On Sun, 22 Oct 2006, Doug Henwood wrote:
> It's all a closed circle: we need to get back to some "true Americanism"
> which the vile usurpers have sullied. So no critique of American society
> as needing a serious overhaul is possible, because that would be
> "unpatriotic."
I still don't follow this argument at either end. I don't understand how claiming that left principles are the truest realization of American ideals is a bad thing. In fact I don't understand how many of our arguments could even be made without it. What were the civil rights movements for blacks, women or gays based on if not the conviction that these rights were a truer realization of American principles? What is it that makes these truths so "self-evident" to those of us who believe in them -- and so fired up with righteous conviction when they are transgressed? It's a gut belief in the American creed -- and a conviction our side is furthering it while the other side is betraying it.
And I don't understand at the other end why you think this argument somehow forecloses serious overhaul. On the contrary, if there was anything hilarious about the communists' and the populists' use of these terms it was just how enormously far they were stretching the meaning of those American ideals -- not how the ideals were constraining their programme. For all their myriad faults, both those groups were for the nationalization of major industries and communications. How is that not a serious overhaul?
Political argument has always been a combination of utilitarian arguments -- this works better -- and identification arguments -- ours is the better cause, the one that better fulfils your truest convictions, convictions you share with us. You make an identification argument are by reinterpreting a identity we both share so that it resonates and stirs people's emotions and makes them feel pulled by convictions they can't ignore. And the standard way of doing that at the national level is to take the national identity we both share and say that our programme is truer to its principles.
Are you saying you're against identification arguments in principle?
The word "true" operates very differently in the logic of identity than it does in the logic of science. Truer to our ideals doesn't mean more like the way they were in the past. Overthrowing Jim Crow meant being true to American ideals for the first time since the country was founded.
Michael