New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | January 20, 2006

Julian Sanchez takes a look at Kwame Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism, and wonders how we can de-Americanize universal values.

Comments

|1.20.06 @ 6:20PM|#

When the rest of the world lacks tyranny and free countries that smirk at US-style "hyper-individualism" but consider it normal, then we can talk about these as universal values.

Then, at that point, we could make the world (including America) actually completely
live up to those values.

|1.20.06 @ 6:21PM|#

Grr.

"When the rest of the world lacks tyranny and free countries that don't smirk...but consider it normal".

I can't type, today.

|1.20.06 @ 6:27PM|#

"We too often insist on branding the war on terror with an American flag, reinforcing the portrait of a conflict between the ummah and one insular tribe, rather than an alternative global community."

Could this be red meat for the nationalists on whose votes the Rethuglicans rely?

|1.20.06 @ 7:44PM|#

Maybe it's just me, but I tend to almost completely ignore any point being made when the writer resorts to terms like Rethuglican, Dumbocrat, NeoKKKon, etc.

|1.20.06 @ 7:51PM|#

It's not just you, agentalbert.

Wow, has Julian been working on a new thesis or something? That's some seriously meaty stuff.

The best part for my money and limited brain power:

the most authentically American patriotism, then, would be the abjuration of patriotism

|1.20.06 @ 8:03PM|#

"Maybe it's just me, but I tend to almost completely ignore any point being made when the writer resorts to terms like Rethuglican, Dumbocrat, NeoKKKon, etc."

I hardly imply that all Republicans are thugs, just the ones at the very top.

I apologize if I've offended your ever-so-fine sensabilities.

|1.21.06 @ 12:21AM|#

Hey andy, you didn't offend us. You just gave us a big reason to not listen to what you said.

The issue for me is what's worth reading and what's worth considering in this big fat Internet thing. I tend to bail out when someone is using insults to drive home their point, even when I agree with the insulter to some degree.

Going back to peek at it, your point about pandering to the nationalist constituency has some merit. I've learned, perhaps wrongly, that most posts that contain pandering insults don't have merit.

|1.21.06 @ 12:56AM|#

Oh what the fuck, you have to be from somewhere. Personally I'm going to have a hard to working up any particular pride in being Cameroonian, since I've never been there.

Ok now tell me I've completely missed the point and to RTFA.

|1.21.06 @ 10:30AM|#

Douglas Fletcher,

I RTFA and it seems the thesis to universalize American values is valid. However, in addition to your point, these values, I believe, have much less to do with what makes 'patriotism' than we'd like to imagine.

Maybe this is too simple, but I think patriotism is much more a romantic concept than the mere sharing of abstract values. It's also a cultural identity based on a shared aesthetic and history. That's not something that can be easily universalized. I'll bet a big chunk of it is like having a fondness for chocolate cake or blonde women. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, and as a personal preference it's fine. The challenge is to have discipline and keep it in perspective, not just try and eliminate it. To not let one's idiosyncratic preferences become obsessive to the point where one confuses them with values.

|1.21.06 @ 3:36PM|#

Lot's of people have a fondness for blond women, that's already a universal. Heh heh just kidding.

The problem with Julian's thoery is, at bottom it seems to be saying that liberal values only need better PR. IMHO, the serious ideologues who have chosen against "univeral" values have probably arrived at a conscious choice. The folks fulminating against "neo-liberalism" are harrdly idiot-savants - it's a cliche that most of these guys have Phd's from Harvard or someplace equally expensive. For instance, I wouldn't be surprised in Bin Laden quotes Thomas Jefferson in his next video while at the same time insisting that taliban-style rule is the coolest.

|1.21.06 @ 3:36PM|#

From my perspective, you've both got a big chunk of the point. Like I said, it was pretty meaty, so get what you can from it.

My take is that he was observing that American patriotism is "supposedly" about a sharing of abstract values regardless of shared aesthetic and history, which is why he all but describes it as an oxymoron of sorts.

Yeah, we live here, not in Cameroon. Even those who came from Cameroon and choose to stay here probably prefer it here. That means that we all tend to dig the aesthetic and history that we get here, so romantic patriotism follows pretty naturally. But when that patriotism stops meaning "Yeah for us" and starts to mean "Boo for them" it butts headlong into our shared values of equality and human dignity.

So, when we conflate (love that word) our romantic patriotism and our values patriotism by holding up American as the standard bearer for liberal universal, our message gets lost on most everyone, often including ourselves.

The problem may have less to do with us, however, and more to do with the vocabulary of most of the world. Even when we know the difference and demonstrate that we know the difference between values and romance, all they hear are the conotations of our words which sound like romantic patriotism. So, the problem may not be so much what we mean by what we say, but what is heard when we say it.

|1.21.06 @ 3:40PM|#

SM,

So are you saying that the OBLs of the world are all just bat shit crazy?

|1.21.06 @ 4:05PM|#

Hell no, I'm saying he's are pretty lucid ie he's not doing the things he does coz of a failure in his education or someone didn't alert him to the greatness of the Bll of Rights. As Julian says, these guys are likely a reaction against globalization. I'm saying that a kindler, gentler globalization might not make a difference. Patriotism can take the blame, but someone from a real country going to be doing the globalizing. And if nothing else these people will blame the masons or the jews, right ?

|1.21.06 @ 4:34PM|#

Rimfax,
Just to clarify - IMO Appiah (& Julain) correctly describes the globalized nature of the world of ideas and commerce etc
- that's just reality. Of course folks in the Congo wear German shirts and watch MTV. But that doesn't stop nationalism at all.
Just a thought expermiment - Islam is a universal faith. I'm not an expert butI bet it's got all sorts of injuctions about individualism and loving your brother coz all religions throw in that shit along with the ones about killing everyone who doesn't agree with you. Would you be willing to go for it if it were shorn of it's Arab origins ? Heck, Scientology is galactic faith ? Would it be more acceptable if they coclealed that Tom Cruise is a believer ?

|1.21.06 @ 10:56PM|#

"I apologize if I've offended your ever-so-fine sensabilities."

A smug asshole offering a backhanded apology in an attempt to label his detractor as a smug asshole.

One wonders if there's a possibility for infinite regression...

|1.22.06 @ 3:07AM|#

Lot's of people have a fondness for blond women, that's already a universal.

Not me, I like brunettes and red heads.

|1.22.06 @ 3:09AM|#

Would it be more acceptable if they coclealed that Tom Cruise is a believer?

No, it would be more acceptable if it wasn't a money-making scam posed as a UFO-cult created by a very bad sci-fi writer.

M. Simon|1.22.06 @ 10:26AM|#

I have no interest in blonde women. Just ask my brunette mate.