American identity

[Maureen Anderson]

>(Carrol:)
>>I think (I'm using "I think" a lot in this post because I'm not very
>>sure) that U.S. super-patriotism and bizarre emphasis on the flag,
>>pledge of allegiance, fear of "anti-americanism" etc. is partly a
>>function of the fact that there never has been any significant "national
>>identity."
>(Joanna:)
>Yeah. Speaking as an immigrant, arriving here in 1963 (at the age of 
>nine), I was very puzzled by the pledge of allegiance stuff.

Ellen Wood compares the weird US flag worship to Britain's monarchy 
cult, where both are so prominent because the idea of "the state" is 
conspicuously weak in each.

(From _Pristine Culture of Capitalism_:)

"What is distinctive about Britain is a political culture which, 
possessing an intellectual tradition and a popular consciousness 
where the concept of the _state_ is very weak, substitutes for it the 
cult of an artificial symbol of statehood.  Britain is quite unique 
among major European nations in these respects.  If there is in the 
Western capitalist world any analogous instance, it is perhaps, 
oddly, in the United States.  The American worship of the flag is no 
less remarkable than the British cult of the monarchy (imagine 
beginning every school day with a 'pledge of allegiance,' hand on 
heart, to a national flag!); and, as in Britain, this holy symbol 
exists within a political culture that lacks both a strong 
association of nationhood with ethnicity and a well-defined 
conception of the state. [...]  For the French, for example, the 
concept of the _state_ is an everyday experience.  The 
English-speaking world seems uncomfortable with it.  A bottle of 
Perrier has proudly emblazoned on its label "autorisee par l'etat." 
Any such imprimatur on a bottle of Coca Cola or a packet of PG Tips 
is unthinkable.

The British and Americans do not customarily attach the prefix 
'State-' to their public institutions -- as in Staatsoper.  The more 
common designation in the former case is 'National' or "Royal' (or 
both together); and the latter has a wide range of adjectives for the 
purpose: federal, public, national (though rarely), and often simply 
government-owned or government-controlled.  The US and Britain 
recognize _governments_, but the British or American 'state,' for all 
such practical purposes, hardly exists.  The 'state' is likely to 
appear, if at all, in pejorative contexts.  Clearly, political 
legitimation in a culture that scarcely acknowledges the _state_ 
presents distinctive problems; and in both these political 
vocabularies symbolic substitutes are called upon to play an 
ideological role not required of them where the idea of the state 
itself is firmly implanted in the national consciousness."

...The foregoing, btw, all in passing in Wood's interesting critique 
of the Nairn-Anderson theses (re. the alleged persistence of 
ancien-regime social forms in Britain).


wondering what "a packet of PG Tips" might be, and if one purchases 
them at the pharmacy,
Maureen