"American Nationalism," was Re: Fascism & Monopoly Capitalism

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>  > >Just what constitutes the core of "America" ideologically (in the
>>  >ideology of American patriotism)?
>>
>>  The Constitution, of course.
>>
>>  Doug
>
>And the Federalist Papers. Maybe even more so.

In _Empire_, Hardt & Negri use, as an epigram to Part 2.5, the 
following remark by Thomas Jefferson: "I am persuaded no constitution 
was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire and 
self government" (160).  They go on to invoke the _Federalist_ & U.S. 
constitution as heralding "a new principle of sovereignty" (169): 
"Already in this first phase, then, a new principle of sovereignty is 
affirmed, different from the European one: liberty is made sovereign 
and sovereignty is defined as radically democratic within an open and 
continuous process of expansion.  The frontier is a frontier of 
liberty.  How hollow the rhetoric of the Federalists would have been 
and how inadequate their own 'new political science' had they not 
presupposed this vast and mobile threshold of the frontier" (169)!

Deliberate anachronism on the part of H & N, but suggestive 
nonetheless.  American Nationalism = an ideology for the Empire.

Yoshie