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(Tenured Radical)

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

AND NOT ONE OF THEM COMES TO VISIT

“The choice of the word ‘American’ in the magazine’s name was a deliberate decision to identify ourselves with this country’s tradition and future,” writes one of the editors of the liberal magazine American Prospect; “curiously, some people assumed at the beginning that a publication presenting itself as ‘American’ must be right wing.”

This is the rhetoric-phobia of the American left, and Paul Starr’s right that it’s at the heart of its problems. Merely invoking the word “America” skews reactionary for a lot of people -- it means nationalism (evil), patriotism (kitschy), chauvinism (dangerous). It means a fundamental assumption that under all the problems America is a great country worthy of our love, whereas America is a profoundly flawed country which we must not allow ourselves to love. If we allow ourselves that sort of simple-minded passion, fascism will result.

One convenient moment in the left’s cultural history in this regard is the Katha Pollitt flag-waving thing. She wrote a column in the Nation about how her daughter, after 9/11, insisted on flying the flag, despite Pollitt’s efforts to warn her about “the worst elements in our own society -- the flag-wavers and bigots and militarists.” See how it all gets bundled together?



“What would happen,” Pollitt asks in that same essay, “if the West took seriously the forces in the Muslim world who call for education, social justice, women's rights, democracy, civil liberties and secularism?” That’d be the Kurds, primarily. Where is Pollitt’s column about the Kurds? If she wants to take them seriously, she should pay a visit.