By John Ehrett
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
In the wake of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union
(“Brexit”), op-ed pages are overflowing with scathing descriptions of
“nationalism” as a corrosive political force. On the surface, this is nothing
new: the modern Left frequently displays a visceral avulsion to anything that
celebrates a “national identity.”
Tragically, this is partly due to the co-optation of
“identity” language by neo-Nazis and white supremacists. But on a deeper level,
the impulse to denounce the “tribal” impulse of patriotism has become so
reflexive and so unreflective that nationalism’s critics find themselves
slipping into a moral quagmire.
National culture matters, and acquires value relative to
other expressions of culture, because human rights matter. If you believe it
makes sense to talk about the moral objectivity of human rights (and most
people, on both the Left and the Right, implicitly reason from this
assumption), it logically follows that some
nations are objectively better than others at promoting human rights.
Almost everyone on the Right and Left would agree it is right and good for us to
condemn countries that countenance death sentences for LGBT individuals
(Uganda), arrests of dissident journalists (Russia), nerve-gassing of civilians
(Syria), and the crucifixion of children (Islamic State).
Schlock-horror maven Eli Roth drove this point home with
brutal effectiveness in last year’s film “The Green Inferno.” The movie centers
on a group of activist college students who travel to the Amazon in an attempt
to save indigenous tribes from capitalist developers. When their plane crashes
in the rainforest, the students are successively hunted, killed, and eaten by
the tribe they originally came to “help.” It’s a gruesome, over-the-top
spectacle—but at the same time a stark indictment of attempts at cultural moral
relativism. Roth’s thesis speaks for itself: all ways of life are not equally
praiseworthy, and (obviously) cannibalism is morally inferior to compassion.
Well-Founded
Patriotism Is Good and Natural
When one adopts a broad perspective, descriptions of
Western liberal democracies as unrelenting
engines of imperialist oppression fly in the face of our moral intuitions.
Regarding human dignity and prosperity, it is fair to assess nations along a
continuum—and for all its weaknesses, the ascendance of liberal democratic
culture has been a titanic achievement in human flourishing. If people could
choose in a vacuum which country they would most like to be born into, the odds
are good that most people would choose a liberal democracy. Attempts to pretend
otherwise are disingenuous: flows of left-wing Westerners are not exactly
pouring into countries ruled by autocrats or theocrats.
This is the moral wellspring from which a properly
ordered “love of country” flows. There is a very real difference between this
sort of patriotism—this affirmation that human rights objectively matter and that certain nations have proven to be more
successful at promoting them—and the kind of jingoism that treats foreign
cultures and traditions as automatically inferior because they are different.
Two societies may differ radically with respect to
worship, dress, food, literature, art, political structure, et cetera, yet both
may share an equally robust commitment to human dignity and human rights.
Moreover, thinking about nationalism in a constructive, value-oriented way does
not mean a nation cannot, or should not, be criticized for its failures to live
up to its own high standards. America is still grappling with its horrific
treatment of African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and other
groups who have suffered through centuries of discrimination. But as horrible
as they have been, America’s failures are not automatically an indictment of
America’s broader national values: liberty and equality before the law.
The contemporary Left’s violent rejection of anything
that feels like “nationalism” (coupled with the chronic inability to articulate
and apply a transcultural standard of human rights) results in a fundamental
tension: the language of traditional national values (inclusivity, openness,
equality) is deployed in the service of political ends alongside denunciations
of the nation qua nation. The
resulting message is intrinsically self-defeating: “Uphold your country’s
values. But by the way, your country is bad, and you’re wrong to identify with
it.”
‘Hamilton’
Demonstrates Healthy Love of Country
Isolationism, xenophobia, and stereotyping certainly
aren’t the answer to contemporary ills, and the rise of vitriolic populism
undoubtedly poses a serious threat to the democratic order. Societies need to
find healthy avenues for resolving these underlying tensions, and, if need be,
find these avenues in unexpected places. For example, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony
Award-winning musical “Hamilton” successfully epitomizes what a healthy “love
of country” can look like.
“Hamilton” traces the founding of the American republic
through the eyes of Alexander Hamilton, exploring the life of a major,
often-overlooked American leader. As a result, the pro-Hamilton cultural
groundswell has become so influential that it stymied efforts to replace
Hamilton on the $10 bill (and resulted in Andrew Jackson getting bumped
instead). At the same time, “Hamilton” is by no means an uncritical celebration
of American exceptionalism. By casting persons of color in lead roles and
adopting rap-music stylings, “Hamilton” illustrates the universal applicability
of the principles for which the American Framers fought and, simultaneously,
the Framers’ failure to reckon with the moral inconsistency of slavery
alongside declarations of equality.
“Hamilton” doesn’t demand that its viewers (or listeners)
be ashamed of their nation. It doesn’t require its audience to disavow their
“love of country.” It does provoke
reflection over the ways in which American promises may or may not be realized
today. The world needs more art like “Hamilton”—more creative forms that
celebrate what is objectively good and praiseworthy about a given nation and
culture, while simultaneously calling that nation “onward and upward” to better
facilitate human flourishing.
“Nation-shaming”—denouncing all patriotic impulses as
barbaric, tribal, and intrinsically racist—will never produce constructive
outcomes, and will only fuel the isolationist fires stoked by Donald Trump and
the U.K.’s Independence Party and Greece’s Golden Dawn. A better approach, for
those seeking to ward off the implosion of global cooperation, is to embrace
the validity of “love of country” while still recognizing and grappling with
any nation’s inevitable failures.
“Nationalism” deserves to be reclaimed from the leftists
and fascists alike. Too much is on the line.
No comments:
Post a Comment