I don't know how long the fight over critical race theory will last. Conservatives are already showing signs of getting bored by it. But one thing is certain: it's a skirmish, not a war, and its origins go back, like so many culture war artifacts, to the decades shortly after the end of World War II.
It's no secret that ever since McCarthyism and Vietnam, modern liberals have had a fraught relationship with traditional ideas of patriotism. We are uneasy with open displays of flag waving and nationalism. We find unapologetic expressions of patriotism to be dangerously tantamount to jingoism. We are reluctant to say that the United States is the greatest country in the world.
All of this is understandable. If your country goes on communist witch hunts; if your country turns water cannons and attack dogs on civil rights protesters; if your country kills millions in a war in Vietnam—if your country does all this and more, how can you say in good faith that it's the greatest country in the world?
But this doesn't go down well with the half of the country that's unashamedly patriotic and distrusts anyone who isn't. Liberals have never had a good answer to this, typically mumbling something about true love of country being expressed by those who understand our shortcomings and are working to fix them. This has never been persuasive to anyone who doesn't believe it already.
And it's what the fight over CRT is really about. Nobody actually cares about the technical definition of CRT, and it's pointless to mock people who use the phrase without knowing anything about its origins and whether it's really taught in our public schools. Nor is it really about racism for most people. It's about patriotism.
The underlying question, as always, is this: How can you teach children the truth about slavery, native genocide, red scares, and other ugly episodes from our past, and yet also teach them that the United States is the greatest country on earth? Because this is what the CRT warriors really care about. They care about our children learning to love their country.
This, for example, is at the heart of the fight over Nikole Hannah-Jones' 1619 Project. It's not about minor errors of fact or even the factual content writ large. It's about what the authors think about America, a word I use advisedly. Do they think America is a great idea enacted by great people who made some mistakes along the way? Or do they think that America is at root a racist country created and built by racist white men who also did a few good things along the way?
The former highlights both the ideals of our origin and the events in our history that make America admirable—democracy, personal liberty, economic dynamism and entrepreneurial spirit, religious tolerance, victory over fascism and communism—and thus allows you to acknowledge even the most sordid chapters in our history while still believing that America is the greatest country on earth. The latter simply doesn't. It makes America no better or worse than any other country that prospered due to the blood on its hands.
And there it is. This is what the fight has been about for decades. How do we present American history to our children in a way that acknowledges the worst of our past while still teaching them that America is the greatest country in the world and well worth our unconditional love? And do we even want to?
If you focus on that, real compromises might start to appear. Or not. Maybe it's an impossible circle to square. But if you focus on anything else, you're certain to never do anything except evade what the real dispute is about.
This may not be the ideal discussion for me. I don't like patriotism. Your country is your home and it's where most of the people you care about live, so you should want it to be good, you should fight for it to be good. To me, that's commitment. But loyalty? I don't know about that. I wouldn't put my country over my fellow humans. I wouldn't follow it into stupid wars. I wouldn't do something I fundamentally disagreed with just because my country did. People first, not countries. And that's not me hating America. I'd feel that way if I lived in Canada or England or Switzerland or any of them. My loyalty is to people I care about and people of the world. Not some abstract geosocial representation.
Is America the greatest country? Are any of them? Are we going by the AP poll or Coaches? Do we look at US News rankings? The whole notion is absurd. Countries have millions of residents and complex histories and features. Some good, some bad. If someone wants to root for it like it's a football team, that's their business, or I guess it is right until they start wanting to fight other countries. I know patriotism is the norm, I just think it's an unhealthy one. I don't think people should hate their countries, but it's just a place, OK? Nobody gets this crazy about their counties, and most people don't get this crazy about their states. If you're going to build a mythos, build it around something that matters, like kindness or decency.
You're tempting fate... Now we're going to have Nate "Loq Qabin" Silver create a KenPom-dot-com or Jeff Sagarin style rating for countries.
+1000
+2000
"I know patriotism is the norm, I just think it's an unhealthy one."
If you define patriotism as simply love of country and loyalty to it, I'm not seeing how that is unhealthy. It doesn't mean you commit to blind loyalty - Germans who rejected Nazism would have been the real German patriots. The loyalty has to be due to your country standing for principles that you deeply believe in (freedom, democracy, equality before the law). Your country should earn your loyalty.
Yes, the word "love" as in "love of country" sounds a bit odd. But hey - I love the UK, Canada, and Italy - so can't I love the US too?
"I wouldn't put my country over my fellow humans."
Would you really not have given Americans first access to covid vaccines? Should we accept say 20 million immigrants a year from poor countries? Should we tax ourselves at a 50% rate for all and redistribute our massive wealth to the poor around the world? Sorry, we should help others, but sometimes we have to look out for our own.
You provided ideas for the US of:
"freedom, democracy, equality before the law"
And with recent actions by some parties to overthrow the popular vote an expression of support for democracy?
Is the lack of accountability for police violence against minorities equality before the law?
If these are among your ideals for the US, then demonstrably the US is not presently living. up too, and arguably frequently has not lived up to, these ideals.
How then can you. be patriotic to a country which does not honor the ideals you appear to consider critical to the honor of the country?
You kind of have to though. That's the price of being a citizen. That's the bargain that exists by living there.
My pithy, oversimplified comment is that those who are gung-ho about patriotism are merely tribalists dedicated to the symbols of patriotism and cheering on the team. Liberals, on the other hand, are dedicated to the stated ideals of the country and will openly state when they feel those ideals are not being held up by those trusted with authority.
I guess, in the end, "patriotism" is a litmus test for if someone is willing to question authority or not.
"Our country, right or wrong" was a toast offered at a Washington banquet by Stephen Decatur--one of many, and coming towards the end. It's an good bet most of the people were drunk by then. Some wag equated it to "My mother, drunk or sober."
Carl Schurz offered his own version of it as a senator: “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.” He was cheered by the entire Senate. Today John Kennedy might ask him if he's a communist.
Many of the people who are getting agitated about CRT thought it was fine when Trump palled up with Putin and denigrated John McCain, a national hero. US nationalism is not the impetus for the Trump movement or for the current reaction to the continued push for racial equality, which is what the CRT issue is all about. Youngkin didn't win by appealing to patriotism - he didn't rant about pulling down statues of George Washington (which he could have done), he ranted about teaching anti-racism in schools.
What is going on can be attributed to instinctive tribalism or nationalism, but it is developing into loyalty to a racist and plutocratic subnation. This happened before, when the Confederacy split off. No doubt the Confederates thought they had the true spirit of Americanism, but their actual loyalty was to the way of life based on slavery. Trump represents the more recent Jim Crow way of life, which is not as dominant anymore but still a major factor in the lives of many whites.
McCain was a far more appropriate symbol of true national patriotism, but when he ran for President he never got the kind of support that Trump has.
The main foundations of the developing split, which has been deliberately engineered by Republicans even before Trump, are racism and religion, not economics or true patriotism.
I agree with you. The blind fanatic support for Trump -- who didn't hesitate to go around talking about America being the laughingstock of the world, and most assuredly DID tell John Kelly that he couldn't understand the sacrifice of U.S. soldiers killed in combat -- is completely incompatible with any traditional coherent notion of patriotism.
It's almost as senseless as supporting Trump because you're a Christian.
Trump's allegiance to the US - or democracy for that matter - is based only on how well it can make him appear as a revered hero. An awful lot of Americans keep failing Trump in this regard, and he hates them for it. In fact, he'd shred our democracy and country to spite them if he could.
I was initially going to post that Kevin is once again downplaying racism but this post perfectly reflects the true nature of the fight against CRT, racism, nothing more, nothing less.
Rockefeller Republican Kevin Drum just misses the Rockefeller Drug Laws.
yup. kevin certainly isn't blind to racism, but he seems consistently unwilling to understand or acknowledge that it is the core ideology of the republican base. the rest is just sophistry and justification.
"Blind racism" is not the core ideology of the Republican base. There are no calls for making new laws that treat people differently based on race. True racism would seek Jim Crow type laws. You are engaging in mindreading when assuming the average Republican voter is driven by racism.
Trump supporters think liberals/progressives are driven by an unspoken desire to tear down the US and eventually silence all opposition to them. They are mindreaders too.
both sides, amirite!?!? except one side is literally full of white supremacists who recently tried to violently overthrown the government. but both side, for sure.
I'm not saying both sides are just as bad or good on political matters. The right elected Trump, and still supports him, and that is downright dangerous. Trump is a master demagogue and he has duped them pretty well. Most even believe his Big Lie that the election was stolen.
However, both sides do engage about equally in mindreading. Neither side will admit to believing the things their opponents say they believe. But each side says they can read the telltale signs. In fact, they are so good at mindreading that it is completely obvious what their opponents really believe.
So, how was the Patriot Front March on Saturday?
Sorry that you didn't have better transportation than a U-Haul moving van, though. Must have felt like the Blind Sheikh's ordnance or Tim Mc Veigh's gardening supplies.
This sounds like the "America, love it or leave it" battles I remember when I was coming of age during the Vietnam War. It goes back further than that and it will go on as long as we're a country. Some people hear criticism as hatred of the country. Some see love of country as a celebration of all that's bad. There's no room for nuance, which is a rare thing in political debates generally, but especially in our social media age.
A lot depends on what's at stake. If people debate tax rates, e.g., there's usually room for disagreement. Vietnam was different because the country was at war and any criticism about what we were doing sounded (to some ears) like it might be support for the other side. I think it's even harder today because "the other side" is not an external but an internal threat -- one of our major political parties. And the enemy is one that a lot of people in the county have a longstanding affiliation with. The media generally fails to recognize the dangerous threat the party has become, and it treats any criticism of the party as normal partisan politics. Media often defers to the party as the true patriots, which only compounds the problem.
It's a challenge for liberals. The nature of progressivism is identifying faults in the status quo and pushing for reform. So liberals often are seen as the critics and that's going to rub some people the wrong way.
But now there's a real opportunity to flip the script. It's an open question if liberals can push an affirmative vision of what America and its heritage is all about, and push against the radical changes that conservatives are working night and day to achieve. That's what worked for Biden in 2020. That vision could be fleshed out more eloquently and with more detail.
One of the issues where the usual script no longer applies: abortion. The status quo is popular (by 2 to 1) and has a long, 50-year history. Dems have an opening if they want to seize it. (They really need a new brand of messaging though -- less scared and more self-assured.)
A Congressman from KY was tweeting this holiday photo today:
https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1467197523127422979?s=20
It's brazen, of course, and meant to inflame. But Dems should respond with more than just condemnation. Can they actually respond with a positive vision about the spirit of Christmas? It's not Dems' comfort zone, but it would strike a chord with a lot of voters.
Exactly, though a condemning response should be "The Prince of Peace was born in a stable over 2 thousand years ago, and this family are celebrating His birth by displaying machines to kill people. A disgusting contempt for Christmas!"
Just imagine if the Jesus of Benedetta's visions from the new Verhoeven film had had an AR instead of a broadsword.
Right wing "patriotism" is the product of a shallow ego, or deep-seated insecurity. I think more often than not many of these people are well aware (at least in their heart of hearts) that the US has many profound problems, and that, in numerous key areas, it has fallen behind both its high income country peers and its autocratic competitors. But they're not capable or willing to mount a rational response (which would involve trying to improve things, because, you know, when you love your country you want it to excel; you don't want it to fall behind).
The puppeteers manipulating these masses, of course, are only too happy to use this blindness and obstinacy to feather their own nests.
I see the exact same phenomenon here in China*, by the way. Love of country is hard-wired into our DNA. It's the modern manifestation of tribalism, which in turn flows from our species's nature as a social creature. Love of country is a fundamentally emotional (or, I dare say, genetic) —not rational—phenomenon, just like love of one's hometown, or family. What's dangerous is when this love of country manifests itself in blind obstinacy instead of resolve to make things better.
*I know a young man here in Beijing—a colleague—who spent a couple of years in the army before going back to school. I asked him out of curiosity if he'd ever consider re-entering the service full time (he's in the reserves) as a career option. He replied, "no," unless it's to invade Taiwan. So this young dude, full or promise and with his whole life ahead of him, is eager to risk his life for a war, that, if successful, would allow China to increase its territory by .7%.
Fucking madness. Liberals are quite right to be skeptical of patriotism. A little bit goes an awfully long way.
Haha, hope he gets put on the front lines and eats a bullet.
Right Wingers are no longer into nationalism, but globalism. That is the paradox you miss. Nationalism died in 1929.
Just guessing based on the recent immigrants I’ve talked to over the years. What they admire about the U.S. is, essentially, the ideals and goals expressed in our founding documents, not whether the country has lived up to those ideals. Assuming enough of the country is striving to meet those ideals.
I think that’s true with some of the “patriotic” folks. Focus on “ We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”,
Not on whether our actions prove that we actually believe that.
Since WW II Republicans have always pretended to the the patriot party. Because the ideology of the Democratic party was closer to that of Russia and China, our national enemies after WW II, they could criticize Democrats as "socialist", meaning foreign enemies - and they still do this. But it was never a really decisive issue. Goldwater was a strong nationalist or "patriot" and he lost in a landslide to LBJ, who was far more "socialistic" than any Democratic President since. What tipped the balance shortly after Goldwater and caused the US to go in a much more conservative economic direction was the deliberate adoption of racism by Republicans. Lower-income whites did not suddenly become enamored of voodoo economics, nor did they become more patriotic. As non-whites have increased in the population and as open racism has become less tolerated, white resentment has increased and Republicans have become even more dependent on it. Trump's critical issue was not nationalism, it was racial xenophobia.
Many pundits and reporters have gotten onto the wrong track by attributing the developing polarization to economics (Kevin did himself in a recent post). Of course this idea is favored by the owners of the big media - they want to curb any leftward economic tendencies. But Kevin takes a weird and false direction in calling on "patriotism". Trump and a large fraction of Republicans are not pushing the supremacy of the US, they are pushing the supremacy of the white "race" within the US, and also the power of their religion. The smaller and economically powerful fraction of Republicans is pushing the welfare of internationalized corporations and the benefit of the rich.
The fight about CRT isn't about some philosophical contradiction between teaching negative parts of US history and teaching that the US is the greatest country. It's about racism, and white people refusing to acknowledge it's history, current prevalence and immense impact on people of color in the country. Kevin, you really need to stop trying to overcomplicate and explain away the obvious answer to the majority of republican ideology. For the party elite, it's almost all about money. For the base it's almost all about racism, sexism and general bigotry.
How can "white people" who have no historical basis in slavery, live up to anything??? Are you that retarded??? Should blacks live up to the damage gang violence has caused white people over the last 40 years???
You represent the problem. A ignorant idiot who doesn't understand history. But must invent it
perfect example of my point. thanks.
Nope, you are a living point. Failed.
Kevin, I think, makes a valid point. I now live in a country with similar historical pretentions of being a light for the world, France, though patriotism is less loud here. And at times I've seen a similar dynamic play out wherein the left decries French actions and the right says "don't denigrate your own country". Closure comes from the top, for example when Chirac went public over the sins of Vichy France or when Hollande admitted the massacres the French committed in Algeria. Then, suddenly, the patriots will say a truly great country owns up to its mistakes, and the issue becomes a non-issue. I realize this is a bit simplistic but the point is a President can play a role no-one else can.
Liberty Equality and Fraternity is absolutely a better trio than Life Liberty and Property.
Here I go disagreeing again. If progressives insist on looking at this through their own justifications, then you are handing the country over to the right. I don't care if it's called CRT or woke, or whatever, there are real issues out there that would once have been of concern to the left wing. Like freedom of speech and thought. There is a real, and I think valid, concern on the right, that the left wing is telling us how we must think and shutting down real openness so we can figure out what's bugging people.
You are criticized if you dare have a Christmas party with traditional Christmas songs (I know because that just happened to my organization). I love traditional music and culture of all sorts, but now how we celebrate is fraught with criticism and wokeness. I don't want to lose "The First Noel" or "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and replace them with "Frosty the Snowman" and "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer."
By the way, my group also plays Klezmer and Hannukah music in our programming. But are we appropriating someone else's culture?
The War on Christmas is back, but it's more a quagmire, given El Pepe Maximo's recent joy in lighting the National Christmas Tree.
Damn Catholics.
Native genocide is another farce. Should natives be taught the Columbian Exchange??? The real genocide. Other than that, it was a 2 way street. Did the European settlers fight the "natives"??? Absolutely. Did they befriend some of the natives?? Absolutely. Were their despicable acts??? Yes(see, Mothman). But genocide???? Smallpox, swine flu, etetete. Lock the bug up!!!!!
Close. But if there is one thing which makes the US different than the rest of the first world it’s that the US is the only country founded on “don’t tell me what to do.”.
It morphs into religious stories of the old American west, where it’s just a man and his gun against the bad guys, and in the shootouts good always wins (an aside- all those shootouts on main street and no bystanders ever get hit?)
Now, as far as racism goes, at the minute it’s all about “I’m not an actual racist, don’t tell me we can no longer call the Washington Redskins the Redskins.”
But it’s true “patriotism” is racism fully - there are no calls to build a wall to keep white canadians out. There isn’t much else on which the Dems can be accused of anti patriotism.
Lol, where are "white Canadian" scabs? ?? Lazy post
There was one border state governor, I forget which one, that called for a wall along the Canadian border. The Canadian response, by a large margin, was "good idea".
Le Page? Sununu? Gianforte?
Changing the specifics to show the faulty reasoning.
>>Conservatives say 2+2=5.
>>Liberals have never had a good answer to this, typically mumbling something about take two apples and two more apples and count them. This has never been persuasive to anyone who doesn't believe it already.
>>Nobody actually cares about the technical definition of 2+2, and it's pointless to mock people who use the phrase without knowing anything about its origins and whether it's really taught in our public schools. Nor is it really about math for most people. It's about something else.
No, it really is about math. If you deny the basic, provable math facts, then there is no point to any discussion related to it, and counting problems are not going to be resolved.
If you deny the basic, provable CRT facts, then you can discuss patriotism all day long, but the people who deny CRT will still deny CRT, and the problems related to that will not be solved.
Maybe you come at it from the patriotism angle, and once (if) you change minds on that, then you can go back to the facts of CRT. But you do have to go back to that and change minds there before any real progress is made.
I guess what you're saying here is that Republican politicians like Donald Trump should stop saying things like "you think our country's so innocent?" and colluding with the country's enemies and denigrating the country's allies and so on. That was your point, right? Because conservatives are all about patriotism and this kind of thing will turn them off, right?
+1
I fall close to Royko in my thinking but I've come to express and affirm patriotism. Keeping a country together means having some solidarity with one's fellow citizens. We might be hypocrites as a country, but hypocrisy is an innate human condition as far as I can see, and a country is just us people.
I have also known and helped many immigrants come to this country (India, China, Nepal, Venezuela) and I cannot express how grateful they are for the United States. Really, this experience has changed my views more than anything. We are not perfect, nor have we ever been, but we can get better by pulling together as citizens and that makes us great. But we also suck a little, always, because--humans.
White race is debatable. Looks like Zionism to me. Your not separating the Forrest from the trees
Should climate change fighters claim anti- fossil fuels is a pro-white thing and the colored hoard wants to burn the sky with fossil fuels??? You see my point, it's dialectical. I also don't think it helps Republicans like they think. I think the million or so Reagan/Laf Dems went strongly for Obama went Trump in large numbers. But they are the ultimate swing voter. Single issue voters who don't follow closely the ideological dialect.
"It makes America no better or worse than any other country that prospered due to the blood on its hands."
I personally find this more inspiring. If you are sanctified chosen ones then doing good is just in your nature. If we do the right thing(tm) it's because we chose.
But I am big into history and the 1619 folks made historical errors that I will not excuse any more than the right's. You don't get a pass on facts
And what historical errors did the 1619 project make?
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If you aren't interested in promoting racism, the struggle for abolition and the civil rights movement are great inspirations for patriotism, so this post doesn't really make sense to me.
As I read the discussion I am reminded of the potato potato argument.
As I see the situation, Kevin is indeed correct: the grounding of the conservative right is patriotism.
But patriotism to what?
I suggest that, based their hyper focus on the original documents, founding fathers, Federalist Papers etc., they are patriot ic to a country which his:
- Northern White European
- male dominated (even John Adam's ignored Abigail's plea to remember the women)
- protestant
- enshrined slavery in the constitution
In short they are patriotic to a racist, male dominated, hirarchical contry and do not want it to evolve to the egalitarian ideals which are arguably concealed in the dreams of some of the original founding fathers.
This group, under the guise of patriotism to the founding documents, cost 600,000+ lives in a fruitless civil war to try to enshrine the ability of whites to enslave blacks.
This group is now, under the guise of patriotism to the founding documents, trying to suppress the move of the US into being an egalitarian diverse country. And again they are willing to use force to support their aims.
So it is not patriotism or racism driving the discussion. The two are intrinsically linked.
Which is perhaps one of the tenants of critical race theory.
The reaction to CRT comes like a lot of these political outrages; because it looks like liberals actually doing what Fox News accuses them of doing every day: indoctrinating your innocent little children to hate America and everything it stands for just like they do.
I still remember the mainstream middle-of-the-road people, who professed to be intellectuals and supported the 2nd Iraq invasion, who seriously claimed that liberals only opposed the invasion because they hated America and always saw anything America ever did as bad.
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