When I posted an announcement on PhillyBlog re: celebrating Flag Day w/Drinking Liberally, the first response surprised me. To wit:'I can't imagine a less progressive thing to do than celebrate flag day. Why don't we burn a flag, then I'll come.'
I sincerely hope that the overwhelming majority of people don't feel this way. I believe that, if you look @ American history from the widest possible view, you can see it as a slow, gradual expansion of just who 'we the people' are. In the beginning, the 'all men' in 'we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal...' clearly referred to while, male, land owners. Mind you, in the late 1700s this was more than just liberal- it was revolutionary. Today, it seems racist + sexist, but not from the perspective of the times in which was written.
Again, to take a very wide view of American history, the term 'all men' was expanded- first to include non land owners, then women, then non-whites, now gays. This is, by its very definition, a liberal process. Indeed, the past ~35 years of American history are unusual in that they represent a conscious effort to roll back the breadth of people included in 'all men.' But there have been times in the past where this was also the case, and this regression never became the new norm- a new progressive period followed each time.
I'm always bothered by people who like to hold up Europe as the ultimate model for humanity to emulate. My people spent much of the past 1000 years desperately trying to get the hell out of Europe, + eventually nearly half of our number were killed for our failure to do so. Today, under all Europe's claims of equality + liberalism runs a deep and nasty stream of bigotry with which David Duke would no doubt feel comfortable.
The US, for all its faults, is the only country in the world founded on the ideals of English Enlightenment Philosophy, especially John Locke's Second Treatise on Government. The brilliance of the US system is its capacity for self-correction, and that's what Drinking Liberally is intended to promote: the very involvement w/politics that is absolutely necessary if self-correction is to be a reality + the definition of 'all men' is to continue to expand, as it must.
-Z
I agree.
The United States is, for the most part, a noble and great experiment and one that I am very proud to be a part of.
Patriotism is progressive. Fanaticism, however, is not. Some people are confused by the two.
"Different strokes for
"Different strokes for different folks."
Some people feel unless you are always fighting or protesting, you are being lax. Others feel there is nothing wrong in celebrating what is right. Others believe in some sort of mix.
Personally, I feel you need a mix of diligence, community/civic activism and the ability to stop, take a breath and say "hey, THIS is a good thing and we should be happy about it".
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"yes adam gave some informative comments but he also seems to sprinkle a little adam dust on it." - merkin
One step further, I would
One step further, I would say that the United States is the only State founded principly on ideas. One of our most central tenets is the idea that we can change, for better or worse, simply by a free discourse of more ideas, rather than protracted and bloody struggles for supremacy of vision. This in itself was what won us so much respect the world over in our nation's infancy. To still have that quality will always be a source of pride, and will always be progressive.
Bingo!
I would take it even further: the US is founded on the highest principles of any state in the world. Most states are founded on one primary idea: 'we wuz here first!' The US was, as I said, founded on the ideals of English Enligtenment Philosophy, such as that freedom, democracy, and reason should be the primary values of a society. The US has manifestly not always lived up to these high ideas; but, as I said, its history has been a gradual expansion of the definition of 'all men' so as to give it a broader + more inclusive meaning.
I would, however, add one bloody huge caveat to all of the above, and that is that the current administrations actions on the world stage- including torture + the war of choice in Iraq- have done more to destroy international goodwill towards the US than anything else in our country's brief history. I recall reading stories of how, as WWII in Europe drew to a close, German soldiers were advised to surrender to the US, since they knew they would be better-treated in American hands than in the hands of any other army. I doubt this can be said after Abu Ghraib + Guantanamo. Indeed, perhaps the single greatest challenge on the international stage for our next President- irrelevant of party affiliation- will be to restore the world's respect for the US.
Drink to Madison + Locke!
-Z
Splitting the difference
I agree with most of the comments above, but... what do any of those things (the Constitution, political liberalism, democracy) really have to do with Flag Day, or even the flag of the United States? For many people, the dogmatic and often excessive deference to the flag represents what they like least about American political culture, especially the substitution of empty symbolism and rote, submissive behavior for real patriotism and a substantive engagement with the fate of our country and government, coupled with an aggressive attitude towards whoever doesn't toe the line. (The left, like other political-cultural bodies, can sometimes adopt the same sort of behavior towards its own, but usually over something slightly more issues-based than a flag.) Hysteria over the pledge of allegiance, constitutional amendments to ban flag-burning, the symbolism and rhetoric that's more often heavy-handed than not. I'm not trying to deny the legitimacy of all symbolic uses of the flag, e.g., flags for widows and family of dead soldiers. But those are special cases, and they don't exactly seem to be what Flag Day is really about.
So, Fourth of July, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, even Lincoln's Birthday, yes, sure, I am there. But Flag Day? It's just hard for me to find real political content in it. And I imagine other people might feel the same way.
Good points...
I look at Flag Day from a largely symbolic position. As the song "Grand Old Flag" puts it, the flag is "an emblem of/the land I love/the home of the free and the brave."
In other words, the flag represents those things which I hold dear about my country. Hysteria- over anything- is not something which I hold dear.
-Z
National pride
is the subject of the opening part of Achieving Our Country, a great work by the great American philosopher Richard Rorty, who died earlier this week.
Right: so, in order to do good things in the arena of politics, you need that thing that Rorty wrote about so much: hope. Specifically, you need to have hope that tomorrow can be better than today, or there is no point.
Hope is a big deal in American life and American politics, whether it's supplied by an inspiring story or by a program like Tony Payton's REACH.
From Rorty's POV, in order to have hope in the political arena--where democracy allows access to real power--you have to believe that America and Americans are capable of doing good things. In an essay from Philosophy and Social Hope, he talks specifically of constructing historical narratives that allow us, as Americans, to feel with deep emotion both the shame and the pride that the stories of people like Elizabeth Cady Stanton or James Baldwin (whose last sentence of The Fire Next Time provides Achieving's title) can make us feel.
Rorty aimed that work of 1998 at the Left, particularly those in academia who had become disengaged with real American political debate since the (relative) flop of Marxist-ish shenanigans circa 1968. Around the same time another great American philosopher, Martha Nussbaum, launched her famous, vicious attack on that (alt)rockstar of detached left-wing academia, Judith Butler, who had suggested cross-dressing as an alternative to political engagement. From a NY Times interview at the time:
I SO heart Martha Nussbaum.
And now she's my favorite living philosopher. Hum.
Nothing against cross-dressing. Wear what you want, just work the polls on e-day, I say. And thank goodness or Goddess, the academic Left has been coming down from the Ivory Tower more in the last few years. I'd like to think Rorty and Nussbaum played a role in that, but I suspect that George W. Bush's providing a second Vietnam also had a hand in it.
Anyway, if I had a flag to fly, I'd fly it at half-mast today in honor of Rorty.
Thanking all the valiant candidates endorsed by Philly For Change, and looking forward with GREAT expectations to the first four years of MAYOR MICHAEL A. NUTTER!