[lbo-talk] Patriotism is Relative, Not Absolute

budge budge at el-pleasant.org
Wed Aug 13 12:11:30 PDT 2003


At lunch today I saw an advert in NYRB for the book:

The Lost Promise of Patriotism: Debating American Identity, 1890-1920 by Jonathan Hansen

and a blurb for it by David Hollinger of UCB that includes this:

"Just when the patriotism of Americans who disagree with specific policies of the government id being called in to question Hansen's judicious and incisive book arrives to remind us how vigorously leftists of a century ago refused to yield the flag to the White House ... remains relevant to today's disputes over what it means to love and defend one's country"

[ellipses mine -- i'm a slow and crappy transcriptionist]

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<http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/15636.ctl>

Hansen, Jonathan M. The Lost Promise of Patriotism: Debating American Identity, 1890-1920. 280 p. 2003

Cloth $51.00tx 0-226-31583-5 Spring 2003 Paper $19.00tx 0-226-31584-3 Spring 2003

During the years leading up to World War I, America experienced a crisis of civic identity. How could a country founded on liberal principles and composed of increasingly diverse cultures unite to safeguard individuals and promote social justice? In this book, Jonathan Hansen tells the story of a group of American intellectuals who believed the solution to this crisis lay in rethinking the meaning of liberalism.

Intellectuals such as William James, John Dewey, Jane Addams, Eugene V. Debs, and W. E. B. Du Bois repudiated liberalism's association with acquisitive individualism and laissez-faire economics, advocating a model of liberal citizenship whose virtues and commitments amount to what Hansen calls cosmopolitan patriotism. Rooted not in war but in dedication to social equity, cosmopolitan patriotism favored the fight against sexism, racism, and political corruption in the United States over battles against foreign foes. Its adherents held the domestic and foreign policy of the United States to its own democratic ideals and maintained that promoting democracy universally constituted the ultimate form of self-defense. Perhaps most important, the cosmopolitan patriots regarded critical engagement with one's country as the essence of patriotism, thereby justifying scrutiny of American militarism in warti



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