My friend Jude, who writes with a couple of the bloggers here over at www.first-draft.com, posted a piece back on Memorial Day Weekend that should be required reading for any patriotic holiday. I re-read it yesterday and in the frenzy of patriotic postings in my Facebook feed, I also committed, well, to the screen some musings of my own. In my frustration over the blind, deaf, and frequently ignorant (though certainly not mute) expressions of nationalistic fervor and loyalty, I posted what you see here as a note to my Facebook page. It's probably fortunate that none of my extremely conservative, fundamentalist Christian friends and family saw it. Mind the gap, and join me on the other side for a well-intentioned but frustrated rant and an extremely fortunate resolution.
Jude's original post, which is WELL worth your time for the whole piece, is here - First Draft: I Didn't Fight For Your Freedom.
A quote or two from his piece -
I didn't fight for your freedoms. In the six years I was in, I never once defended your right to vote, or to carry a gun, or to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure (that one doesn't really apply anymore, anyway), or any of the other things you enjoy as a citizen of this country. I just didn't. Neither did anyone who went to Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Vietnam. It's all bullshit. It's a fucking lie that we tell ourselves and each other so that we don't have to think about why we send young men and women to serve, suffer, and die for old men's vainglorious ideas and profit margins.
snip...
I don't mind honoring sacrifice, but the military doesn't have a monopoly on that, now does it? I also don't mind remembering military dead and wounded. But we do it all wrong. We just fetishize the suffering (like good Catholics, no?) without wondering why it ever happened in the first place. Remembrance and memorial, it would seem, also involve reflection and assessment. Just because someone died or was wounded doesn't automatically validate how he or she came to be in that state. We send our young people overseas to be bored, pull duty, sometimes get shot at, and occasionally get hit. Then we never ask why they're over there in the first fucking place, because doing so, apparently, does them a disservice. What kind of jack shit is that?
While Jude's piece does adequately express part of my frustration - and fortunately, as someone who hasn't worn a uniform, he's 'allowed', as a Navy vet, to say things I'm 'not' - there's something else that's been nagging me for a while now.
The jingoism surrounding the Fourth has always been unattractive to me, and it's only become more grating as I've gotten older. As I said, Jude's post sums up part of my frustration pretty neatly: we consistently treat the military as somehow more deserving of our esteem than others who also make lifelong and considerably taxing sacrifices. I've wondered for years why Americans, who always pounce on the chance to be overtly nationalistic, don't reserve a measure of their flag-waving hoopla for the people who preserve, study, and teach America's past. Is it because preserving and teaching American history isn't 'sexy'? Is it the American penchant for violence? Is it our wide stripe of anti-intellectualism?
As I see it, archivists, librarians, historians, and teachers in general are the people who try to remind Americans of the steps we took to get where we are today. Educators work long hours for little pay and less recognition, and they're increasingly likely to take their lives in their own hands when they go to work. In return, they face scores of bored students who couldn't care less about Anti-Federalism or Populism, but who will, come early July, spout a lot of flowery talk about sacrifice and the Founding Fathers without knowing much more than the barest outline of our creation mythology.
I've come to the conclusion that most people are patriotic because it's easy and it feels good. It's a warm, giddy feeling, isn't it, when we sing about 'crowning thy good with brotherhood'. But that giddy feeling doesn't influence us to do what's right, even in the most clear-cut situations.
You see, I have to wonder about Americans. We spend trillions to send our military to hundreds of posts all over the world, while every day, we struggle to fund the care and re-integration of the broken soldiers who come home.
Civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan have died by the hundreds of thousands, while the majority of Americans call their deaths (when they're remembered at all) 'collateral damage.'
For decades, engineers talked about the loss of life and property that would happen when a hurricane came to New Orleans and breached the inadequate levees there. Then, in September of 2005, the majority of the nation pointed fingers and called racist names as Americans died in the Federal Flood.
In a nation whose founding principles dictated there would not be a state-sponsored church, lawmakers use Christian rhetoric to explain their federal and state laws that make same-sex couples second-class citizens.
For decades, America, alone among other 'first-world countries' has held the low end of statistics for public health availability, and obesity, heart disease, and cancer rates, yet we continue to defend big agriculture, processed food, and farm subsidies.
But then, every year in May, July, and November, people wave flags and sing songs and talk about their deity blessing "us" more fully than any of the other billions of people on the globe. With our deep-seated brand of short-sightedness, is it any wonder that, on the last Tuesday of May, July fifth, and November twelfth, we all go back to our non-stop Casey Anthony coverage and American Idol?
I wonder at Americans because so many of us want to be conspicuously in love with our country of birth a few days a year, but so few of us seem to be conspicuously intelligent about what our countrymen actually did in our national past. It's the equivalent of a serial one-night-stand fan getting herpes and wondering how the hell it happened because every guy she took home LOOKED like a million bucks.
Understanding our history is a way out of this mess. It helps to remind us of the things that are truly important in today's over-hyped, over-sexed, and over-worked society. History affords us perspective, and we need that more now than ever before. But rather than listening to historians talk (or reading historians who've written) about the Revolution, the Articles, and the Constitutional Convention, we get, more often than not, people who want to lie by the pool, go to sales, and eat a lot.
This morning, though, I was afforded quite a treat. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon Wood, author of "The Radicalism of the American Revolution," "The Americanization of Ben Franklin," and "Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different," was on a rebroadcast episode of the Diane Rehm Show on my local NPR affiliate, WKMS. He was on to answer questions, and to promote his new book, "The Idea of America". He also talked some about how we might reconcile our 21st century mores with 18th century ideals, but I wish he'd been able to go into more detail on that point.
REHM...What did the Revolutionaries think they were doing?
WOOD11:16:33
I think they were breaking with the old customs of Europe. They were repudiating blood, that is who your father was, whom you married didn't count, it's merit only. All men are created equal, said Jefferson in the Declaration. That was conventional wisdom for Whigs or Patriots and I think for lots of enlightened people in the 18th century.
WOOD11:16:57
So they thought they were breaking from that old tradition of hereditary power, hereditary power, hereditary office and they're going to open it up to anyone who had merit or talent. Now, that's the question, what (laugh) is talent?
REHM11:17:11
What constituted talent?
WOOD11:17:14
Well, I think -- I think they came to realize that talent became just the ability to get elected. And that was not quite what they had -- many of them had in mind. I think many of the founders, I think, died disillusioned with what they had wrought.
REHM11:17:27
How much did money play a role?
WOOD11:17:31
Well, money always plays a role in politics and in life and I think they didn't want wealth to be the criterion of success and I think they fought against that, but it was assumed, Washington, for example, served as Commander in Chief without salary because he thought that that's what a gentleman, an aristocrat, does. You don't draw salary, but John Adams opposed that because he knew didn't have sufficient wealth to ask...
REHM11:18:00
Whereas Washington has plenty of it, yeah.
WOOD11:18:02
Washington was a very wealthy man and he thought that he could. And Franklin, who was also wealthy, proposed in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 that all members of the elected branch, the Executive Branch, should serve without pay. Now (laugh), can you imagine what would've happened if that had remained in the Constitution or had been proposed? Madison, who took notes, said there was a long pause after this proposal was made and more out respect for the old man than for the practicality of the proposal.
Gordon Wood on The Diane Rehm Show: "The Idea of America"
Transcript
Main Page, with link to Audio
If you're able, please take a moment and visit the show's page. I don't think you'd be disappointed. I hope that as years go on, I'll see more of these academic discussions of what it means to be an American and less of the rah, rah, siss, boom, bah kind. We need a little more introspection and critical thought in this country, and far fewer fireworks.