Nationalism, superpatriotism, Americanism and Memorial Day

By Bruce Walker
web posted June 3, 2002

Since September 11th I have made a personal commitment to
display the American flag in my yard and on my automobile,
pointedly refusing to remove it when a "decent period of time"
has elapsed. This obstinacy is hardly novel to those who know
me well, but one such individual recently asked me if I was a
"superpatriot."

This almost archaic term refers to those people who were so
passionately committed to America and was often hissed in the
same breath as that other epithet "anti-communist." Those
"superpatriots" and "anti-communists" of the 1960s were
automatically unthinking, insensitive neandrathals, whose
Superpatriotism represented hubris begging for a comeuppance,
which all too often liberals in America have been delighted to
watch smack our nation across the face.

Superpatriotism is not the same as nationalism. The latter term
refers to those individuals who support their nation because they
perceive self-interest to always lie in national interest. The Great
Russians of the Soviet empire were nationalists as were, of
course, the Germans of the Third Reich. Mussolini also reached
nationalism rather than patriotism. The term suggests commitment
to a national leader or national party that personifies national
interest.

While few liberals mind other nations being nationalist, patriotism
in America is judged loathsome, because America - in the eyes
of these liberals, who view all life as a zero sum game - view our
freedom, prosperity, peace, and contentment as inevitable
coming out of that finite global or cosmic pool or each of those
virtues.

So, America is rich because Ethiopia and Bangladesh are poor.
America has a working democracy because North Korea and
Cuba do not. The selfish superpatriotism of America is sucking
all the joy out of the rest of the world, and the weary dim mantra
about "America having four percent of the world's population,
and consuming twenty-five percent of the world's energy" or
some equally childish condemnation of America's happy
condition requires mocking patriotism as "superpatriotism" and
another replay of our sins of success.

The best, and perhaps most enraging, definition of Americanism
was Barry Goldwater's famous lines "Extremism in the defense of
liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no
virtue." This good man, this noble legislator was immediately
wounded by the venomous fangs of a dozen hidden vipers.
"See? Goldwater is an extremist. He is a superpatriot."

Well, I guess I am too - if Goldwaters famous exposition was
wrong. Over Memorial Day, we had the chance to think about
some other extremists: Marines on Guadalcanal, SBD pilots off
Midway, Army sergeants on Omaha Beach, Swoosie crews
over Berlin, merchant sailors on slow boats cross the Atlantic in
January...and lots of other "extremists in the defense of liberty."

These extremists might just as easily have been called
"superpatriots" but what did this superpatriotism entail? All men
fight for some specific land and some familiar culture. Were
Americans sixty years ago fighting to defend their homeland?
Not exactly.

These men had ancient homelands in Italy, Ireland, Poland,
Russia, and Japan, but they were not fighting for the armies of
these ancient homelands but against those armies. Italians from
America fought the Italian armies of Fascism. Germans from
America, like Eisenhower, fought German Armies across
Europe. The Japanese-American division, albeit it fighting in
Italy, was the most decorated unit in the Second World War.

The ethnic roots of these Americans were one place, but their
moral and intellectual roots were quite another place. The home
of their hearts and of their minds was in America - not America
of vast mountain ranges, great plains, and riparian forests, but
America the delight of individual consciences and America the
siren of dreams built from sweat and nerve.

We Americans - almost all of us - have ancestors who
surrendered to comfort of native dress, uniform religious beliefs,
languages learned from infancy, and cherished symbols like the
Crown of Saint Stephen or the Sistine Chapel to hunt down that
most elusive blessings: liberty.

These men and women, who often lived as much for the promise
which America could - and did - bring to their children and
grandchildren, as those benefits they would personally enjoy
during their own years in America, would wonder about what
silly words like superpatriotism meant to the silly people who
blathered on about loving America too much.

Surely they would marvel even more at how some spoiled fools -
who have never seen pogroms, religious wars, and whole
peoples glaring at each other across imaginary lines - could look
at Americanism and see bigotry and danger. These parents
would send their sons off to defend this magnificent principle of
human existence, that all men are equal and free under the rule of
law, and tell those sons to fight, and even to die, to keep this
dream alive.

Memorial Day was a day to honor those boys - and how many
who died were truly boys! - but it is also a time to honor those
universal ideals of human dignity and the soil in which those
grand notions have taken firm root. It is a time to fly Old Glory
without an apology. Is it a time for superpatriotism? I have no
idea what falsehood that Marxist neologism is intended to
conjure, but if it is a time for unabashed Americanism? Yes!
 
Bruce Walker is a senior writer with Enter Stage Right. He is
also a frequent contributor to The Pragmatist and The Common
Conservative.

Enter Stage Right - http://www.enterstageright.com