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(Un)Fortunate son
I woke up this morning to find that I lived in a country of "patriots." Of course, I had seen the flags -- large and small, paper and cloth -- all week, hanging from fire escapes, taped to car antennae, pinned to t-shirts and jackets. I had attended somber candlelight vigils on the Brooklyn Heights promenade, and stood with the crowds, gazing at smoke curling up from the gash that had been torn in lower Manhattan. But this morning it was official: news that we had entered a new national era was being trumpeted from the front pages of the world’s most influential newspapers and magazines. A "sense of patriotism, and defiance, blanketed America," wrote Rick Bragg in The New York Times. "This shared victimization powerfully reminds Americans that they are all in the end mutually dependent members of the same community," wrote Francis Fukuyama in the Financial Times. "Let us start the rebuilding of our understanding of our place in the world," admonished an editorial in The New Republic. But should we? Is the death and destruction we have witnessed this week evidence that we must rethink our place in the world, our national purpose and character, or evidence that we must work harder than ever to maintain it? Does the attack of terrorists who share so few of our cultural and philosophical beliefs mean that we should re-evaluate the very basis of this country, whether one defines it as the freedoms of speech, association and movement, or the freedom to pursue democratic capitalism? Should we forge our newfound patriotism -- always an elusive and volatile concept -- from the experience of victimization and defeat, as it has been in the Balkans for the past decade? I have always believed there is much to be grateful for and proud of in this country, and am as skeptical about knee-jerk anti-Americanism as I am of nationalistic jingoism. Recent events have done nothing to shake my confidence; the outpouring of compassion and empathy across the nation, and world, have only bolstered it. What is called for is not a re-evaluation of how we feel about America, but a re-evaluation of what we should do as Americans. Airport security, intelligence operations, immigration policies: all these surely should be reconsidered. If America is guilty of anything-and I’m not sure it is-it is for having taken its security too much for granted. While Europeans and Israelis have learned to live with the encumbrances of an intrusive security apparatus, we have been blissfully innocent. This will no doubt change. But the crass calculus according to which the enormous number of fatalities at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are believed by some to have "finally" taught (!) Americans how it feels to be a victim country -- that, as Martin Peretz writes in The New Republic, America has joined "a fraternity bonded in blood" -- is simply wrong. Such sentiments are more properly known as nationalism or ethnic chauvinism. Any patriotism that depends on the status of its citizens as either victims or victors is unworthy of the name. Patriotism, "love of country," is just that. Let’s not allow this week’s violence to take that from us.
Robert Boynton teaches magazine journalism at New York University. Formerly an editor at Harper’s, he has written for Lingua Franca and The Nation and has been a contributing editor at The New Yorker.
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