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Patriotic Anarchists Unite!
There's a debate raging elsewhere in the blogosphere about whether there's a difference between nationalism and patriotism. It seems clear to me that there is, for reasons that should be obvious if you attach each word to a region that isn't a nation-state. If you describe someone as a "Missouri patriot," you're saying she has a strong affection for the place she lives in. If you call her a "Missouri nationalist," you're implying she's some sort of secessionist, perhaps with a stash of arms hidden just west of St. Joe. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the majority of Missouri patriots are not Missouri nationalists.
It is just as possible, though not as overwhelmingly common, to be an American patriot without being an American nationalist. Granted, this might uncover dueling definitions of America. True patriotism is defined by the boundaries of your affection, not the boundaries of a real or potential political unit: Your country can extend just 20 miles from your home or all the way to Ottawa, depending on your roots, mood, and experiences. Nationalism can transcend borders as well, but it does so in a much bloodier manner.
Episiarch|4.1.08 @ 11:09AM|#
Patriotic Anarchists Unite!
OK! Anybody there?
Being an anarcho-libertarian is a lonely business.
x,y|4.1.08 @ 11:14AM|#
I'll cop to be an atheist and an anarchist who sometimes gets the chills when someone sings God Bless America really well.
Jesse Walker|4.1.08 @ 11:22AM|#
Someone has been ripping off of Orwell...
I hate to admit it, but I've never actually read that essay. It's
quoted somewhere in one of the opening links of the post,
though.
Abdul|4.1.08 @ 11:26AM|#
Nationalists and patriots? I spit on both of them for not being ballsy enough to come out as chauvinists and jingoists.
|4.1.08 @ 11:30AM|#
I'll cop to be an atheist and an anarchist who sometimes gets
the chills when someone sings God Bless America really well.
I'll cop to being an agnostic minarchist who got a little thrill of
pride when I watched the burgers liberate the croissants from the
Nazi sausages and pretzels in that food fight video.
|4.1.08 @ 11:33AM|#
Your country can extend just 20 miles from your home or all
the way to Ottawa
For this Canadian, my patriotism kind of skips over Ottawa. (You're
welcome to Ottawa, if you Americans want it.)
|4.1.08 @ 11:36AM|#
"For this Canadian, my patriotism kind of skips over Ottawa.
(You're welcome to Ottawa, if you Americans want it.)"
No thanks. I would however take anything West of Alberta. Let the
Quebec and the West go its own way and leave Toronto and Ottawa
stew in their own socialism.
|4.1.08 @ 11:39AM|#
The problem with stuff is that the criminals show up and ruin everything. Height Ashbury is a good example. According to what I have heard in interviews with Ken Kessy and Jerry Garcia, Heigh Ashbury was a really amazing place in the mid-60s. It really was a free spirited place and a lot of what it is cracked up to be. By 1967, however, it had gotten completely out of control and was populated largely by criminals, deadbeats, runaway teenagers and tourist buses there to see the hippies. For all of the "summer of love" crap, according to the people who had been there in the mid 1960s, 1967 Heigh Ashbury was a pretty negative place. I suspect that any area of real freedom you set up in this country will be quickly overrun by criminals and deadbeats once word gets out.
Edward|4.1.08 @ 11:40AM|#
Sounds like bullshit sophistry to me. Patriotism is "good" nationalism. Sometimes nationalism has been progressive and even inclusive (the slogan of 19th century Polish nationalists (patriots?)was "For our freedom and yours.)Usually nationalists (they often call themselves patriots) have some axe to grind with some enemy. Whether the Nazis were German nationalists or patriots depends on your perspective I imagine Ron Paul would call them patriots.
|4.1.08 @ 11:43AM|#
gets the chills when someone sings God Bless America really
well.
Many years ago (1995, I believe), in the course of the pre-race
rigamarole at Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland, the local
talent brought in to sing the Star Spangled Banner flamed out about
halfway through; the crowd came to the rescue and finished it off
for her. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand at
attention, out there on the grid.
Those were simpler times.
GILMORE|4.1.08 @ 11:45AM|#
The aforementioned Orwell piece:
Notes on Nationalism
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat
Comment I found summarizing some of it -
Orwell defined patriotism as "devotion to a particular place
and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in
the world but has no wish to force upon other people."
According to Orwell, nationalism is the habit of identifying
oneself with a single nation or an idea, and "placing it beyond
good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing
its interests.
Quote from his paper =
""All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances
between similar sets of facts. Actions are held to be good or bad,
not on their own merits but according to who does them, and there
is almost no kind of outrage - torture, the use of hostages, forced
labor, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery,
assassination, the bombing of civilians - which does not change its
moral color when committed by 'our' side.… The nationalist not only
does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but
has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about
them.""
javier|4.1.08 @ 11:45AM|#
Even though we use nation to refer to this country, when you use
nationalist I think it still derives from the old meaning of nation
as in differentiating between certain peoples. As Jesse pointed out
they can transcend borders like kurdish nationalist, black
nationalist, white nationalist or trying to united the germanic
people.
Patriotism is also troubling because it is defined by the
governmental boundries established, so it is very difficult for it
not to turn into government worship. I like vancouver just as much
as Seattle, am I not patriotic?
|4.1.08 @ 11:46AM|#
I think "nationalism" necessarily has a racial overtone. For that reason I don't see how the US strictly speaking can be nationalist. The fact is that the US such as it is is nothing but a spot on the map. Despite efforts to the contrary, anyone who lives here can become an America. Being an American is the product of where you live. "Nationalism" in every other context I can think of is a product of who you are. I could move to Korea or Germany but I really couldn't ever become a Korean or German nationalist because I am not a Korean or German. But, anyone can move to the US and claim to be an American not just politically but culturally.
The Wine Commonsewer|4.1.08 @ 11:47AM|#
I would however take anything West of Alberta
A history teacher once told us that sometime in the 19th Century
the US could have had all of the Yukon, BC, and NW Territories for
Maine.
I have no idea if that is urban myth or not, but it was true at one
time people didn't see the value of vast swaths of primeval
forested land.
|4.1.08 @ 11:48AM|#
I'm a patriot to the extent that America personifies the idea of
freedom, which is actually pretty well relative to other
countries.
Also, I think our mountains are majesticer than other countries',
and our plains are more fruity.
alan|4.1.08 @ 11:51AM|#
Old patriotic movies don't do it for me. An actor recently died,
one I wasn't really familiar with, and PBS showed a clip of him
playing a part beside John Wayne in the Alamo.
The two were guffawing together, and exhibiting 1940's era notions
of manliness. Pretty much all displays of masculinity in cinema
were goofy until Robert De Niro came along with his roll in Taxi
Driver (his Vito was a superb example too).
Speaking of the Great One, the one movie that really gets my
patriotic blood red hot is The Deer Hunter. By the end of that
movie, you feel as fucked over in the National sense as the
soldiers in that movie.
New World Dan|4.1.08 @ 11:54AM|#
Huh. As an open boarders enthusiast, I've been preaching the end of nationalism for some time. I've also been preaching the end of citizenship as well. Patriotism? If there were a serious threat to my way of life, I'd fight for it.
Jesse Walker|4.1.08 @ 11:58AM|#
I like vancouver just as much as Seattle, am I not
patriotic?
Sure -- you're a patriotic northwesterner.
alan|4.1.08 @ 12:00PM|#
Huh. As an open boarders enthusiast, I've been preaching the
end of nationalism for some time. I've also been preaching the end
of citizenship as well. Patriotism? If there were a serious threat
to my way of life, I'd fight for it.
How people feel about their Nation/State/Continent or even
Race/Gender is their business. When they want me to write a check
to support them, or any other form of deprivation though edict then
it becomes my business.
|4.1.08 @ 12:03PM|#
"How people feel about their Nation/State/Continent or even
Race/Gender is their business. When they want me to write a check
to support them, or any other form of deprivation though edict then
it becomes my business."
That is okay, just leave and don't take any of the benefits from
living here. For all its faults the US is still a better place to
live than most of the rest of the world by any measure. It is only
that way because for the last 230 years people have felt
differently than you and actually been willing to pay a price in
blood and money to make it that way. You in contrast get to wake up
every day and suck off that tit and do nothing for it other than be
lucky enough to be born here.
javier|4.1.08 @ 12:10PM|#
Sure -- you're a patriotic northwesterner.
Patriotism seems to have more of a state component to it.
Everything under the sovereignty of the US is american patriotism
and same for the Canada.
alan|4.1.08 @ 12:13PM|#
That is okay, just leave and don't take any of the benefits
from living here. For all its faults the US is still a better place
to live than most of the rest of the world by any measure. It is
only that way because for the last 230 years people have felt
differently than you and actually been willing to pay a price in
blood and money to make it that way. You in contrast get to wake up
every day and suck off that tit and do nothing for it other than be
lucky enough to be born here.
Did you get misty eyed with every rising wave of sanctimony in your
body as you wrote this drivel?
|4.1.08 @ 12:32PM|#
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Which, of course, doesn't mean that every patriot is a scoundrel.
Really, patriotism can only serve as a place for scoundrels to take
refuge if the vast majority of patriots aren't scoundrels.
|4.1.08 @ 12:33PM|#
Labels can be such slippery things when people get involved. Too bad we need them sometimes.
|4.1.08 @ 12:34PM|#
British Columbia will be ours, as soon as Québec succeeds in
seceding.
Free Missoura!
|4.1.08 @ 12:35PM|#
TWC
I don't know about "...the US could have had all of the Yukon, BC,
and NW Territories for Maine" but in the 1870s it was touch and go
whether British Columbia would join Canada or the US. Opinion in
the then British colony was pretty strongly in favor of the latter
(most of its residents were Americans, after all). And the British
government at that point didn't much care either way.
It wasn't until the Canadian government promised to build a
transcontinental railway that the BCers came around.
My grandfather said that when he was growing up in Bar Harbor in
the 1890s/19oughts (he was born in 1893) they felt closer cultural
ties to Nova Scotia than to to anywhere in the USA.
When I was at school in Canada in the sixties my history teacher
said that when he was a kid in Nova Scotia in the 20s there was
still a sizable chunk of the population that ranted about what a
sellout Confederation was and how they should've "joined the
States" when they had a chance.
Back in 1964 or so Macleans magazine did a survey on
attitudes towards joining the US. At that time something like 29%
were in favor. The highest in the Maritimes (with something like
39%) and Alberta (33%+/-).
Of course, I doubt it's anywhere near that today, but I suspect
it's higher that most people think.
|4.1.08 @ 12:36PM|#
Jesse,
St Joe is on the state line - any weapons stashed west of there
would be in Kansas, something completely out of the question for a
Missouri Nationalist. See: Quantrill.
alan|4.1.08 @ 12:38PM|#
Of course, the true Patriots are Lockheed Martin, General
Dynamics, and Boeing:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/31/AR2008033102789.html?hpid=topnews
Rent Seekers of the World Unite (That includes you John)!
alan|4.1.08 @ 12:41PM|#
British Columbia will be ours, as soon as Québec succeeds in
seceding.
Free Missoura!
I never liked Missoura! But then this kid, Tyler Hansbrough came
along. Now, I say God bless, Missoura!
|4.1.08 @ 12:41PM|#
A patriot is like a man who thinks his wife is the most beautiful woman in the world. A nationalist is like a man who feels insulted if you think your wife is the most beautiful woman in the world.
chauviniste|4.1.08 @ 1:02PM|#
If you describe someone as a "Missouri patriotess," you're saying she has a strong affection for the place she lives in. If you call her a "Missouri nationaliste," you're implying she's some sort of secessioniste/ess
Some Missourian|4.1.08 @ 1:03PM|#
Dude, just west of St. Joe is Kansas. Nothin' but dayum free-staters over that way.
property-rights chauviniste|4.1.08 @ 1:04PM|#
perhaps with a stash of arms hidden just west of St. Joe. I'm going to go out on a limb
Get you own damn arm to go out on!
|4.1.08 @ 1:10PM|#
According to FEMA, most of you sound like terrorist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XC1fk_EO3c
and according to the CIA, most of you look like terrorist
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN3032631620080330?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBO7xBpJtoc
yep, blue eyed blond haired Al Quada is now a talking point from
the governemnt. How does that make you feel?
Jesse Walker|4.1.08 @ 1:12PM|#
Steve: You wouldn't want to store the arms where the Missouri authorities could get to them, do you?
twv|4.1.08 @ 1:38PM|#
Hmmmm. A patriot is like a man who fights for the honor of his
wife.
A nationalist is like the man who rents his wife out as a harlot on
Saturdays and dresses her up as a matron on Sundays.
|4.1.08 @ 3:40PM|#
I think that properly, "patriotism" and "nationalism" should
mean the same thing -- "love of one's nation." However, the meaning
of "nation" has become confused with that of "the State." And in
practice I think "nationalism" has become misidentified to mean
"love of one's State." Then again, so is "patriotism."
If that is confusing, then I need to once again reprint something I
last
posted on H&R about a year ago, but it originates in the
future:
------------------------------------------
To understand this period of world history, it is necessary for the
student to become familiar with certain terms, some of which are
now obsolete:
Country - A particular geographic region, as
variously defined by a common climate, terrain features, or
artificial or natural boundaries.
Nation - An extended group of people who feel an
affinity with each other on the basis of common culture, common
descent or other shared trait they hold as important. Similar to
"tribe," but usually applied to a larger group. A nation may be
largely confined to a particular country (Texians) or it may be
widely scattered (Jews).
State - A criminal syndicate that claims a
monopoly on the legitimate use of force for creating and enforcing
rules within a certain geographic region. (Local states may be
allied in a pattern of fealty with a larger, over-arching regional
state.)
Patriotism - Love of one's nation, usually
combined with affection for the country which that nation
inhabits.
Modern readers often have great difficulty in understanding the
Warring States period (1789-2019) because writers of that time
often used the terms "country," "nation" and "state"
interchangeably -- sometimes in a deliberate attempt to confuse and
deceive, but more often simply out of an unquestioned habit of
mind. During that period, most of the world was ruled by states,
each of which indeed claimed to rule a particular nation inhabiting
a particular country. For example, during that period the "French
nation," the "country of France" and the territory and people ruled
by "the French state" were essentially one and the same.
Because of this close identification, many patriotic people also
closely identified with the state that ruled them -- absurd as this
may seem to us today. At the same time, those who dissented from
their ruling state were often accused of "lacking
patriotism."
-- from Western Culture: The Roots of Modern Civilization;
Volume 8: Wither the State
English edition
Uploaded 2112 Adam Smith University Press
http://ssww.asu.ay/pubs/westernculture/8_state
Urbital of Alta Ayngrad
Anglo-Yankish Anarcho-Commonwealth
Cislunar Orbital Zone
|4.1.08 @ 4:03PM|#
yep, blue eyed blond haired Al Quada is now a talking point
from the governemnt. How does that make you feel?
It's about time. This brown eyed, brown haired, patriotic American
never did trust those assholes.
Mike Laursen|4.1.08 @ 4:10PM|#
For all its faults the US is still a better place to live
than most of the rest of the world by any measure. It is only that
way because for the last 230 years people have felt differently
than you and actually been willing to pay a price in blood and
money to make it that way.
Partially true. Many of our soldiers have fought for our freedom,
and we should be grateful for that.
Partially not true. The sad truth is that many of our soldiers have
fought to steal territory from others or oppress native populations
or for no good reason at all. Even for that, we should show
gratitude to the ordinary soldier who had his heart in the right
place, thinking he was on the side of right.
Partially not true, for another reason. A lot of what makes the
U.S. such a great place had to do with people engaging in trade,
hard work, and fun.
Other Matt|4.1.08 @ 4:28PM|#
Many years ago (1995, I believe), in the course of the
pre-race rigamarole at Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland, the
local talent brought in to sing the Star Spangled Banner flamed out
about halfway through; the crowd came to the rescue and finished it
off for her. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand at
attention, out there on the grid.
I was at a high school wrestling match where the scratchy taped
version of the SSB crapped out bad, this was the winter of 2001 if
I recall correctly. The opposing team's heavyweight wrestler
stepped in and amazed everyone with singing the SSB in a clear
baritone. I believe he kicked ass on the mat, too, but it was
probably the most memorable rendition I'll have, in a good way. The
worst was a Wash Redskins cheerleader who forgot the words halfway
through, can you imagine 50K people watching you screw that up?
|4.1.08 @ 5:19PM|#
"I could move to Korea or Germany but I really couldn't ever
become a Korean or German nationalist because I am not a Korean or
German"
I disagree. I think one can be British (ancestry) and also be an
Irish Nationalist. Or maybe Spanish and also a Basque Nationalist.
You might deem such an individual's perspective insincere, I
don't.
In Hawaii are many who believe: (1) Hawaii is the greatest, most
beautiful place in the world; (2) people born in Hawaii are
superior to people born in other places; and (3) Hawaii should
break from the US and re-assert the Kingdom.
Many of these folks were born in California. I would call them
Hawaii nationalists. They do have guns hidden, BTW.
Same holds for Texas.
And what of a militant Black Nationalist who undergoes DNA testing
& discovers she is Native America and not of African ancestry
(unless you go back as far as the great migration, rendering us all
African)? Assume the test results do not change her political views
one iota, is she, by definition, no longer a Black
Nationalist?
It aint necessarily so.
|4.1.08 @ 8:56PM|#
SxCx:
Patriotism is hats, Nationalism is guns.
Love the definition (teh funny!), but its not quite there yet.
Patriots often wear hats and carry guns at the same time. Just
sayin'.
|4.1.08 @ 9:39PM|#
I'm a patriot, Lonewacko is a nationalist.
You may be a patriot, GILMORE. But Lonewacko is an ignorant
asshole.
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