Conservatives Will Always Win on Patriotism

by Micah Tillman

The onslaught Obama endured on ABC over patriotism was not so much an attack by Gibson and Stephanopoulos as preparation for a battle that will always be Conservatives’ to lose. Progressives need to be prepared, but simply appealing to their own brand of patriotism isn't working. Instead, it highlights four major weaknesses: cognitive dissonance, elitism, the future’s weightlessness, and the specter of nihilism.

Patriotism “Is Said in Two Ways”
Last time I argued that Conservatives and Progressives mean “patriotism” in fundamentally different ways:

Conservative patriotism is love of country for what it is. It gives the patriot pride by teaching her to see herself as the product of something valuable. Conservative patriotism is philodoksopatria.

Progressive patriotism is the love of country for what it could be. And since Progressivism sees us as the progeny of America’s flawed actuality, it is often accompanied by shame. Progressive patriotism remains unmixed with doksopatria.

Weakness 1: Cognitive Dissonance
If patriotism must produce pride, therefore, Progressive philopatria is nothing of the sort.

But if patriotism requires the belief that somehow our generation is special — that it can make America something it’s never fully been — then Conservative philopatria is nothing of the sort.

Progressive patriotism, therefore, is not completely dissociated from pride. It’s just that the love-pride link in Progressivism is reversed.

Conservatives loves their country first, and feel pride as a result. Progressives have pride in themselves first and love their country (i.e., they think they can “make something of it”) as a result:

We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. We are the hope of those boys who have little . . . . –Barack Obama

Progressives, therefore, endure a cognitive dissonance that Conservatives do not. Progressives must struggle with shame over themselves as products of their nation, and yet must have pride in themselves to think that they can solve their nation’s problems.

This internal conflict puts Progressives at a disadvantage when squaring off with Conservatives over patriotism. “Do I really love my country if I’m ashamed of it?” “How can something so flawed be the source of its own healing?” “Should I be proud of myself or not?”

Weakness 2: The Appearance of Elitism
But the dissonance also makes Progressives defensive on the issue of elitism, as we have seen recently. After all, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. And we are not everyone.

The power of Barack Obama’s campaign has been his portrayal of the we as all-encompassing — at least with respect to the present generation. (Past generations had to wait for us, evidently.) Whereas other Progressive politicians believe that we is coterminous with the political class, Obama has tried to make the Progressive version of pride more egalitarian.

He has also taken advantage of the middle ground between the Progressive and Conservative poles of patriotism, as I have noted before. But this move will always be accompanied by an air of squeamishness. It is difficult to maintain pride in and shame over your country simultaneously.

Conservatives’ singular admiration of country avoids all this, and is therefore labeled “un-nuanced,” “simplistic,” and “blind” by Progressives. But this reaction further reinforces the perception of Progressives as elitists.

Weakness 3: The Future’s Weightlessness
Pointing out that there are things about this country which Conservatives despise — its activist judges, its loss of tradition, its growing government, etc. — has little effect. When a Conservative calls for change, she sees her work as returning the country to its true self.

The present defects are — to use an Aristotelianism — “accidental” rather than essential. The country’s fundamentals may need exfoliation, but not reconstructive surgery.

For Conservatives, the country is what it was, while for Progressives it is what it will be. But the past will always have more weight than the future. (And even when Conservatives see parts of our country’s past as hateful, they dismiss them as accidental.)

Conservatives understand the Progressive talk of “America’s promise,” but see it as something America has always already fulfilled. You just might have to dust it off a little in certain places.

Conservatives, consequently, are much more ready to forgive America-Past than are Progressives. Progressives, on the other hand, can be more ready to forgive what America-Present does in the name of America-Future:

[W]e know that that requires us to make adjustments in terms of how we use energy. We've got to be less wasteful, both as a society and in our own individual lives.

And . . . believing that this planet and this world extends beyond us . . ., it's here for . . . more generations to come. I think religion can actually bolster our desire to make those sacrifices now. –Barack Obama

Weakness 4: Nihilism?
It all depends on where you see value as lying. For Conservatives, the past is the eternal wellspring from which value flows. We must return to it and preserve it, even as we filter out extraneous impurities.

But for Progressives, value lies in the goal which calls us out, forward, upward. Things gain their value from their service to the future, to progress.

But since the future is always future, does the present ever actually get any value?

With this preference for moving beyond the present — with this sense that value may be always pending, but never actualized — Progressivism once again opens itself to attack. Compared with the value Conservatives find already present, Progressivism seems to consist of rejection, negation, negativity, nihilism.

And if we had a choice, which looks more attractive? If Progressive patriotism means cognitive dissonance, elitism, pipedreams, and nihilism, we’ll choose the Conservative version every time. That’s why it’s in the interest of Conservative politicians to frame elections in terms of patriotism.

Will Obama’s caught-off-guard performance last Wednesday finally scare Progressive politicos into taking the four weaknesses of their position seriously? It’s about time they started building up defenses.

Otherwise, what hope will they have against Senator Patriotism (R-AZ) in the fall?

Micah Tillman (micahtillman.com) is a lecturer in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America.