My wife belongs to an Internet group where there was a recent blowup over the insane expectation Americans have about foreigners who visit America's shores. Nussbaum, Martha C., et al. For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, edited by Joshua Cohen. There was overwhelming pride in American scientific achievements (91%), the US military (89%), American culture and
http://www.pearltrees.com/ arts (85%), economic (75%) and sporting (73%) achievements, and diversity in race, ethnic background, and religion (72%).
It is no accident, I suggest, that the strands of universality and particularity are braided through the history of American peoplehood, as they are I suspect, for political communities throughout the West. Tolstoy and other critics have argued that patriotism is incompatible with these notions - that it is egoism writ large, an exclusive and ultimately aggressive concern for one's country, and a major cause of international tensions and war.
6 Although Rawls claims that his theory of justice is political and not metaphysical, in fact, his reasoning is based on previously assumed moral intuitions that cannot be generated simply by a social contract, from the formal requirements of fair original position, as Rawls wants to (Barry, 1989, par.
People get a glimpse of the Wizard of Oz hiding behind the curtain whenever it is shown that the different classes do not share equally in the sacrifices that result from these interpretations (Bush's and Cheney's service records in the Vietnam War, Haliburton's sweetheart contracts in Iraq, etc., etc.). Evidence of class bias is never lacking, but only repeated and detailed criticism from us stands a chance of tearing down this curtain once and for all and revealing the prime spokesman for our illusory community for what he is. The most important ideological function of patriotism is to keep people, particularly workers, from thinking about their class and their own class interests, and to substitute a spurious national interest (really capitalist interest) in its place.
The reason the nation as a value community is so fragile and vulnerable today is because its existence depends on a certain level of cultural knowledge being shared by all of the population and on the active and nationally engaged leadership of elites, who are mobilised by their education in the humanities.