> JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:
>
> >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?
>
> Why your country? Why not solidarity with the people your country was
> attacking? Why do some geographical borders and a nation-state define
> a special kind of feeling for you?
>
> Doug
Are these mutually exclusive? I did and do feel solidarity with the Iraqi victims of the Gulf War and the embargo and at the time of the war backed up that feeling with action.
One reason one might be concerned about one own country, and even specially motivated to try and change its behavior, is that one feels its government should not be killing other people who have done us no harm. One might want one's country, partly because one has an identification with it, to do the right thing.
Of course, it is best if all governments do the right thing, but if the Iraqi government doesn't, I don't feel ashamed, as I do when the US misbehaves. I might be angry at the Iraqi government, but I lack the sense of ownership, the idea that my country's government is _mine_, with respect to that of another country. An identification is not, of course, blind and unthinking endorsement of everything that the government does, or it would make no sense to feel ashamed of its misbehavior. It is not a Rortyian feeling that I care more about Americans than I do about Iraqis, or that Americans are better or that our traditions are loftier, etc. It's just a sense of belonging, an ability to feel that this country, its past and future, are mine.
As for why one might feel this way, do you want a Kantian reason, a reason that all rational beings should so feel? I can't give you that. Unlike some people who call themselves patriots, a word I don't care to use because it is so sullied, I don't think that an American who doesn't feel this way is a bad person or defective in some way, or to be condemned for this lack of feeling. If you don't feel that way, that's OK, although if you don't feel that way because you think you can't care about the victims of US imperialism and also care about the United States and its people, I think you are mistaken.
While I agree that feelings of this sort are subject to critical appraisal--I do not approve of someone who feels loyalty to "the white race," and not only because there is no such thing--I do not think that identification with one's own country, regarding it as _yours_ is that sort of case. It might be problematic if the identification was so absolute as to blank out criticism, as it often is in this country. But if I feel with Woody Guthrie that "this land belongs to you and me," does that make me a bad member of the internationalist community? Am I allowed no loyalties more narrow than the human race?
--jks