about it. I’m excerpting spottily here, please refer back to his post:
Contrast [patriotism of pursuing shared ideals] with what Jonah Goldberg wrote in a USA Today opinion column: “We might need to change this or that policy or law, fix this or that problem, but at the end of the day the patriotic American believes that America is fundamentally good as it is.”
Mr. Goldberg suggests that it is ultimately love of the status quo that makes a patriot…This is not patriotism…patriotism not only allows but requires that we strive to fix the places where we have fallen short of the promises we believe in.
The best clarification I’ve heard on blind-faith/assumed-righteousness patriotism came during a digression in an artificial intelligence lecture, of all situations. The professor pointed out that Carl Schurz’s quote is often cited as “My country, right or wrong.” I’ll call this the Goldberg/Hannity truncation. He explained the full quote, vindicating Dan, is:
“My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”
I was going to reblog squashed and add my comment, but boutofcontext just does it so much better.
