Christopher Dickey writes a good essay in Newsweek about American nationalism. Here’s the second and third graf.
Orwell wrote that nationalism is partly “the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects.” He said it’s not to be confused with patriotism, which Orwell defined as “devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people.”
July 4, I would argue, is a patriotic holiday in just that sense-a true celebration of so much that makes the United States of America unique. It’s the party thrown by a nation of immigrants to mark the creation of something new on the face of the earth, a society devoted not to the past but to the future-the incredibly elegant vision of “certain inalienable rights” to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
He develops that idea, then bridges to patriotism.
But American nationalism, unlike American patriotism, is different-and dangerous.
The second part of Orwell’s definition tells you why. Nationalism is the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or an idea, “placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.” Patriotism is essentially about ideas and pride. Nationalism is about emotion and blood. The nationalist’s thoughts “always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations. … Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception.”
The meat to the essay is about what and who America is, not what we have been. Insightful.
Dickey closes with
“The pursuit of happiness” is, indeed, what the Fourth of July is all about, and I’d like to see that wonderfully vague and evocative principle accepted universally as an inalienable right. But let’s never imagine that the pursuit of happiness is, everywhere, the same as the pursuit of the American dream. That’s something we can share, but never impose.