Her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom

Well, according to a lot of conservatives, my thinking that Phil Ochs' song "The Power and the Glory" is a great patriotic American song is pretty problematic, what with it calling Americans to live by their ideals. I will grant that I'm a little behind the times in posting this now, but I just ran across this live performance by Ochs on the TV show "The Midnight Special" from 1974 and couldn't resist. Oh, and that's Curtis Mayfield introducing Ochs which makes me kind of giddy:

Patriotism and History

I spotted via TAPPED this David Frum column on progressivism, patriotism, and the Obama campaign through a discussion of Todd Gitlin's book, The Intellectuals and the Flag. Frum is (surprise) skeptical of Obama's understanding of patriotism, stating that Obama:

[T]ries to distinguish between the fearfully flawed United States as it is - and the reformed country into which the United States might evolve. It is the latter, hypothetical, country that deserves patriotic affection. But there is this one problem: that hypothetical country does not as yet exist. This is not patriotism - it is a wish fantasy.

Frum's comments reveal a somewhat baffling lack of historical context. While he may label Obama's patriotism as "without content and without qualities" one need look any farther than Obama's "Yes We Can" speech to comprehend how Obama understands patriotism. Doing so reveals a historically minded view of this issue and makes a mockery of those who would question Obama's love of country.

For Obama, patriotism centers on a devotion to the ideals of freedom and democracy that the United States was founded upon; this was the "creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation." That seems a pretty standard idea which certain presidents have reaffirmed in recent years. However, as anyone with any knowledge of American history knows, the actual social and political conditions of the United States upon its' creation did not match these ideals (see for example, slavery). To secure these blessing required (and continues to), centuries of struggle by political leaders and ordinary citizens. In Obama's speech those who embraced this patriotic mission were the ones making this ideal of America a reality: from the abolitionists to women's rights activists to union organizers. To Frum however it would seem these Americans were merely "shrinking from realities," while embracing a "wish fantasy." That is how Frum describes Obama, Gitlin, and other modern day progressives who he derides as attempting to sell a "whole new approach to patriotism." Yet, last I checked, the "realities" in America include women having the right to vote and slavery being abolished, among other changes since 1776. Thus, Obama is not pining for a fantasy America, he is rather situating his campaign and its' goals within this larger narrative of history.

Of course, Obama's reading of patriotism and history is nothing new. In fact, based on his remarks, one can imagine David Frum dismissing as "without content" and merely "hypothetical" the sentiments of a short piece of rhetoric delivered in a small town in Pennsylvania one June afternoon in 1863. It is in a way unfortunate that the Gettysburg Address is so famous as it gives us an excuse to avoid pondering its meaning, which Obama is very much attempting to emulate. Lincoln ascribed to a conception of patriotism emphasizing ideals, particularly "the proposition that all men are created equal." For him at that juncture, the Civil War did not just mean preserving a union and an old America, but rather redefining American ideals to be more expansive, to create in that worn but meaningful phrase a "new birth of freedom."

Of course there are a million more things to say about how the meaning and experience of freedom has been contested throughout American history. For the moment however, I'll leave by hopefully appealing to Mr. Frum from another angle and remind him of Rabbi Tarfon's old saying: "It is not your responsibility to finish the work [of perfecting the world], but you are not free to desist from it either."