Cognitive Dissidents
EJ Dionne writes in the Washington Post a paean to dissidents, patriotism and history of the United States. I think he's got it both right and wrong. Yes, many of our advances as a nation have come about by dissidents pushing the envelope. Martin Luther King is one example Dionne cites, Frederick Douglass is another.
Have you ever noticed a certain hesitant quality to the expressions of patriotism by progressives or left-wingers?
The patriotism of the conservative goes unquestioned. It's assumed that every politician on the right will wear a flag on his lapel and effortlessly hold forth on ours as "the greatest country in the history of the world."
You can be certain that on this, as on every July 4th, patriotic oratory will flow as well from liberals declaring their love of flag, country and the Declaration of Independence. Many will speak of how our constitutional republic is to be revered especially for its guarantees of liberty and justice for all and — hint, hint — limits on the powers of overreaching monarchs.
But the progressive and the reformer have a problem with what passes for unadulterated patriotism. By nature, the reformer is bound to insist that the country, however glorious, is not a perfect place, that it is capable of doing wrong as well as right. The nation that declared "all men are created equal" was, at the time those words were written, the home of an extensive system of slavery.
Most reformers guard their patriotic credentials by moving quickly to the next logical step: that the true genius of America has always been its capacity for self-correction. I'd assert that this is a better argument for patriotism than any effort to pretend that the Almighty has marked us as the world's first flawless nation.
One need only point to the uses that Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. made of the core ideas of the Declaration of Independence against slavery and racial injustice to show how the intellectual and moral traditions of the United States operate in favor of continuous reform.
There is, moreover, a distinguished national tradition in which dissident voices identify with the revolutionary aspirations of the republic's founders. Frederick Douglass, the former slave turned anti-slavery champion, offered the classic text in his 1852 address often published under the title: "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"
"To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy," Douglass declared. "Everybody can say it. . . . But there was a time when, to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men's souls. They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day."
Yes, these were great men and considered to be very much dissidents, rebels and, in the end, heroes. But America also has had it's share of dissidents who history has not treated kindly. We have had our Utopians, we have had our homegrown terrorists, we have had our misfits and malcontents. We have even had our outright evil ones.
So yes, we should welcome the discourse and we should not cede authority for declaring what is and is not patriotic to the party in power at the moment.
We should also shy away from glorifying dissent for it's own sake. Ultimately, this country has a genius for figuring out what is right and what is wrong. It sometimes takes years, even generations. But we get there in the end. Our conservative elements help by acting as a brake on the worst excesses of some of the dissenters. Our dissenters sometimes help the conservatives see the right way to go. And this is really where I think Dionne may have hit it right:
Those who reject the idea of national perfection, who insist that the Founders laid out a pathway and not a destination, should thus resist defensiveness. They should embrace the creed offered in a speech to Congress in 1990 by Vaclav Havel, the Eastern European dissident who became president of the Czech Republic.
"As long as people are people, democracy, in the full sense of the word, will always be no more than an ideal," Havel said. "One may approach it as one would the horizon in ways that may be better or worse, but it can never be fully attained. In this sense, you, too, are merely approaching democracy."
That we're still trying, 230 years after we declared independence, is our national glory.
So we need, as a nation to be willing to understand both those who fall on the more conservative side and those who fall on the more dissident side. But we also must not elevate one over the other. (that's where I think Dionne has it wrong).
By Roland Hesz, Tuesday, 4 July , 2006 @ 2:30 am
I am frankly surprised about this post.
So we need, as a nation to be willing to understand both those who fall on the more conservative side and those who fall on the more dissident side.
May we all keep that in mind, not only on the 4th of July.
By Gaius, Tuesday, 4 July , 2006 @ 5:04 am
Why are you surprised?
By Roland Hesz, Tuesday, 4 July , 2006 @ 5:40 am
First, I’ve seen you as a relatively unbiased guy.
Lately I read a bunch of posts about “traitorous lefties who will loose this war for us” and so on.
Now it is more in line with my first impression.
That’s the root of surprise.
By Gaius, Tuesday, 4 July , 2006 @ 6:03 am
I don’t believe I have used the word traitor, Roland. I have always, since I was growing up during the Vietnam war years, believed that the left lost us that war. It’s not a new position for me. I think I posted something or other on it almost from the very start of this blog.
By Roland Hesz, Tuesday, 4 July , 2006 @ 6:09 am
Yes, still it gout through like a very anti-leftist place sometimes.
It can be my fault.
And it can be that you try to balance out some left media effects on your blog, concentrating on issues that are clearly in favour of the right wing - it’s your blog, you decide what to write, and I respect your opinion even if I can’t always accept it.
The main thing is that both of us share the same values - not calling name, not hitting each other in arguments, and agreeing that wine is the best drink on earth - ok, the last one is a joke.
But still, this post was of an entirely different flavour to the others. Or so it seems to me.
And as we know, I got a jaundiced viewpoint.
By jpe, Tuesday, 4 July , 2006 @ 9:15 am
Yes, still it gout through like a very anti-leftist place sometimes.
It can be my fault.
Your intuition was correct.
Nonetheless, this was a good - and kinda moving - post.
Happy fourth! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a date with a small american flag and a 12 of pabst.
By Gaius, Tuesday, 4 July , 2006 @ 9:41 am
Anti-leftist or anti-extremist?
By Donna, Tuesday, 4 July , 2006 @ 3:49 pm
Great post, Gaius!
By Blackhawk, Wednesday, 5 July , 2006 @ 7:58 am
Nice post!
By Gaius, Wednesday, 5 July , 2006 @ 8:01 am
Thanks.