The Truth About Patriotism

DIVCritique of the role of patriotism in democratic theory and its manifestation in popular culture as a mode of conceptualizing national cohesion./div

Presents a comprehensive timeline of American and world history with facts and quotes, contributions to science and the arts, wars and military conflicts, and popular culture, and includes a collection of patriotic poems, speeches, and song lyrics.

A rediscovery of patriotism as a virtue in line with the core values of democracy in an extremist age The concept of patriotism has fallen on hard times. What was once a value that united Americans has become so politicized by both the left and the right that it threatens to rip apart the social fabric. On the right, patriotism has become synonymous with nationalism and an “us versus them” worldview, while on the left it is seen as an impediment to acknowledging important ethnic, religious, or racial identities and a threat to cosmopolitan globalism. Steven B. Smith reclaims patriotism from these extremist positions and advocates for a patriotism that is broad enough to balance loyalty to country against other loyalties. Describing how it is a matter of both the head and the heart, Smith shows how patriotism can bring the country together around the highest ideals of equality and is a central and ennobling disposition that democratic societies cannot afford to do without.

A provocative, inspiring account of our neglected American ideals and the people who are living them today—and restoring our nation’s dream Patriotism has become a loaded word: one that is wielded against people with whom we might disagree, or whose cultural origins don’t match our own. But our founding fathers—Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and others—saw patriotism as a dynamic force: an act of service, in an evolving nation that defined its purpose by offering all people a better way of life. In Authentic Patriotism, author and award-winning journalist Stephen P. Kiernan explores the original ideals that have been lost in our current climate, where war and economic turmoil have eroded our sense of civic obligation. Kiernan describes “a nation adrift,” out of touch with its origins—and then introduces a range of inspiring people who have revived our national purpose by taking action: • The out-of-work college graduate who led an economic and environmental renewal of her blighted home community. • The retired executive who pioneered a revolutionary concept in health care for people without insurance. • The minister who created a legendary choir, with the goal of uniting children of different races, genders, and classes in one voice. • The family who donated their daughter’s heart, so that another might live. These and other “New Americans” are profiled in a book that offers hope, ideas, examples, and practical resources for readers who want to renew the American spirit.

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.

From the acclaimed historian and New Yorker writer comes this urgent manifesto on the dilemma of nationalism and the erosion of liberalism in the twenty-first century. At a time of much despair over the future of liberal democracy, Jill Lepore makes a stirring case for the nation in This America, a follow-up to her much-celebrated history of the United States, These Truths. With dangerous forms of nationalism on the rise, Lepore, a Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, repudiates nationalism here by explaining its long history—and the history of the idea of the nation itself—while calling for a “new Americanism”: a generous patriotism that requires an honest reckoning with America’s past. Lepore begins her argument with a primer on the origins of nations, explaining how liberalism, the nation-state, and liberal nationalism, developed together. Illiberal nationalism, however, emerged in the United States after the Civil War—resulting in the failure of Reconstruction, the rise of Jim Crow, and the restriction of immigration. Much of American history, Lepore argues, has been a battle between these two forms of nationalism, liberal and illiberal, all the way down to the nation’s latest, bitter struggles over immigration. Defending liberalism, as This America demonstrates, requires making the case for the nation. But American historians largely abandoned that defense in the 1960s when they stopped writing national history. By the 1980s they’d stopped studying the nation-state altogether and embraced globalism instead. “When serious historians abandon the study of the nation,” Lepore tellingly writes, “nationalism doesn’t die. Instead, it eats liberalism.” But liberalism is still in there, Lepore affirms, and This America is an attempt to pull it out. “In a world made up of nations, there is no more powerful way to fight the forces of prejudice, intolerance, and injustice than by a dedication to equality, citizenship, and equal rights, as guaranteed by a nation of laws.” A manifesto for a better nation, and a call for a “new Americanism,” This America reclaims the nation’s future by reclaiming its past.

Because of the War in Iraq, Hanna's book is more timely than ever. In the final chapter of her book, she wrote, "The lessons of Vietnam must never be ignored or forgotten." To her that lesson was simple: American citizens must always question our government, and we must never again sacrifice our sons and daughters to political rhetoric and unsubstantiated fears. Or lies. But we didn't learn the lesson after all. American citizens, in the name of patriotism, have allowed our government to trap us in a war that has become a nightmare. Peggy's story is one that many Americans today can relate to as she recounts her struggle with patriotism and dissent, with trying to understand why we were at war, and who was telling the truth. Peggy's story breaks the stereotype of the Vietnam anti-war demonstrators. She was a housewife and mother of five small children. The stereotype of crazed hippie college students, created by the media, caused unnecessary pain for our troops because they believed the protestors opposed them. They didn't! They opposed our government's policies, not our troops. Patriotic moms and dads just like Peggy Hanna took to the streets too but never received the media coverage that the college campuses did. She describes how much peace activists cared about our troops - a message that never made it to the soldiers dug into the trenches or to their families at home. That was one lesson that was learned. Today anti-war protestors are making sure the troops understand they are protesting our government's policies, not our troops. Opposing the war in Vietnam or the war in Iraq, does not take away their sacrifice and their honor. As one college professor said, "This is a book that all Americans should read."

'The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs' Biting and timeless reflections on patriotism, prejudice and power, from the man who wrote about his nation better than anyone. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.