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"Talking of patriotism, what humbug it is; it is a word which always commemorates a robbery" (Mark Twain. Cited in Philip Horne. "Sparks from the Divine ragbag." Guardian Weekly, April 21, 2006: 23).
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." - Hermann Goering in Nuremberg where he was found guilty and sentenced to death for crimes against humanity. "The notion of a "chosen people"... the leitmotif of the American Dream... Many Americans continue to see themselves as a chosen people and America as the promised land... and that the American way is God's way. Our very success seems proof positive that we were in fact chosen... has been the driving engine behind the American sense of confidence--many Europeans might say arrogance" (17-19)... "Many Europeans no longer believe in God. While 82 percent of Americans say that God is very important to them, approximately half of all Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes say that God does not matter to them. When it comes to religious beliefs, American views are much lcoser to the views of [backward, uneducated] people in developing countries and very much at odds with the rest of the [better educated] industrialized world" (21)... Americans, like all backward, uncivilized peoples, see things in a simplistic way... "we tend to see the world itself as a battleground where good and evil forces are continually at play" (21)... "Although Europeans cringe at America's use of religious language to define the global struggle, the White House rhetoric finds a willing audience in the American heartland. "The belief that we are a chosen people has made Americans the most patriotic people in the whole world... far more willing to fight for their country... "...among Europeans and people of other regions around the world, national pride is declinging with each successive generation. America is the exception [again, backward]... "...for many... the nation-state is no longer the only platform for expressing one's beliefs and convictions and for fulfilling one's aspirations" (Rifkin, Jeremy. The European Dream. pp. 22-23)...
"Along with rightwing fundamentalism, nationalism is one of the most pernicious forces at play in the world today" (Matthew Rothschild. "Airing it out." The Progressive, June, 2005: 4).
"...favorite quote from Emma Goldman: "Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living being inhabiting any other spot. [see the definition of "ethnocentricity"] It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all other"" (Matthew Rothschild. "Airing it out." The Progressive, June, 2005: 4).
"There is something horrifying in the realization that, in this twenty-first century of what we call "civilization," we have carved up what we claim is one world into 200 artificially created entities we call "nations" and armed to apprehend or kill anyone who crosses a boundary. "Is not nationalism--that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder--one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking--cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on--have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power... "But in a nation like ours--huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction--what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves. "Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy... "The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible... "It was our "Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent... "It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to war... "to civilize and Christianize"... "As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines... Elihu Root, our Secretary of War, was saying: "The American soldier is different from all other soldiers... He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness"... "Our culture is permeated by a Christian fundamentalism as poisonous as that of Cotton Mather. It permits.. mass murder... with the same confidence as it accepts the death penalty for individuals convicted of crimes... "One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on September 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq. "What makes our nation immune from the normal standards of human decency?... "We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation... "Langston Hughes... addressed his country as follows:
You really haven't been a virgin for "Kurt Vonnegut... places nations among those unnatural abstractions he calls granfalloons, which he defines as "a proud and meaningless association of human being." "There have always been men and women in this country who have insisted that universal standards of decent human conduct apply to our nation as to others. That insistence continues today..." (Howard Zinn. "The scourge of nationalism." The Progressive, June, 2005: 12-13).
"Can anyone deny that the American flag has achieved the status of a graven image?... "The contention that flag worship is blasphemy was a key element before the Supreme Court in 1940. In that case it upheld the right of a Pennsylvania school district to expel two students who refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The two teenagers were members of the Jehovah's Witness denomination. Their church believed that pledging allegiance to the flag violated the Biblical admonition (Exodus 20) against worshipping or bowing down to any graven image of God. The court decided that the need for national security and national unity allowed Congress to force individuals to violate the Ten Commandments. "In 1943, the Supreme Court reversed its 1940 decision. That reversal probably had less to do with religion than with the Court's realization that, at the height of a war against totalitarian regimes, a central feature of which was a slavish devotion to national symbols, compelling us to worship the flag was inapt. (As a side note, that same year the Flag Code itself was changed. No longer were students required to salute the flag with one arm extended forward. The similarity to the Nazi salute was too embarrassing. From that time onwards, we were told to put our hands over our hearts.) "The evidence that we literally worship the flag is overwhelming. Unique among all nations, we have a Flag Day, a Flag code etiquette, a national anthem dedicated to the flag and a verbal salute to the flag. Twenty-seven states require school children to salute the flag daily... "If further evidence is needed, consider these words from the Congressionally enacted U.S. Flag code (Title 36 USC 10, PL 344). "The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing."... "Our national anthem, sung at every sporting event and increasingly, at every mass political gathering, is the only one I know that focuses its devotion solely on a flag. "And the rockets' red glare / the bombs bursting in air / gave proof through the night that our Flag was still there." Congress has repeatedly thwarted attempts to substitute the eminently more singable and entirely more fitting song, "America the Beautiful," for "The Star Spangled Banner."" (David Morris. "The Blasphemy of Flag Worship." AlterNet. Posted June 21, 2005.).
"... the open display of patriotism... is widely sneered at in Europe... ""To most Europeans born after the second world war, it is a somewhat bewildering sight, this massive outpouring of patriotism [in the US]... Those of us who pride ourselves on a certain degree of sophistication view flag-waving with lofty disdain. It is embarrassing, mawkish, potentially bellicose. I must confess that I find the sight of grown men touching their hearts at the sound of the national anthem a little ridiculous, too. And the ubiquitous incantations of "God Bless America" seem absurdly over the top... "The place where American patriotism seems to annoy Europeans the most is at international sporting events. Chants of "USA! USA!" and "We're number one!"... drive Europe crazy... What the Russians are upset about... is the transformation of the Olympic Games into yet another American Festival of Victory... American athletes hysterical with their adrenalin-stoned patriotism... whooping, en masse, up-yours patriotism is not endearing" (Reid, T.R. The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy: 14-15)...
How the Media Can Restore Credibility"... the Gallup poll finds that 49% of Americans consider the news mostly or completely unreliable..."... the endemic vices of elitism, unaccountability, and star worship that afflict our journalistic institutions beginning with the top management. It will take more than another pro forma mea culpa to rebuild their eroded creditbility. Systemic changes are essential: "Journalists shouldn't get cozy with government officials... A reporter's job is to discover and tell the truth... politicians and reporters are natural enemies... "Press conferences produce lies, not news. What comes out of them should be treated as news only after it has been independently verified. "Journalists should be accessible. Isolation impairs accountability... Every newspaper byline should carry its writer's direct phone number and email address, and they should be required to return their messages... "Ban patriotism. While I was covering the war in Afghanistan in 2001, a colleague from a major US paper informed me: "We've captured Kunduz!" We? Never mind editorial independence--she identified with the Norther Alliance because they were backed by the United States. CNN mimicked Fox News' perpetually waving stars-and-stripes logo and TV anchors from Maine to Hawaii sported flag lapel pins--a prop on state television in dictatorships. Even when the US is at war, reporters should remain neutral. Skeptics make better journalists than patriots. "Embedded reporters are whores... ersatz journalists who rode into Iraq in American tanks and armored personnel carriers... Correspondents who participate in a story--a war, say--deserve to be fired" (Ted Rall. "It's the Skepticism, Stupid." The Progressive Populist, Dec. 15, 2005: 2, 19).
"Patriotism, Tom Paine observed, is not best measured in times of national comfort and quiet. It is in times of crisis, when the summer soldiers and sunshine patriots have retreated to the safety of official talking points and unquestioning loyalty, that those who truly understand the meaning and merit of the American experiment come to its defense. On the 230th anniversary of the launch of that experiment, let us reflect on those who have met the test, noting in particular that some of the boldest expressions of patriotism have come from groups not necessarily associated with dissent. "Consider America's librarians. Since the enactment of the Patriot Act in 2001, the American Library Association (ALA) has been at the forfront of the fight to defend freedom of inquiry and thought from provisions of the act that allow the Justice Department to subpoena the records of libraries and bookstores. The librarians succeeded in getting the House to adopt language protecting library records in 2005--only to have it stripped from the bill to which it was attached by the Administration-friendly House-Senate conference committee. "But the librarians have not just been lobbying to change the Patriot Act, they've been on the front lines of exposing its abuses. When four Connecticut librarians challenged an attempt by the FBI to use a National Se3curity Letter to obtain records of who was reading what in the state, the Justice Department slapped a gag order on them. But the 64,000-member ALA and its Freedom to Read Foundation stood up for the librarians, working with the American Civil Liberties Union, the Association of American Publishers and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression to make a federal case of the issue. In May, after the FBI dropped its defense of the gag order--and shortly before it withdrew its demand for the records--a federal appeals court declared that order moot, and the librarians were at last free to speak out. Peter Chase, director of the Plainville, Connecticut, public library, explained that he and his fellow librarians decided to fight because of their frustration at receiving the National Security Letter even as "the government was telling Congress that it didn't use the Patriot Act against libraries and that no one's rights had been violated. I felt that I just could not be part of this fraud being foisted on our nation"" ("American Patriots." The Nation, July 17, 2006: 3).
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