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Orwellian_Ghost Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 07:46 AM
Original message
Emma Goldman On Patriotism

What Is Patriotism?


by Emma Goldman
1908
San Francisco, California
Men and Women:



What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naivete, we would watch the passing clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not float so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our little souls? Is it the place where we would listen to the music of the birds and long to have wings to fly, even as they, to distant lands? Or is it the place where we would sit on Mother's knee, enraptured by tales of great deeds and conquests? In short, is it love for the spot, every inch representing dear and precious recollections of a happy, joyous and playful childhood?

If that were patriotism, few American men of today would be called upon to be patriotic, since the place of play has been turned into factory, mill, and mine, while deepening sounds of machinery have replaced the music of the birds. No longer can we hear the tales of great deeds, for the stories our mothers tell today are but those of sorrow, tears and grief.

What, then, is patriotism? "Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels," said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our time, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment in the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the honest workingman...

Indeed, conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others. The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that from early infancy the mind of the child is provided with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition...

An army and navy represent the people's toys. To make them more attractive and acceptable, hundreds and thousands of dollars are being spent for the display of toys. That was the purpose of the American government in equipping a fleet and sending it along the Pacific coast, that every American citizen should be made to feel the pride and glory of the United States.

<snip>

http://edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/emma_goldman_patriotism.html
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rug Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 08:35 AM
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1. "conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism."
Thought it needed to be repeated.
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Orwellian_Ghost Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 11:41 AM
Response to Reply #1
3. American exceptionalism
We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.

- Emma Goldman
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judy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 10:05 AM
Response to Original message
2. Great Post!!
Thank you O_G, and Emma, of course... :)
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Supersedeas Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 12:18 PM
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4. thanks for the link
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Tierra_y_Libertad Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 12:33 PM
Response to Original message
5. "Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains...
"Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead." - Arundhati Roy
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Raskolnik Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 04:03 PM
Response to Reply #5
19. "Quotes completely devoid of context or discussion...
...are no substitute for actually saying something." - Mickey Mantle
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followthemoney Donating Member (745 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 10:21 PM
Response to Reply #19
26. Last thoughts of Micky before the drink that wiped out the ...
Last of his liver.
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Raskolnik Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-14-09 11:02 AM
Response to Reply #26
31. (Mickey Mantle didn't actually say that)
I just made a statement, put some quotes around it, and pretended Mickey Mantle said it.

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Duncan Grant Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 12:50 PM
Response to Original message
6. Right click, save:
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Raskolnik Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 04:04 PM
Response to Reply #6
20. Ah, the light touch and subtle wit of Ted Rall. n/t
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leftstreet Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 01:42 PM
Response to Original message
7. K&R
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arcadian Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 01:45 PM
Response to Original message
8. Great post.
But I know this is going to turn ugly when small minded posters start equating anarchists with bomb-throwers.
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TBF Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 01:51 PM
Response to Original message
9. The more things change the more they remain the same.
K&R for Emma, who was far, far ahead of her time (and our times too for that matter)
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endarkenment Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 02:24 PM
Response to Original message
10. So many fools, so little time. K&R
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Echo In Light Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 02:25 PM
Response to Original message
11. Claims the lucky 13 K&R
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Solly Mack Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 02:29 PM
Response to Original message
12. K&R
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cali Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 02:36 PM
Response to Original message
13. patriotism is simply tribalism writ large
in other words, it's part and parcel of the human condition. Yes, there are exception like Goldman and others who delve deeper, but those are the exceptions.

Face it, most humans are still tribal and most of them are persuadable.
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Raskolnik Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 03:41 PM
Response to Reply #13
15. I'm not sure of that.
I think patriotism gets conflated with nationalism and/or tribalism quite a bit (particularly by many of the posters on this thread so far), but that doesn't make it accurate.

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cali Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 03:43 PM
Response to Reply #15
16. I think they're all very closely related
nationalism is patriotism on steroids or as Rech-Mallazwen said: "Nationalism is a atate of mind in which a man hates another man's country more than he loves his own".
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Raskolnik Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 03:46 PM
Response to Reply #16
18. Perhaps related, but definitely fueled by different motives, and definitely producing
different effects.
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anaxarchos Donating Member (963 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 08:11 PM
Response to Reply #13
23. Yeah sure...
Nationalism has nothing to do with "tribalism" unless "tribalism" is made so generic as to lose all semblance of meaning. Tribalism is a much older phenomena but it is in no way "part and parcel" of the "human condition", either. It dates from tribal competition which typically comes at the end, and not the beginning, of tribes, clans, gens.

Nationalism is much more recent. It dates from the absolute monarchies of Europe and more so from the modern Republic. The modern state, the civil service, "the Army of the whole people", the mass levy... all of these are essential conditions of nations, nationalism and "patriotism" (which is similarly indistinguishable from nationalism - the Greek patris has NOTHING to do with national feeling). The Greeks and Romans lived and died without feeling the slightest pang of nationalism or patriotism. The Germans lived in Europe for a thousand years without knowing what a "German" was - even in the time of Friedrich der Grosse. It was only after Napoleon and, properly, 50 years later, that a German "nation" appeared. The United States is not one of the youngest "nations"; it is one of the oldest.

Nationalism/patriotism are NOT part of human nature. They are a modern racket. Emma Goldman clearly understood and wrote about that fact.
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ProSense Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 02:59 PM
Response to Original message
14. Not buying it
Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot.


That is the warped perception of patriotism. In a nation of immigrants, patriotism doesn't have anything to do with where one was born. A transplanted Cuban, Jamaican, African or European can be an American patriot. Secondly, if you're not a patriot of one nation or another, does that mean you see no difference between one country or another? There are no cultural norms, nothing?

Is a Saudi Prince more or less patriotic than an American leader? More or less intelligent?

Is Nelson Mandela more or less patriotic or intelligent than a Saudi or American leader?

Is a person born on the continent of Africa who speaks four or five languages more or less patriotic or intelligent than a person born in the U.S.?

There are poor and disenfranchised people in every country, and they too can feel pride in the ideals of their respective countries, recognizing that many are willing to fight for those ideals, which will improve their situtation.

I would agree that some people believe the globe is divided "little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate," but only as far as they see differences (nobler, better, grander, more intelligent)among peoples of the world. That's warped. There are people in this country who have a warped notion of what it means to be patriotic. These are the same people questioning others patriotism and declaring themselves the true patriots.

People probably have more in common with each other than these "iron gates" create.






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Raskolnik Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 03:43 PM
Response to Original message
17. Patriotism is not nationalism.
Ms. Goldman, and most of the posters on this thread, are not talking about patriotism, but instead talking about nationalism. There is a difference.
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anaxarchos Donating Member (963 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-14-09 12:07 AM
Response to Reply #17
27. They are the same, actually...
If you are referring to the Enlightenment, you are presenting an early view of the issue. Yes, there is clear recognition that some form of social cohesion is appearing and conjecture that it is more general than simple nationality - a variation on "civic virtue". By the middle of the 19th century, though, that naive view is gone, at least to the degree that either term describes something "real". It is a discussion of emerging social bonds before the form of those bonds, the modern state, is fully visible. If you are talking about Aristotle, that is something completely different, again.
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Raskolnik Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-14-09 11:03 AM
Response to Reply #27
32. Nothing in the body of your post relates to whether patriotism is the same as nationalism. n/t
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anaxarchos Donating Member (963 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-14-09 03:40 PM
Response to Reply #32
33. The body of my post relates directly to that.
The debate has always been between whether "nationalism" is "ethnic" or "civic", with the former being a much earlier view than the latter. Here is a part of The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on "Nationalism". I was supporting one of the poles of that debate and saying why I did so. My reference to "civic virtue" was precisely that. It is very hard to posit a difference between "patriotism" and "nationalism" in the United States, of all places, simply by pointing to the lack of any "ethnic" commonality, whatever.

"Indeed, purely “civic” loyalties are often put into a separate category under the title “patriotism,” or “constitutional patriotism” (Habermas 1996, see the discussion in Markell, P. (2000)). This leaves two extreme options and a lot of intermediate positions. The first extreme option has been put forward by a small but distinguished band of theorists, including E. Renan (1882) and M. Weber (1970); for a recent defense see Brubaker (2004). According to their purely voluntaristic definition, a nation is any group of people aspiring to a common political state-like organization. If such a group of people succeeds in forming a state, the loyalties of the group members might be “civic” (as opposed to “ethnic”) in nature. At the other extreme, and more typically, nationalist claims are focused upon the non-voluntary community of common origin, language, tradition and culture, so that in the classical view an ethno-nation is a community of origin and culture, including prominently a language and customs. The distinction is related (although not identical) to that drawn by older schools of social and political science between “civic” and “ethnic” nationalism, the former being allegedly Western European and the latter more Central and Eastern European originating in Germany (a very prominent proponent of the distinction is Hans Kohn 1965)."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nationalism/
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Vidar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 05:07 PM
Response to Original message
21. K&R.
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roody Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 07:34 PM
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22. I pledge allegiance to the Earth.
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maryf Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 08:59 PM
Response to Original message
24. K&Rnt
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AnnieBW Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-13-09 09:52 PM
Response to Original message
25. I Love Emma!
Ever since I did a report on her in my freshman year of college, I've felt inspired by her.
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Puregonzo1188 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-14-09 01:00 AM
Response to Original message
28. Thanks for posting, that particular piece by Emma Goldman has crossed my mind
several times reading posts on DU in recent days. Glad I'm not the only one.
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blindpig Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-14-09 07:42 AM
Response to Original message
29. kick
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Blue_Tires Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Apr-14-09 08:55 AM
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30. ttt
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