Candidates Embody Differing Concepts Of Patriotism

The thunder of this year's Fourth of July fireworks may provide brief respite from the partisan clamor over who is the truer patriot — John McCain or Barack Obama.

The battle lines are familiar. They were drawn during the Vietnam War, when McCain was a prisoner of war, and Obama but a child.

Four decades later, the contrast between two presidential candidates has never been starker.

Here is the grizzled former Navy flier who has vowed "I will never surrender in Iraq." And there, the brash newcomer with the unlined face whose startling success already is the source of so much lump-in-the-throat pride in the genius of America.

A black father, a white mother and a name that couldn't help but confound. But here he is, and here we are.

On the Fourth, he could deliver Thucydides' "Funeral Oration of Pericles" virtually verbatim, changing only "Athens" to "America."

Pericles, the Athenian statesman and military commander, delivered the oration — as recorded by the historian Thucydides — in 431 B.C., to honor those killed in the first year of what would be a very long war with Sparta. It is a paean to courage, duty and honor, but also to what Pericles proclaimed to be the uniquely Athenian virtues of democracy, freedom, tolerance and opportunity. And it is an exhortation to fight and die for the glory of an empire determined in its might — and required by its sense of superiority — to lead the world.

As his choice of Independence Day material, Barack Obama might want something a bit more contemporary, like the 1938 poem "Let America Be America Again." Written by the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, it is a plaintive call for America to eschew empty patriotism and live up to its founding ideals:

"America can change," declared Obama in his March 18 speech on race in Philadelphia. "That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope — the audacity to hope — for what we can and must achieve tomorrow."

Almost all Americans consider themselves to be very patriotic, according to the Pew Research Center in Washington. But Pew has also found that Democrats and Republicans have discernibly different tendencies in the tenor of the patriotism.

Republicans tend to be far more likely than Democrats to believe "we all should be willing to fight for our country ... right or wrong," and to support the use of pre-emptive military force. They are less likely to care what the rest of the world thinks of us. (According to a recent Pew survey of citizens in 24 countries, the rest of the world prefers Obama to McCain.)

Over time, as Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer write in their book "The True Patriot," those different tendencies have hardened into a caricature that "says the right loves America, and the left looks down on it. It says conservatives are proud to wave the flag and proclaim America to be the best, and liberals, embarrassed by the whole chest-thumping spectacle, complain about America's errors."

It is a caricature that found unfortunate resonance for the Obama campaign in February, when Michelle Obama declared, "For the first time in my adult life I am really proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback."

Before and since, said Liu, who supports Obama, nearly every assault on the Illinois senator has sought to blemish his patriotism, to pose the question, "Is he American enough?"

"This is going to be the dominant frame of the general election," said Liu, who served as a speechwriter and senior domestic policy adviser in the Clinton White House, and who believes Obama must do a better job of articulating an unself-conscious "progressive patriotism."

With the notable exception of Bill Clinton, Democrats in recent decades have proved hapless in defending themselves from this kind of attack, according to Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory University and author of "The Political Brain."

Four years ago, the Democrats chose Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry as their standard-bearer at least in part because they thought his Vietnam War record would inoculate him from attacks on his patriotism.

Kerry's record was attacked by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and, said Westen, Kerry's slow and ineffectual response proved he wasn't the leader America was looking for.

Indeed, even earlier in the campaign, the right wing had "swift-boated" Kerry's choice of "Let America Be America Again" to be his campaign slogan, with a media blitz describing Langston Hughes as in the thrall of Stalin when he wrote the poem. Kerry retreated.

But in Obama, Westen sees a candidate "light-years ahead" of Kerry in his charisma and political touch, and, in his Philadelphia speech — "A More Perfect Union" — the makings of his own patriotic narrative.

"He began to talk about what it means to strive for a more perfect union," said Westen, and framing his candidacy in a manner that made you think, "Wouldn't the Founding Fathers be smiling today if they could see this?"

"His story is an 'only in America story,' an American dream story. His candidacy is only possible in America," Berkeley linguist George Lakoff, author of "The Political Mind," wrote after the Philadelphia speech. "How could he be anything but patriotic when he is America? And how can we, identifying with him, be anything but patriotic when we are America?"

In the days since, Obama has fleshed out a definition of patriotism founded on caring, interdependence and mutual sacrifice. In his first TV ad of the general election campaign, titled "The Country I Love," he talks about "treating your neighbor as you'd like to be treated."

Victor Davis Hanson, a classics scholar and fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, said America has yet to get a good fix on Obama. Is he messianic, hollow or whole?

His patriotic appeal, said Hanson, is "not based on anything he's done, but on who he is." Vote for me and make America a better land.

"It's the difference between action and essence," said Hanson. McCain flew bombing missions over North Vietnam. He was shot down and held prisoner for 51/2 years. "He was tortured, and performed amazingly well under torture," said Hanson.

From childhood, McCain was drawn to tragic heroes. In his 2003 book "Worth the Fighting For," he recalled as a 12-year-old boy chancing upon "For Whom the Bell Tolls," and falling in love with the "beautiful fatalism" of a Hemingway hero.

The Arizona senator begins "Worth the Fighting For" with a quote from Pericles' funeral oration: "Fix your eyes on the greatness of Athens as you have it before you day by day, fall in love with her, and when you feel her great, remember that this greatness was won by men with courage, with knowledge of their duty, and with a sense of honor in action."

But, as a poster named Andrew Case noted in a 2006 discussion of the oration on the blog Obsidian Wings, it bears mentioning that Pericles was leading Athens toward ultimate disaster. Pericles' description of Athens "is a grotesque distortion of the arrogant, greedy, selfish city that brought about its own destruction through high-handedness towards its allies, overconfidence, and just plain stupidity."

The takeaway for today is plain: "Self-deception is crucial to creating an imperialist democracy," wrote Case. "Liberals who criticize U.S. actions are doing exactly what is necessary to avoid the fate of Athens. Self-deception leads to self-destruction."

And yet, the lesson for the 2008 campaign is not so clear. After all, nearly 2,500 years later, how is it that Pericles' patriotic oratory still soars and resounds?

But of course these two differ in their views of what patriotism truly is.

Osama believes that America needs to crawl back into the early days of the last century when we didn't give Marxism a chance. Like Stalin, he and the Democrats would make almost everyone a proletarian. Everyone equal, but some, out of necessity, would have to be more equal than others.

He and the Democrats truly would run this country like an Animal Farm with the stinking pigs wallowing around the halls of Congress, fouling the corridors and offices with even more of their crap!

Make no mistake friends. This comining election will be the most important in the history of this nation! We either surrender completely to the Elite Political Class of mindless idiots, or we vote for McCain and then hold his feet to the fire.

If he doesn't perform we raise all kinds of particular hell.

With Osama...we haven't a chance. All that we planned for our children and grandchildren will turn to dust.

Ahhh, but I still think Bill Clinton was the bravest of all.

Don’t you remember the editorials making the rounds, circa 1992, that it took as much, if not more, courage and steadfastness of character to be a draft dodger and anti-war protestor as it did to serve and fight?

Conservatives love our country and what it stands for. Conservatives know that sometimes war is a necessary evil. Conservatives know America has problems, but point out that we have the maximum individual liberty of any society ever in history.

Liberals tend to be self-critical, if that’s the right word, about our country. They like to point out our alleged crimes, and point out situations where we haven’t lived up to our highest ideals. They criticize us for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ignoring the fact that we didn’t start that war. They moan and groan about a history of racism and discrimination in this country, and give us no credit for ending legal discrimination. They love our country in their own way, I guess, but they don’t give us enough credit for being the greatest nation in the world, with the most individual liberty of any country ever in history.

Conservatives like to celebrate what is right with America. Liberals like to celebrate diversity, but tend to focus on what’s wrong with America.

Liberals who criticize U.S. actions are doing exactly what is necessary to avoid the fate of Athens. Self-deception leads to self-destruction.

Yeah, so why are the socialists not looking at the socialist policies that have been a plague and miserable failure in the last century, and renouncing that! Socialism in Russia didn't work, in England it didn't work and Europe is a wash in entitlements to Muslim minorities which are ever gaining strength. Where is the great socialist model? Socialists practice their own self deception.

Athens suffered military defeat that lead to its downfall and this is what the socialists want to see happen to the US in Iraq. This article fails to point out this important and salient fact. Again, it's the self indulgent socialist fault finding that doesn't find any fault with socialist POV. Self-deception at its finest.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.