Left2Right’s Elizabeth Anderson offers a justification for patriotism that is designed to appeal to the thinking person on either side of the Left/Right divide. She uses New York City as the base of her metaphors for liberal and conservative ideas and ideals. Although I find her tribute to NYC heartwarming, I find her arguments a bit less than convincing. Being on the left, myself, I’ll focus on her advice to me:
To the Left: Chinatown shows how free trade in goods and free movement of people are inextricable from the free exchange of ideas and willingness to learn from and welcome them, no matter their origin–attitudes that lie at the core of the cosmopolitan ideal. It also forces us to acknowledge the special cultural conditions needed to foster "diversity" at its best. Not every national culture is as good as the U.S. at opening itself up to immigrants from so many lands and enabling them to become fully "us" (and this is not to say that we are all that great in other regions of the U.S., or with respect to certain immigrant groups). To promote the cosmopolitanism we love, we need to treasure the local conditions for its flourishing, and this requires robust support for and love of America itself. We also have to acknowledge that former Mayor Giuliani brought spectacular benefits to the city by insisting not just on a crackdown on crime, but on restoring order and civility to the streets, without which people cannot raise families in the city, nor enjoy the great diversity it offers, but will rather retreat behind closed doors and ethnic enclaves hostile to outsiders. (This is not to deny the costs of Giuliani’s crackdown.) Cosmopolitanism needs patriotism to survive.
Here I think Anderson makes mistakes in her logic based on an overly romantic view of the city and a misperception about immigrants’ attitudes.
First of Anderson’s mistakes is the implication that somehow liberals who are not totally on board with all aspects of "free trade" (and the business models/laws/ideologies that go with it) need only see the street-level benefits of it to change their mind. This ignores the important philosophical differences of opinion and focus that separate liberals and conservatives here, mostly dealing with workers’ rights, anti-corruption measures, and the potential of excessive materialism to be spiritually harmful.
Fortunately, she’s chosen Chinatown as her example. Unfortunately, as support for her argument, that example is rife with problems. Anyone who knows Chinatown well understands it houses one of the most overall corrupt markets in the city. Not only are many of the products for sale there knock-offs, but the amount of black market dealings, taxes not paid, workers not documented, etc. etc. should hardly stand as anyone’s ideal. Organized crime there remains vicious, as well. New ideas do come in via Chinatown, and perhaps the corruption is a necessary component of that, but it’s hardly as Apple Pie as she implies.
Second in Anderson’s mistakes is the idea that love for America is required to promote/protect cosmopolitanism. Here, I’ll admit, I’m not 100% clear on what she means. Either she means love for the US by American citizens or love by immigrants. In particular, this line is unclear:
To promote the cosmopolitanism we love, we need to treasure the local conditions for its flourishing, and this requires robust support for and love of America itself.
She seems to be saying that if we want the country to continue to be cosmopolitan (and she agrees that is far from universally desired) we need to love the American ideal, as declared on the Statue of Liberty perhaps, that welcomes folks from other parts of the world to join us here and take part in the dream. But I think she’s missing a key element of this. Immigrants come here even when we fight like hell to keep them out. With all due respect, I think Anderson needs to talk to more immigrants about why they come here. It’s not because they feel welcome to do so.
Watching "Maria Full of Grace" (extremely highly recommended…stunningly brilliant) on DVD the other day, I noted at the end that it was a sad story, to which my partner said rather dryly, "Well that’s how it is. You Americans just don’t see it." The story tells the tale of Maria, who volunteers to work as a mule (swallowing drug pellets to smuggle them into the US from Colombia) in order to make some money to raise the baby she’s carrying. She’s unmarried, things are tough in her home town, etc. etc. Besides, her "boyfriend" talks her into it. By the end of the film she has made some incredibly difficult decisions but ends up taking her chances in the US.
What my partner was referring to when he said "You Americans just don’t see it" was the reality behind the immigrant experience, the harsh choices, the extreme homesickness, and the quiet expectation that immigrants act as if they were dumb and just happy to be living in this great land of ours because of our freedoms…this obligation he feels to be "all smiles," despite the racism, despite the xenophobia, despite even the nationalism he endures every day, all the resulting insults/injuries extreme patriotism inadvertently inflicts. "Maria Full of Grace" showed the immigrant experience from the immigrants’ POV, where they could be themselves, without Americans watching them, and talk among themselves with a healthy dose of the real reasons immigrants come here…and it ain’t got anything to do with stars or stripes.
But back to the mistake Anderson makes…her leap in logic is the last sentence in that paragraph: Cosmopolitanism needs patriotism to survive. I think she’s got it exactly backwards here. Cosmopolitanism survives in spite of patriotism, and it’s the determination of the immigrants, not the ideals of the citizens, that deserve the lion’s share of credit. And it always has been here.
I find the Left2Right crowd to be a little bit goofy. Maybe blogging will be good for them.
Yeah, L2R’s a little goofy.
For me, patriotism means defending the Constitution and that’s it.
I think Canada has a healthier attitude towards immigrants than the USA. It looks like Canada embraces diversity, while the USA encourages assimilation. Still, there are countries a lot more xenophobic than the US, and there’s truly a lot that’s great about the US.
I have a lot of trouble with patriotism as it’s expressed in the United States. The Battle Hymn of the Republic or the Star Spangled Banner on the Fourth of the July can bring a tear to my eye, and I remember running around my front yard in the cold waving the American flag back when the USA won the gold in Hockey back so long ago, but I was deeply influenced by this definition of patriotism by George Bernard Shaw:
And too often patriotism here is used as a defense for attacking dissenters, as if they were not also patriotic, even in their dissent.
Edward: I think I read Anderson differently. When she said “free trade in goods and free movement of people are inextricable from the free exchange of ideas and willingness to learn from and welcome them, no matter their origin”, I didn’t take her to be saying that anyone needs to be accept any particular version of free trade, let alone a specific view on the sorts of worker protections etc. that need to be included in free trade agreements. I just took her to be arguing (obliquely) against that bit of the left which seems to oppose free trade in general. — I have certainly had my share of arguments with other liberals on this topic. My view has always been that it makes no sense for me to oppose free trade agreements on the grounds that e.g. they will take jobs away from North Carolina textile workers without taking just as seriously the possibility that they will provide jobs for impoverished people in other countries. I’ve also always thought that free trade agreements need serious environmental and labor standards, since that’s the only way I can see to ensure that they will in fact be beneficial: accepting Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage does not, in my view, mean accepting the idea that some country should get a comparative advantage in some area because they are willing to use slave labor, or to poison their environment. But this (as it seemed to me) sensible and very liberal view has not always met with favor among people on the left.
In the cosmopolitanism part, I took her to be saying that we, as citizens, need to love our country — and not just its ideals, but it itself. ‘Love’ here, I think, means not just thinking well of it, but working to make it as good as it can be (so it’s not ”America, right or wrong”, but rather a commitment to work to make it the best country it can be.) I also took it that she was addressing herself only to Americans, and saying: we need to make our country its best self; not addressing herself to e.g. Brits and saying: you too should love America. (Their corresponding obligation would of course be to work to make the UK its best self, and their views about the US would be beside the point.)
In general, I think that to work out the best form of patriotism, it’s helpful to think of it as a kind of love, and ask yourself what exactly love involves. It does not (according to me, at least) involve support for whatever the object of your love is doing. If I were in love with someone, and he came home one day and announced that he had decided to become a professional assassin or to deal drugs to schoolchildren, I do not think it would be any part of love to say, “anything you say, dear; I’m behind you all the way”. And it does not involve never criticizing the person you love. (There is such a thing as being too critical, relentlessly negative; there is also such a thing as being too uncritical.) It does involve always wanting the very best for the object of your affection. And love for a country differs from love of another person in that while I am not another person, and cannot directly control what he or she does, I am part of my country, and can thus help to make it the case that it acts well. (When I was working in the primaries, I used to think: in a democracy, we get the leadership we deserve, and as a part of ‘we’, it is therefore incumbent on me to help make sure that we deserve the very best leader we can get.)
When I was working in the primaries, I used to think: in a democracy, we get the leadership we deserve
I believe that too.
and as a part of ‘we’, it is therefore incumbent on me to help make sure that we deserve the very best leader we can get.
Nice way to put it.
I just took her to be arguing (obliquely) against that bit of the left which seems to oppose free trade in general.
Yes, I did too, but it wasn’t a good argument against that bit of the left that’s opposed to free trade in general. Chinatown represents equally the problems with free trade that inspire that position among some liberals, but she didn’t mention that. There’s a hiccup in her logic there that seems more designed to provide a parallel/balanced argument than actually prove what she’s saying about why some liberals are off-base about free-trade. It could use some clarification at least.
Re the need to “love our country,” I agree (and like they way you put it), but I still don’t see the connection to cosmopolitanism. If we don’t love our country/if we do love our country, immigrants will still fight there way in here because of the opportunities here…it’s not connected to our attitudes in my opinion. Maybe if we love our country we’ll loosen the borders somewhat, but that’s not what she’s saying exactly. If we work overtime to tighten our borders, essentially rejecting that aspect of our tradition/character/history (and therefore showing it no love) the immigrants will STILL come.
I think that the problem is that you seem to be reading ‘nativism’ for ‘patriotism’ in her statement, while at the same time, I think she is saying ‘patriotism’, when she really means something more like ‘civic spirit’.
Some people do take their patriotism into the realm of nativism where it requires the rejection of immigrants; others do not. But I think what she is really celebrating in the case of New York is civic spirit–a city can only accept diversity if people don’t withdraw in fear into enclaves–rather, they need to be drawn together by a common concern and love for the place they live, if there is to be unity instead of division into warring camps.
In other words, to have diversity, there has to be unifying factors as well. In the case of New York, I expect civic spirit is more of a unifying factor than US Patriotism in the abstract. Patriotism is what keeps New York City from trying to get out of being in the same union as Alabama, not what keeps Brooklyn and Long Island from declaring war on each other.
The lack of an overriding, overarching identity which can draw diverse groups together is what kills some nations, like Yugoslavia. Diversity, without some underlying glue that holds it all together, inevitably decays into strife.
This isn’t to say that the ‘glue’ can’t cause problems. Immigrants typically aren’t too interested in assimilating, and the natives often go too far. But you have to have something to provide unity, before you can have functional diversity. Otherwise, people will simply choose up sides and fight.
I agree with Edward, that Elizabeth Anderson is indulging in deep wishful thinking when she pins cosmopolitanism upon patriotism. I also agree with John Biles about the two patriotisms. Civic spirit is as palpable on the streets of New York as nativism seems to be in the heartland. Civic spirit is a kind of streetwise diplomacy, more of a process or a dance-step than a set of beliefs. Nativism is just a form of bullying.
It is too bad that we can’t put some of the ‘pater’ back into ‘patriotism’ – by which I certainly don’t mean propping up patriarchy! No; but if we could love our country the way we love our parents (uncomparingly, against Shaw as it were), then things would be quite different. I think that for too many people, patriotism is an expectation that our country will love (and humor) us.
Immigrants typically aren’t too interested in assimilating, and the natives often go too far.
Really? All the literature discusses how first and second generation immigrants are often forcing their children to speak English and be more ‘American’. It usually falls on the 3rd generation to rediscover their heritage.