Alexandria, VA Today is a day of remembrance for those whom have died in the service of their nation. We attend parades, memorials, cemeteries and ceremonies to honor their sacrifice. Some – such as my son and I, yesterday – ride motorcycles through our capital city especially to recall those who may still be missing or captured. And, many of us will enjoy a weekend that marks the beginning of summer, with festivities ranging from barbecues to beaches to boats, almost all gatherings allowing us time to enjoy friends and family.
We mark this day with flags of the nation and recollections of the freedoms that we enjoy for which they made the supreme sacrifice. But, it is necessary and proper to recall that on the battlefield – doubtlessly assaulted by sounds and sights that few humans should experience, and hardly any can bear without scars, visible or invisible – almost no soldier is thinking of the nation, the flag, the Constitution or the even the liberties that we note particularly on this weekend. What they are, almost to a man and woman, thinking about as they move forward in the onslaught of violence and stench and horrors and death are the lives and loves they share with their comrades in arms. They die not for abstractions – ideas, ideals, natural right, the American way of life, rights, or even their fellow citizens – so much as they are willing to brave all for the men and women of their unit. On sparkling weekend days like this, beside white graves bedecked with pristine flags, we understand and interpret their sacrifice in broader and more comprehensive terms – and surely it is a piece, since it is to country and Constitution that they swear allegiance when they enlist. But on the battlefield, it for is the sake of particular people that they are moved to put their lives into immediate danger, against every instinct and impulse that guides any creature.
It is right to recall this, because as a nation we are more prone than ever to interpret our national story as one centered on the universal abstractions of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, those natural rights of man with which we are all endowed, regardless of place and history and culture and kin that we may also happen to possess. As we have become ever more not only citizens of the nation, but encouraged to become citizens of the world, we lose the capacity to understand that the sacrifices of soldiers are made for reasons other than those abstractions. There is a danger that to be an American increasingly means solely a common allegiance we hold to a set of self-evident truths, and not a storehouse of memories and stories and traditions and folkways – some that are shared, others that are particular to a set of people – but all of which are indelibly American.
Our national self-understanding has been transformed over the past twenty-five years or more – from one bounded by particular stories of particular people, often with an emphasis on sacrifices made during war-time, instead to a nation-building effort to encourage allegiance to the idea of the nation, its animating ideals and underlying philosophy. As has been pointed out by my friend Mark Henrie, where once school-children learned about the lives and deeds of Betsy Ross, Paul Revere, and George Washington on or near the battlefield, now they are more prone to be taught (if at all) about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and above all, their Rights as enshrined in the Bill of Rights (and, from there, their ever-greater realization through various emancipation and civil rights movements). The story of America itself is not a patchwork of stories, but instead a grand narrative that discloses – with Hegelian inevitability – the unfolding of an every more perfect natural rights Republic.
This emphasis upon the idea of the nation has been shared alike by liberals and so-called conservatives alike. If the Pledge of Allegiance was written by a socialist (with an aim to overcoming any particular allegiances people may have had to region and varying traditions), it is today fiercely defended by conservatives. Our liberals have as their hero Martin Luther King, and our conservatives, Abraham Lincoln – both because they advanced the natural rights Republic. If there is one main point of distinction between liberals and conservatives today, it is that liberals believe that the idea of the nation can and should be extended universally, while conservatives would emphasize its limitation to a particular nation-state. Neither is much interested in defending the legitimate place of smaller units within the nation – other than as administrative units. Both are attracted to the theory of America more than its stories, poems, places and songs.
No soldier dies for a theory. He dies on behalf of the people with whom he enters battle, seeking to save those whom he loves, to whom he feels a strong sense of duty, and for whom he is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. Today, on this day of remembrance, we should recall not only the lives and deaths of the soldiers whom we rightly honor, but the right and proper grounds for their sacrifice, and keep in mind those reasons as we seek to defend, in our own less demanding ways, a nation of particular places, particular people, and particular memories.
Update, June 1, 2009: A reader sent me a link to this song, with the refrain “…right now, I’m fighting for the man next to me; I know he’s fighting for me.” Thanks to him.
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“There is a danger that to be an American increasingly means solely a common allegiance we hold to a set of self-evident truths, and not a storehouse of memories and stories and traditions and folkways – some that are shared, others that are particular to a set of people – but all of which are indelibly American.”
In Mr. Beer’s article from a few days ago, his friend Mr. Bickford brought up Harvard researcher Robert Putnam’s findings that increased diversity leads to lower social capital. America has become so diverse an social capital so depleted that all we have left in common is a vague idea that we are all committed to those abstract principles of equality and liberty. Of course since we all have different conceptions of what liberty and equality entail it is not clear that we even have this in common any longer; perhaps we just pretend we to. Even the father of our country no longer enjoys a common respect. In 1997 George Washington High School in New Orleans was renamed. “Why should African-Americans want their kids to pay respect or pay homage to someone who enslaved their ancestors?” Carl Galmon asked the New York Times. Galmon is a civil rights leader in New Orleans and has led the campaign to change school names. “To African-Americans, George Washington has about as much meaning as David Duke.” More recently, a committee of the New Jersey Senate killed a proposal to celebrate Washington by hanging his portrait in every one of the state’s 600 public-school districts. Curtis Ballard, a historian at Oklahoma’s Langston University opposed the bill, telling USA Today that “America was not a pretty place for black people when George Washington was present. Our people were still in slavery. This country doesn’t have much to celebrate when it comes to 200 years ago and its treatment of people.”
More recently yet, at a congressional hearing on President George W. Bush’s faith-based initiatives, Rep. Melvin Watt, a North Carolina Democrat, launched a vitriolic attack on Washington in response to a proposal by both Democrats and Republicans to include in the record Washington’s “Letter to the Newport Hebrew Congregation,” a correspondence that welcomed American Jews as equal citizens in the new republic.
Rep. Watt mocked the first president. “For us to be applauding the statements discussing bigotry that were written by a person who owned slaves is a little bit more than I can, without churning stomach, be able to tolerate,” said Watt.
If you have a hope that our national self-understanding can be re-transformed back into “particular stories of particular people” I think you are mistaken.
I think we should not mistake contemporary iterations of “multiculturalism” – that is, efforts by various self-proclaimed victimized groups to claim certain privileges and status – with the kinds of “particular stories” I’m alluding to here. To wit, the deeper motivation of these versions of “multiculturalism” is actually and ultimately a reinforcement of abstract liberal conceptions of the human self, ultimately shorn of particularlity. This is most deeply revealed by the marks of status by which such victimized groups are recognized – that is, biological markers that are ultimately to be regarded with indifference. What is excluded from recognition are groups and identities that are, to some extent, chosen, and hence are not allowed to claim any special status in liberal society (if it’s chosen, that’s your problem). About the best summation of this deeper point was made by my teacher, Wilson Carey McWilliams, which I’ve quoted and commented upon here.
I am not suggesting that there are not and ought not to be national stories – that’s of course the kind of story we tell in relating the deeds of Paul Revere, Betsy Ross and George Washington. But there also ought to be a place for the stories of particular places with particular histories that will have less universal appeal or meaning to the rest of the nation. Where I grew up – in Windsor CT – we reserved a special place in the curriculum for the deeds of Nathan Hale, whose homestead in nearby Coventry we visited nearly every year. The same went for Windsor man, Oliver Ellsworth and the stories that were still told about the Connecticut Charter Oak tree, pictured on the back of the Connecticut state quarter (and before that, marvelously brought to life in the backdrop of one of my favorite childhood books, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, which was a book that we were all encouraged to read as youth in CT). We were curious to learn stories about King Philip and the war he fought, as we could still see the cave it was reputed he lived in on a sheer cliff-face of Talcott mountain, a favorite hiking venue. These – and others like these – were stories that had particular meaning for me when I grew up in a Connecticut that still proudly identified with its colonial roots, and reserved a place for their retelling to the young in our state. When I speak of “particular stories of particular people,” it’s these sorts I have in mind…
It is a sad thing that such a fine institution as the United States Military should be the point of a maladroit spear foisted on the world by our dysfunctional civilian leadership “going abroad in search of monsters”. As they flit about in pampered satisfaction, ginning up one conflict after another, our men and woman in uniform follow their orders and too many meet either death or permanent trauma. Many in the National Guard face lasting financial hardship due to repeated deployments. Meanwhile, our former Vice President, receiver of military deferment and former head of a military contractor that has both garnered millions of dollars as a result of the war efforts and, shockingly, actually electrocuted soldiers in showers due to shoddy work…..he is abroad, with his family members spreading more inuendo and paranoia in service to a civilian political industry that is now quite beyond redemption.
When queried on the fact that many citizens emphatically do not support the ongoing war effort of an energetically idiotic Bush Administration , his reply was “So?”.
This is, in short, what our civilian leadership, for all their rhetoric and all their grand paeans to patriotism are really saying about the sacrifices of our military today: “So?”
Torture?: “So?”
Illegal Spying?: “So?”
Propagandized Intelligence?: “So?’
Entrapment in service to well publicized terrorism arrests?: “So?”
Legislation in service to Special interests?: “So?”
Federal Reserve and Treasury Department malfeasance?: “So?”
Economic suicide?: “So?”
Bureaucratic Entropy?: “So?”
For all intents and purposes, the civilian leadership of this nation has blighted the sacrifices of our Military with a haughty “so what” and stained our traditions of liberty…our many narrative histories with a bloody question mark. Meanwhile the citizenry remains steadfastly indifferent, giving thanks primarily, for a third day added to their beloved weekend.
Deaths abroad and the ongoing slow-death of the Republic is what I have on my mind today, this Memorial Day, 62 years since my father, a member of the Third Marine Division followed orders in the South Pacific when this great nation was an opponent of Fascism rather than slouching into it on a debt financed expedition into the imaginations of the Neo Conservative.
This is a Memorial Day tinged with shame and that is a hard truth to swallow.
What’s wrong with natural rights? As those become protected, the threat of majority’s tyranny is mitigated, is it not? I love America. I love America’s abstractness. It is a spiritual “place.” It is NOT place, ethnicity, profession, but commitment and love of liberty, democracy, and community noted down on pieces of paper a bit over 200 years ago. I’ve never been shot at for wearing an American flag on my arm, so I’ll take your word for it that our soldiers volunteer their lives not for these ideals, but for their comrades. I’d ask them why they joined these comrades before they knew who they were in the first place.
I celebrate multiculturalism. And thank God that the Jesus loving Martin Luther King and his generation of activists risked their lives for America. So in this way, the “particularity” of each of us, regardless of race or religion, would be acknowledged, at least from the state’s perspective, instead of being disregarded in favor of group identity.
You have to have faith, I think. America will get better in fits and starts. There’s a core strength to America that people from other nations have always underestimated. You put all these people from all over the world in this country. And they seem to retain so much of the old world. But together, they become Americans, change what America is, but never its core. We are always deemed too soft, divided along ethnic lines, or dissolute, too much in love with our cultural talents and continental seclusion. Until in the 20th century we saved the world three times. When the Germans, Japanese, and Italians were rolling through the world, our Depression debilitated, humbled nation proved wrong all those who doubted us. A nation deeply wounded by Vietnam, Watergate, and a decade of economic malaise rose up to defeat the Communist threat.
We are members of an awesome nation. Our nation has been through so much worse than what we’re going through now. It’s not only those who we honor on Memorial Day that kept it great. You have to have faith in all of it, not just to a memory of a slice of it.
[T]he United States, more than any other nation, is flat and dusty old unassuming Kansas. But at the same time, it is Oz, the vertical and shining Emerald City on a hill. We must never forget either fact, one of them Real, the other merely real.
Nor can we forget the very real Kansans who gave their lives to bring us closer to that Reality. In order to honor them, we must never do anything to change this into a country that would be unworthy of their sacrifice — indeed, one they would scarcely recognize. That’s the deal in a vertical democracy in which its fallen heroes, of all people, still have a say. We must be their voice and their witness, always. And if you can’t be grateful on this day, at least have the decency to be ashamed of yourself.
~ Excerpt from On Remembering our Heroic and Selfless Witnesses to the Transcendent
In one paragraph you praise multiculturalism, and in the next you praise integration. I was hoping you could explain how you can be in favor of both. Multiculturalism is usually understood as the view that groups retain their cultural distinctiveness, integration the view that people drop their culture and integrate into the majority culture. So when you say that you celebrate multiculturalism, and then that we should shun group identity, it seems like a possible contradiction. Perhaps you could explain what you mean so that I can understand it better.
Excellent post. Indeed, soldiers fight and die for their brothers-in-arms, loved ones, not flags, constitutions, or nations.
While we may agree that George’s stupid war reflects the ignorance of the neocon controlled STUPID (GOP) Party, when it comes to wars and the killing and wounding of brave Americans, no one takes a back seat to the Socialist-Democrats who never saw a war they didn’t like.
I’ve often thought that a really accurate campaign poster for the commie-dems would be “Vote Democrat and butcher your kids!”
Kinda has a ring to it.
D.W., a tip of the hat to your father, the 3rd Marines were all heros! My dad was a platoon sgt. in the 305th Combat Engineers, 80th Division, 3rd Army, George Patton cmdg-the old man saw it all. My great-uncle was killed in an assault on a fortified line in France thanks to that s-o-b Woodrow Wilson!
It was a french catholic writer, Jean de Viguerie, who opposed in 1998 two differents concepts for “patrie” (sorry but unable to translate from french “patrie” into “nation”), the tradicional “patrie” etymologycally means land of your fathers (latin: pater). Not only a piece of land but also something that has been altered after generations with its own landscapes, wineyards, forests, small villages, towns, factories, monuments, graveyards, cathedrals. This “patrie” is a portion of land where your soul can breath (Peguy).
However with the French Revolution, a different concept of “nation” appears, one that is now abstract, just an ideology. The nation becomes a union of individuals living under the same law who gives birth to the national history. The nation is set up by freely joining the principles of the Universal Human Rights. The nation becomes an intelectual idea (marie-madeleine martin).
I translated into spanish from frech original introduction chapter here:
http://www40.brinkster.com/celtiberia/patrias.html
A french catholic review of the book:
http://www.europaegentes.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=214
Never found an english translation. Here in Europe the book was only discussed in (reactionary) right wing christian oriented forums, not always understood anyway, since the author is pessimistic as to consider that soldiers and citizens had been dying for a wrong concept of nation for the last two centuries. This point would be a rubicon even in FPR forums…
I suppose P. Deneen didn’t know about this author, but anyway he had reached to parallel ideas even under separated cultural backgrounds and historical events (french revolution vs. american revolution). ¿the abstract idea of nation can be separated from the american revolution itself?
Oliver Ellsworth: my man Luther Martin’s bete noire! But what a lovely sentiment he expressed late in life: “I have visited several countries, and I like my own the best. I have been in all the states of the Union, and Connecticut is the best state. Windsor is the pleasantest town in the state of Connecticut, and I have the pleasantest place in the town of Windsor. I am content, perfectly content, to die on the banks of the Connecticut.”
Empedocles,
I don’t want to hijack the comments section, so I’ll be as succinct as I can in response to your question about whether multiculturalism is necessarily opposed to integration. I think integration happens whether new immigrants embrace it or reject it. If you’re going to be an economically and socially viable individual in America, you integrate. Maybe not in a generation or even two, but over time, it’s inevitable. I get excited about the fact that this integrated America was built not by a monolithic ethnic or religious group, but by a strange, fascinating mix of people from all around the world. You can’t talk about New York City without talking about the Dutch. Or Texas without Mexicans, Chicago without the Polish, Boston without Irish, Florida without Cubans, California without Portuguese farmers, Hawaii without the Japanese. It goes on of course. Eventually, all these people commit to America’s ideals and contribute to its vibrance and dynamic growth. Immigrants integrate; the country is multicultural.
This country is a miracle. And I thank God for it.
@ Empedocles — To speak ahead of Dr Deneen, your definitions of “integration” and “multiculturalism” pretty much amount to a false dilemma, and that’s mostly because you’re so far ignoring the possibility of multiple cultural or communal identifications. And that seems to be the point of Dr Deneen’s article, that we have multiple sorts of communal bonds, each of which motivate virtuous actions (national bonds, bonds of heritage, and local or familial bonds). So, I am bonded to my grandparents in a way that I am not bonded to your grandparents because, in part, there are stories common to my life and to their life, and because they have been responsible for passing those stories to me. And I am bonded to other Iowans because there are stories that are part of Iowa’s heritage that most Iowans have always told one another, and there are similar stories for the United States, as well.
Two problems, though. First, as a nation we’ve grown disinterested in promoting stories at all; hence, our allegiance to ideas like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And second, to the degree that even individually we promote any stories at all, they are less and less often our local ones. Why is not promoting stories a problem? Because stories, common bonds that tie members of a community (however large) to one another, are the sorts of bonds that inspire virtuous actions – as they do with our soldiers in war. Bonds to abstractions seldom function in this way. So, when we attempt to promote bonds between humans and abstractions and deprecate bonds of community, we eliminate a vital impetus for virtuous behavior.
Now, I think you’re right to point out that, at times, certain of our communal bonds can come into conflict with one another. How are African Americans whose stories run back to the days of slavery to pledge allegiance to a national community whose heroes once enslaved them? And similarly, how is a young man supposed to care for his town when that town’s leaders supported a highway to be built through his family’s farm? Or how is a daughter supposed to love her father, when he broke their family in an act of adultery?
These questions of conflicting communal loyalties are some of the oldest in our civilization, going back to the Iliad, where Achilles overcomes his anger at Agamemnon and fights for Greece after Hector kills a Patroclus, Achilles beloved comrade. The point, though, is that stories in these communities and the bonds they generate inspire virtue, and that’s why we need to pass them on and foster a sense of their communal significance. The fact that some of the stories conflict with one another is an old problem, to be sure, and one that we will have to deal with. But this fact of their conflict, in itself, does not alter the importance of the effects that the stories have.
Is anyone else, besides me, unhappy with the celebration of Memorial Day as a three day bash? It seems as if it’s become a kickoff for the sales of summer and party time at any number of public recreation facilities. The honoring of our fallen heroes seems to be an afterthought after a weekend of celebration.
Where I live, one small town still has a Memorial Day parade, in the early morning. Mine had s ceremony at the courthouse, others at the local veterans memorials in town squares etc.. I attended the ceremony and noticed that the participants were my age or older. A couple of hours later, a mass was held at a local church in honor of military families, veterans and those who had made the ultimate sacrifice. (This event had more participants than the event at the courthouse park; however the smallish church was not filled.)
This coming weekend I will be planting flowers at my parents and grandparents graves. (I don’t dare put out live flowering plants before the end of May in this part of the country.) I’m sure the only people I will see at the graveyards will, as in other years, be my age or older. Most of them still call it “Decoration Day.”
The three-day weekend holiday has become the norm. Some have advocated for the 4th of July to become another “long-weekend.” We seem to be destroying the traditions that bind us together in favor of commercialized recreation.