The Truth about Patriotism is a bracing repudiation of the claim that patriotism is essential—or even beneficial—to democracy. Contending that even at its best patriotism subverts the democracy it purports to value, Steven Johnston turns to patriotism’s defenders to show how they must jettison much of democracy to champion patriotism. Closely examined, patriotism itself effectively demonstrates the impossibility of love of country. Patriotism, Johnston argues, tends toward narcissistic self-regard, blind to its violent ways of being in the world and its dependence on death. Thus we would be better off without it.
Drawing largely from aspects of American political and popular culture, this wide-ranging book presents a wealth of examples to disclose patriotism’s self-defeating character. They include Richard Rorty’s and John Schaar’s enmity-driven love of country, Socrates’s angry judicial suicide, the violent obsessions of High Noon and Saving Private Ryan, the triumphalist self-display of the World War II Memorial, Oliver Stone’s and Don DeLillo’s spectacular representations of the assassination of President Kennedy, George W. Bush’s symbolic sacrifice of more Americans in commemoration of September 2001, and yet other memorials to and apologies for patriotism. Ultimately, Johnston calls for a vision of democracy that uses the tragic possibilities inherent in politics as a spur to a life-affirming civic ethos of reciprocal generosity.
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“Have you become wary of how benign patriotism is invoked to counter bellicose patriotism? In this book Steven Johnston shows you why that wariness is well grounded. He explains the traps attached to benign patriotism, and he presents an alternative suited to democratic life. An indispensable book for a post-Bush era.”—William E. Connolly, author of Capitalism and Christianity, American Style“This courageous book directly confronts a political impulse—patriotism—that has been a largely unchallenged cornerstone of American culture and, at the same time, an integral strategy for the deployment of hatred and resentment that threatens the democratic enterprise. Drawing on diverse sources (intellectual and popular; contemporary, historical, and classical), Steven Johnston questions the very possibility of a coherent American patriotism.”—William Chaloupka, Professor of Political Science, Colorado State University
Steven Johnston is Associate Professor in the Department of Government and International Affairs at the University of South Florida. He is the author of Encountering Tragedy: Rousseau and the Project of Democratic Order.
Acknowledgments ix
1. “Without External Picturesqueness,” Or, Why I Am Not a Patriot 1
2. This Patriotism Which Is Not One 21
3. Iconic Drama I: The Mortal Logic of Enmity 64
4. Iconic Drama II: The Socratic Way of Death 89
5. The American Memorial/Monument Complex I: The Architecture of Democratic Monuments 115
6. The American Memorial/Monument Complex II: Political Not Patriotic 138
7. Patriotism and Death: Wounded Patriotic Attachments 161
8. Bruce Springsteen and the Tragedy of the American Dream 198
Notes 233
Bibliography 269
Index 279
1. “Without External Picturesqueness,” Or, Why I Am Not a Patriot 1
2. This Patriotism Which Is Not One 21
3. Iconic Drama I: The Mortal Logic of Enmity 64
4. Iconic Drama II: The Socratic Way of Death 89
5. The American Memorial/Monument Complex I: The Architecture of Democratic Monuments 115
6. The American Memorial/Monument Complex II: Political Not Patriotic 138
7. Patriotism and Death: Wounded Patriotic Attachments 161
8. Bruce Springsteen and the Tragedy of the American Dream 198
Notes 233
Bibliography 269
Index 279
Related subjects:
American Studies
Political Science, U.S. Politics
Political Theory