Hat tip to Ed at Dispatches from the Culture Wars for this provocative piece from historians Howard Zinn, published by Common Dreams.

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.  [snip]

Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.

That self-deception started early. [snip]

We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.

Yet they are victims, too, of our government’s lies.[snip]

We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.

We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.

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Zinn’s call to rethink patriotism, to claim a new and different kind of patriotism, one that is healthier, more honest, than what we have seen so much in the last few decades resonates with me.  The jingoistic, America first chauvinism that has replaced patriotism bothers me. 

In the run up to the Iraq war, when Republicans in Congress were so upset that France didn’t back out obvious falsehoods and so they insisted French fries now be known as Freedom Fries.  At the time, it seemed an infantile and absurd gesture but in retrospect it seems all the more shameful and callow, an act not of patriots but of willful and spoiled children who cannot stand the thought that they are not the center of the universe.  Patriotism such as that is, to my mind, an angry and impudent response to a world that refuses to recognize our self proclaimed exceptionalism.

Throughout our history we have dressed our imperialism in the cloak of democracy – pretending that our actions were about spreading democracy.  And all too often we did at the gunpoint. 

When John Winthrop declared that his Massachusetts bay colony would be a “city upon a hill” for the world to see, he was laying the foundations for American exceptionalism, for our belief that we would be a unique beacon the world, one so very different than any other nation that had come before.  Yet we have not been so very different.  We built a worldwide empire through a keen and cunning combination of economic and military power, through keeping a ruthless eye always on the main chance and rarely missing or overlooking an opportunity for gain.  We are neither worse nor any better than any of the imperial powers who came before us.

But we must recognize that if we are to survive.  We must shed our self-deception and honestly assess and understand who we are and what we have done.  While the people of much of the world, including our traditional and long time allies, saw the war in Iraq for what it was – an imperial adventure to control resources and exert our power – how many millions of Americans gladly told themselves it was a noble effort to free the people of Iraq?  How many of us remain convinced that the adventure in Iraq is a noble endeavor? 

The July 4th just past, saw the usual amount of flag waving and tearful singing of patriotic songs, the usual setting off of fireworks and explosion of red white and blue everywhere one looked.  It seems time to reflect anew on our notions of patriotism, to engage in a mindful national discussion of what it means to be an American, to be a patriot.  As we look at an America whose democracy has become utterly dysfunctional, a nation waging not one but two failed wars, a nation whose basic infrastructure is in advanced state of collapse, a nation whose economic elite are utterly unwilling to pay taxes and who employ every resource at their disposal to avoid and minimize their taxes, who have convinced themselves and many others that taxes are an evil to be avoided, it becomes increasingly and to my mind despairingly important that we as a people engage in a national dialog about what America must be and can be and how we all must share in the making of that nation.

(Photo above from the hilarious website Awkward Family Photos).

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