Questioning Patriotism

Timothy Dalrymple at Patheos responds to those who demand that one not question their patriotism with the reply that he's darn well going to question it, and good for him, says I:

When “Don’t question my patriotism!” became the imperative of choice for the stylish liberal in the run-up to the 2004 election, I was a doctoral student at Harvard. The very same faculty who spent half their time indicting the United States as the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism struck an indignant pose when they imagined their patriotism was under review. Whether they were offended at the allegation that they did not love their country, or offended at the suggestion that they should, varied from professor to professor.

Now, I can imagine the outrage of my liberal friends as they prepare to tell me how the Star-Spangled Banner brings a lump to their throats and a soaring feeling to their hearts. So let me clarify that I’m not questioning the patriotism of Democrats. Plenty of Democrats have demonstrated their patriotism beyond reproach. Neither am I attacking all liberals, or all ultra-liberals. I’m not attacking anyone. It’s no sin to be unpatriotic. This is merely an observation that many of liberalism’s intellectual elites are (1) deeply uncomfortable with the concept of patriotism, and (2) find America especially undeserving of love and loyalty.

Exactly so, which is why they have such contempt for middle American Tea Partiers and their like.

The liberal elites of whom I speak witness public displays of patriotism amongst the masses and fear that that kind of patriotism is tantamount to nationalism, and it leads to war and totalitarianism because it persuades the benighted masses to defend their country and support their leaders without question. Flags and lapel pins and the pledge of allegiance, not to mention Memorial Day and Independence Day, are just so many pieces of propaganda that serve to raise children in automatic loyalty to the machinery of the state.

Dalrymple touches upon an interesting irony here. Recall that one of the charges leveled at Tea Partiers by their cultured despisers is that reluctance to ride the Obama social and economic trainwreck is evidence that conservatives actually despise the country. Frank Schaeffer presents us with a paradigmatic example of this peculiar point of view in a recent interview at MSNBC.

So, if you question their patriotism because they seem to harbor little love for this country, its history, its people or its principles they wax indignant at the implication that they're not patriots, but if you disagree with their political ideology they question your patriotism.

At any rate, Dalrymple raises some good questions in his essay. Here are two:

Do some forms of patriotism encourage unquestioning obedience, while others are more salutary? Or, ... what differentiates patriotism from nationalism, or patriotism from idolatry?

Here's another that he might well have asked: How long can a nation survive if no one cherishes anything about it?

There's more good stuff at the link. Check it out.