How is American Patriotism different and noble compared to anyone else’s national patriotic sense? I would be genuinely interested in any successful, cogent, well-argued rebuttal to the following quote. The rebuttal must also demonstrate that drinkable bathwater comes from American flag wavers who use patriotism as a political tactic.
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.
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. – Emma Goldman
Oh, and it won’t be sufficient to merely attack Emma Goldman for her politics. Political leaning does not make one’s point of view more or less legitimate except when there is a choir involved.
More Goldman:
ReplyDeleteGustave Herve, another great anti-patriot, justly calls patriotism a superstition -- one far more injurious, brutal, and inhumane than religion. The superstition of religion originated in man's inability to explain natural phenomena. That is, when primitive man heard thunder or saw the lightning, he could not account for either, and therefore concluded that back of them must be a force greater than himself. Similarly he saw a supernatural force in the rain, and in the various other changes in nature. Patriotism, on the other hand, is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.
...The awful waste that patriotism necessitates ought to be sufficient to cure the man of even average intelligence from this disease. Yet patriotism demands still more. The people are urged to be patriotic and for that luxury they pay, not only by supporting their "defenders," but even by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires allegiance to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister.
More Goldman
ReplyDeleteThe usual contention is that we need a standing army to protect the country from foreign invasion.
Every intelligent man and woman knows, however, that this is a myth maintained to frighten and coerce the foolish.
The governments of the world, knowing each other's interests, do not invade each other.
They have learned that they can gain much more by international arbitration of disputes than by war and conquest.
Indeed, as Carlyle said, "War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other."
The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, With the result that peace is maintained.