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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 3 of 3. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Beckett on April 28, 2012, at 21:50:51
A brief modern history of the categories from this month's Harpers:
http://www.harpers.org/media/pages/2012/05/pdf/HarpersMagazine-2012-05-0083904.pdf
Posted by sigismund on April 28, 2012, at 23:11:22
In reply to Conservatism, liberalism, nationalism, socialism, posted by Beckett on April 28, 2012, at 21:50:51
It depends on what you mean by conservative. That could cover anyone from Brezhnev to Santorum these days.
Unfortunately I need a subscription to read the article.
Yeah. It's a sorry business.
Posted by Beckett on April 29, 2012, at 0:10:09
In reply to Re: Conservatism, liberalism, nationalism, socialism, posted by sigismund on April 28, 2012, at 23:11:22
Well, sorry about that. I hope you don't mind I cut and pasted. Seems there was some discussion on this board some time back about the slippery categories of liberal and conservative. I am always grateful for some elucidation. Please forgive major typos.
American Nationalism--John Lukas
Harper's May 2012The histories of words amount to more than the evolution of language; words are both causes and effects, origins and results of thinking, including political thinking. Nationalism is an enormous subject, George Orwell wrote in 1945, in one of the few essays that distinguish nationalism from its older and rarer variant, patriotism. Adolf Hitler knew the difference. Writing about his youth in Mein Kampf, he described himself as a nationalist, not a patriot. He was referring to the peculiar Austrian politics of his time, but the difference in terms is universal and valid now too, nearly a century later.
As with every profound and meaningful subject, a mere definition of nationalism will not do. Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self- deception, Orwell wrote, but that comes close to what this great and honorable writer so often warned against: vocabulary obscuring thought. Definitions, Samuel Johnson is supposed to have said, are tricks for pedants. And it was he who said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. What Dr. Johnson meant was not patriotism but nationalism, because the very word nationalism, a modern and largely democratic phenomenon, did not exist.
Nationalism is not identical to patriotism (though in American popular usage it is; super-patriot, to Americans, really means an extreme nationalist). Nationalism is largely aggressive, patriotism largely defensive; nationalism is largely democratic and present-minded, patriotism largely traditionalist and historically conscious. I say largely, because these categories are not leak-proof; they sometimes overlap. But it is significant that although nationalists existed from the beginning of time, the word and the category of nationalism as we understand it today appeared only in the last decades of the nineteenth century.It also appeared about the time (around 1870) that the previously obvious political categories of conservatives and liberals began to lose their meanings. Conservatives had to accept and even adopt more than a few liberal advocacies, while liberals, too, abandoned much of their former individualism. What was coming was something else. By the twentieth century the two dominant political forces were no longer conservatism and liberalism but nationalism and socialism. Hitler under- stood this very well. Before he became Germanys leader, he was asked whether he planned to nationalize Germanys industries. He is re- ported to have said: Why should I nationalize the industries; I shall nationalize the people, which is what he did. But his own German Nationalist Socialism was only one brutal and extreme version of the many other combinations of nationalism and socialism institutionalized across the world.
How does this relate to the United States? Ever since about 1870 the idea of socialism, as well as the very word, has been abhorrent to most Americans. Nor is nationalism a very current American term, even though its manifestations have been obvious. One reason for this development has been the overlapping of nationalism with patriotism in many American minds. When in 1910 Theodore Roosevelt spoke of the new nationalism, he was advocating the assimilation of millions of immigrants, not the extension of American power across the world. In Europe and in Britain, especially after World War II, the primary purpose of states, which traditionally had been the furthering of their military power, became the establishment of some kind of basic material and existential security for most of their populationa priority that still is not acknowledged by many American Republicans. Even more im- portant was the subtle change in Americans ideological self- identification. Before 1950 the political designation of conservative was dis- avowed, if not altogether disliked, by most Americans, including Republicans. Yet very soon after, and for the first time in American history, ideological conservatism became a more than acceptable political designation. By the 1980s, more Americans called themselves conservatives than liberals. Much of this was ambiguous, since many Americans were not truly conservative at all, except for their op- position to liberals. Also relevant was the character of the two traditional American political parties. Republicans had become, by and large, the nationalist party, while the Democrats (without of course admitting it) were, by and large, moderately socialist as well as nationalist. That Americans did not even recognize this nationalism/socialism application to their two parties is beside the point. Not beside the point, however, is that nationalism, especially in the United States, is now a more potent and popular force than almost anything else, including social reform.
Nationalism, unlike patriotism, is essentially a populist phenomenon. Before 1900 the Republican Party was largely opposed to populism. This is no longer so. We may even argue that the Republicans are now more populist than are their opponents, and we may recognize the differences be- tween Republicans and Democrats in their views of their countrys destiny and its relations with the rest of the world. Exceptionalism is, of course, a sentiment in every nation, but exceptionalism among Americans is in- separable from a belief in something like American universalismmore precisely, a belief in the validity and consequent promotion of not only American ideals but American power across much of the globe. By 1956, the United States had naval, air, and army bases in so many countries that presumably even the president could not easily list them. Fifty years later, the number of American bases abroad has risen to almost one thousand. No one can enumerate them, not even the Pentagon, not to mention a president. Nor do the vast majority of American people show any awareness of this phenomenon or what it means.
The popular and even governmental acceptance of the idea that what is good for America is good for the world can be observed in the ideology of Woodrow Wilson. Yet the mostly Re- publican isolationist rejection of Wilsons policies, including of the League of Nations after World War I, was a
complex and often contradictory phenomenon, and nationalist to the core. Most Republicans were opposed to American interventions in Europe, but they supported such interventions in the Caribbean and even in the Far East. Most of those who opposed American intervention against Hitlers Germany during World War II became extreme proponents of an American crusade against Soviet Russia. Eventually, Wilsons ideas about Americas function in the world were, implicitly or explicitly, adopted by such diverse Republican presidents as Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and the Bushes. (Nixon requested that what he thought was Wilsons desk be placed in his Oval Office.) Meanwhile, American intervention, even in the domestic affairs of other nations, became an accepted govern- mental and military practice, largely approved of and seldom opposed by the great majority of citizens. Three of the candidates in this years Republican presidential primaries unequivocally stated that they stood for Americas global hegemony. The sole opponent against this desideratum, Ron Paul, did not get very far.
In 1821, John Quincy Adams declared: America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. That course, he said, would involve the Unit- ed States beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition. . . . She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit. Very few Americans cited these wise words when George W. Bush chose to launch a war against Iraq. American wars are often popular, at least at their beginning. This was so even with the Vietnam War, which was later questioned. But in accord with the Constitution, the military, save during wars, has seldom had primacy over civilian lifethat is, until recently. Reagan and George W. Bush liked to see themselves as commanders in chief (a function stated but briefly in the Constitution, and subordinated to the civilian primacy of the presidency). Reagan liked playing at being a soldier (e.g., his un- precedented habit of saluting with his bare hand, an unseemly gesture then adopted by his successors, including Bush Jr.). History may not repeat itself, but it is worth considering that the military rose to predominance not during the height but during the decline of republican Rome.Does this mean that the United States has entered a time of its decline, that the twenty-first century, unlike the twentieth, will no longer be an American century? Not necessarily, for many reasons, among them that decline is a vague term. Nationalism varies from country to country. American nationalism remains different from, say, German or Russian or Hungarian nationalism because of American sentiments and the American character. One example of this is the goodwill shown by Americans, including the military, toward former enemies (Germans and Japanese after World War II, Vietnamese after the Vietnam War). There is prejudice and arrogance in the notion that what is good for America is good for the world, but it also suggests a measure of benevolence and goodwill of many Americans who think and believe in it. (Not even Hitler or Mussolini or Stalin thought that what was good for his own country was good for the world.) The uniqueness of American prosperity may dwindle, and American military supremacy is not a durable guarantee of American influence and power. But above and beneath all of this moves the mass democratization of the world. Will popular sentiments rule politics in more and more countries, at the expense of old-fashioned liberties? We cannot tell; we may be only in the beginning of a global democratic age. It is even possible that what is good for the world will not necessarily be good for America. Still, the American respect for law, the American acceptance of great social changes, may prove as prevalent as they often were in the past. American nationalism may not remain what it was, but it is certain that its manifestations will be inseparable from the inclinations of the American character, which is a term that many historians affect to ignore, though nonetheless there it is.
This is the end of the thread.
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