American Patriotism

"Defines what American patriotism means and gives examples of what it looks like in our everyday lives"--Publisher's description.

This book argues that the transformation of our world into a global society is causing a resurgence of tribalism at the same time that it is inspiring the ideology of political holism--the understanding of human society as an evolving global system of interdependent individuals, cultures, and nations. Betty Jean Craige examines the "patriotic" resistance to globalization in the United States by examining a number of recent historical events, including the Persian Gulf War, the 1988 presidential campaign, and the Iran-Contra scandal.

After the Civil War, many Americans did not identify strongly with the concept of a united nation. Francesca Morgan finds the first stirrings of a sense of national patriotism--of "these United States--in the work of black and white clubwomen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Morgan demonstrates that hundreds of thousands of women in groups such as the Woman's Relief Corps, the National Association of Colored Women, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Daughters of the American Revolution sought to produce patriotism on a massive scale in the absence of any national emergency. They created holidays like Confederate Memorial Day, placed American flags in classrooms, funded monuments and historic markers, and preserved old buildings and battlegrounds. Morgan argues that while clubwomen asserted women's importance in cultivating national identity and participating in public life, white groups and black groups did not have the same nation in mind and circumscribed their efforts within the racial boundaries of their time. Presenting a truly national history of these generally understudied groups, Morgan proves that before the government began to show signs of leadership in patriotic projects in the 1930s, women's organizations were the first articulators of American nationalism.

During the years leading up to World War I, America experienced a crisis of civic identity. How could a country founded on liberal principles and composed of increasingly diverse cultures unite to safeguard individuals and promote social justice? In this book, Jonathan Hansen tells the story of a group of American intellectuals who believed the solution to this crisis lay in rethinking the meaning of liberalism. Intellectuals such as William James, John Dewey, Jane Addams, Eugene V. Debs, and W. E. B. Du Bois repudiated liberalism's association with acquisitive individualism and laissez-faire economics, advocating a model of liberal citizenship whose virtues and commitments amount to what Hansen calls cosmopolitan patriotism. Rooted not in war but in dedication to social equity, cosmopolitan patriotism favored the fight against sexism, racism, and political corruption in the United States over battles against foreign foes. Its adherents held the domestic and foreign policy of the United States to its own democratic ideals and maintained that promoting democracy universally constituted the ultimate form of self-defense. Perhaps most important, the cosmopolitan patriots regarded critical engagement with one's country as the essence of patriotism, thereby justifying scrutiny of American militarism in wartime.

Environmental patriotism, the belief that the national environment defines a country’s greatness, is a significant strand in twentieth century American environmentalism. This book is the first to explore the history of environmental patriotism in America through the intriguing stories of environmental patriots and the rhetoric of their speeches and propaganda, The See America First movement began in 1906 with the aim of protecting and promoting the landscapes of the American West. In 1908, Gifford Pinchot and President Theodore Roosevelt hosted the White House Conservation Conference to promote the wise use of natural resources for generations of Americans. In 1912, Pittsburgh’s smoke investigation condemned the effects of coal smoke on the city’s environment. In World War II, a massive propaganda effort mobilized millions of Americans to plant victory gardens to save resources for the war abroad. While these may not seem like crucial moments for the American environmental movement, this new history of American environmentalism shows that they are linked by patriotism. The book offers a provoking critique of environmentalists’ communication strategies and suggests patriotism as a persuasive hook for new ways to make environmental issues a national priority. This original research should be of interest to scholars of environmental communication, environmental history, American history and environmental philosophy.

When we talk about patriotism in America, we tend to mean one form: the version captured in shared celebrations like the national anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance. But as Ben Railton argues, that celebratory patriotism is just one of four distinct forms: celebratory, the communal expression of an idealized America; mythic, the creation of national myths that exclude certain communities; active, acts of service and sacrifice for the nation; and critical, arguments for how the nation has fallen short of its ideals that seek to move us toward that more perfect union. In Of Thee I Sing, Railton defines those four forms of American patriotism, using the four verses of “America the Beautiful” as examples of each type, and traces them across our histories. Doing so allows us to reframe seemingly familiar histories such as the Revolution, the Civil War, and the Greatest Generation, as well as texts such as the national anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance. And it helps us rediscover forgotten histories and figures, from Revolutionary War Loyalists and the World War I Espionage and Sedition Acts to active patriots like Civil War nurse Susie King Taylor and the suffragist Silent Sentinels to critical patriotic authors like William Apess and James Baldwin. Tracing the contested history of American patriotism also helps us better understand many of our 21st century debates: from Donald Trump’s divisive deployment of celebratory and mythic forms of patriotism to the backlash to the critical patriotisms expressed by Colin Kaepernick and the 1619 Project. Only by engaging with the multiple forms of American patriotism, past and present, can we begin to move forward toward a more perfect union that we all can celebrate.

In this absorbing book, George McKenna ranges across the entire panorama of American history to track the development of American patriotism. That patriotism—shaped by Reformation Protestantism and imbued with the American Puritan belief in a providential “errand”—has evolved over 350 years and influenced American political culture in both positive and negative ways, McKenna shows. The germ of the patriotism, an activist theology that stressed collective rather than individual salvation, began in the late 1630s in New England and traveled across the continent, eventually becoming a national phenomenon. Today, American patriotism still reflects its origins in the seventeenth century. By encouraging cohesion in a nation of diverse peoples and inspiring social reform, American patriotism has sometimes been a force for good. But the book also uncovers a darker side of the nation’s patriotism—a prejudice against the South in the nineteenth century, for example, and a tendency toward nativism and anti-Catholicism. Ironically, a great reversal has occurred, and today the most fervent believers in the Puritan narrative are the former “outsiders”—Catholics and Southerners. McKenna offers an interesting new perspective on patriotism’s role throughout American history, and he concludes with trenchant thoughts on its role in the post-9/11 era.

Nationalism is on the rise across the Western world, serving as a rallying cry for voters angry at the unacknowledged failures of globalization that has dominated politics and economics since the end of the Cold War. In After Nationalism, Samuel Goldman trains a sympathetic but skeptical eye on the trend, highlighting the deep challenges that face any contemporary effort to revive social cohesion at the national level. Noting the obstacles standing in the way of basing any unifying political project on a singular vision of national identity, Goldman highlights three pillars of mid-twentieth-century nationalism, all of which are absent today: the social dominance of Protestant Christianity, the absorption of European immigrants in a broader white identity, and the defense of democracy abroad. Most of today's nationalists fail to recognize these necessary underpinnings of any renewed nationalism, or the potentially troubling consequences that they would engender. To secure the general welfare in a new century, the future of American unity lies not in monolithic nationalism. Rather, Goldman suggests we move in the opposite direction: go small, embrace difference as the driving characteristic of American society, and support political projects grounded in local communities.