<< >So what is patriotism? Is there a left form of it?
>Joseph Noonan
A left form of patriotism in the USA is mainly expressed as a jeremiad -- a
negative Americanism, as it were. >>
Sure, see Chomsky. He's a good American patriot. Really! Problem with patriotism is that in this country, it has been more or less defined as opposition to dissidence, Americanism vs. Communism, My Country Right or Wrong, America Love It Or Leave It, all that garbage. That is partly why it is very hard to be consciously patriotic as an American leftist. There has been a largely successful effort to define patriotism as being anti-left.
However, while I myself am something of a "rootless cosmopolitan," I don't see the point of being antipatriotic in the ostentatious way that some leftists are. One time when I was speaking against the coming Gulf War at OSU in the fall of 90 to a pretty decent sized audience, I had a young ROTC type attack my patriotism. I said, if I didn't care about my country, why would I be doing this? He allowed as I had a point and apologized.
I _do_ care about my country, and I _am_ proud of many of its traditions and accomplishments. One constructs a usable past, but it's there in America--Tom Paine, the Abolitionists, John Brown, Debs and Knight, the Haymarket Martyrs,
Frederick Douglass and the Suffragists, Emma Goldman, the IWW and the CIO, Rosa Parks and Dr. King. And--because I am not as left as some of you, I have establishment heros too--I think the Constitution, for all its flaws, is a great achievement; not least because of the 14th Amendment; I am a great admirer of John Marshall and OW Holmes, Learned Hand, Hugo Black and Thurgood Marshall.. Towering over our landscape is the shadow of Lincoln.
The CP tried to appropriate a form of patriotism during the pop front era, Communism is 20th century Americanism, the Jefferson Clubs, the WWII moviues with integrated fighting units fighting fascism--all written by commies shortly to be blacklisted, "The House I Live In," etc. But it sort appropriated them.
A big exception was Woody Guthriie, who had a real deep and very left wing patriotism, wrote the great patrioric song of the 20th century, this Land is Your Land, nothing artificial OR alienated-Jeremiad about. He didn't have appropriate patriotism, unlike the CP, he simply loved this country, from California to the New York island. And he was never alienated. He was often angry--or he wouldn't have been on the left, in fact, a comsymp fellow traveller. But there's never a sour note about America in his writing and singing. Unfortunately his attitude seems not to have taken root among the radical left in this country. You can see echoes of it in, for example, EL Doctorow.
This is rather disjointed, and I am not sure I have a point, certainly I don't have a thesis. But it may stimulate discussion.
--jks