There ARE honest people on the Left.

[scruffy]

I'm sure there are honest people on both sides, but anyone who calls right wingers "patriots" is simply not being honest.

See how dumb these idiots are?

They're too stupid to realize they're being dishonest.

 

[Doug1943]

Yes there are leftists capable of critical thinking and intellectual honesty but those seem to be from mostly the WWII and Boomers generations and as those die out, they become increasingly rare. With the left controlling most of the media, government, education, scientific institutions, entertainment, advertising etc., the current generations have little opportunity to even know the truth about much of anything and are not provided incentive to seek it out themselves. Naomi Wolf is a boomer.

One gentle correction to your OP. "Classical liberals" are not in any way leftist. They represent advocacy for small, effective, efficient government with as much liberty, power. resources left with the people as possible.

Yes, I thought I indicated that I was using "classical liberal" in a non-standard way. Perhaps a better phrase would be "traditional liberal".

But there is a connection between "classical liberalism" and "traditional/modern liberalism" and that is individualism. Individualism is probably an inevitable result of modernity, first of all economic modernity. And what we see with the modern Left is individualism taken to the extreme: the 'Me Generation'.

That's why it's so easy for young Leftists to close down conservative meetings on campus: they're offended by what the think the speaker might say, and anything that offends or upsets them has to be destroyed. The rights of others simply are not part of their mental calculus. (We're stuck with the words "Left" and "Right", unfortunately.)

The Old Communist Left -- those who saw the Soviet Union (or, later Mao's China) as their ideal society -- were also against free speech for their political opponents, but for a very different reason: they saw it as a necessary aspect of the class war they were fighting, and you don't allow the enemy to have newspapers in your territory while you're fighting a war.

 

[Doug1943]

I'm sure there are honest people on both sides, but anyone who calls right wingers "patriots" is simply not being honest.

You have fallen into the error that almost everyone on the Right makes: you list "patriotism" along with other virtues like "honesty" and "kindness". But patriotism, like courage, is a neutral virtue: it can be enlisted for good or evil.

It simply means intense loyalty to the state and the desire to see it flourish. Hitler was a German patriot. Mao was a Chinese patriot. Castro was a Cuban patriot. Ho Chi Minh was a Vietnamese patriot. (Interestingly, although originally Communism was internationalist, it only succeeded in countries where it managed to capture nationalist opposition to domination by foreigners.)

Patriotism is an extension of our genetically-driven loyalty to those who bear a lot of our genes, our kin.

Many states are in fact tribal-states, where most of the population are genetically related. America is different, by design. (And whether this is, in the long term, an adequate basis for a state is a matter of dispute on the Right: the "civic nationalists", who believe genetic kinship is not necessary in order to have a cohesive state, that America is a "propositional nation" (from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address), and the others -- I don't know a phrase that describes them -- who believe that it isn't, that, at the maximum, a state must be based on 'race'.)

So patriotism is one step beyond tribal loyality, if we think of a progression, each step of which involves less immediate self-interest: me, my close relatives, my clan, my tribe, my 'nation'. In fact, from a very abstract view, "patriotism" is not at the peak of that list: beyond that would be 'patriotism' to the entire human race (with maybe an intermediate step of 'patriotism' towards one's civilization). That was what drove the Marxists: internationalism.

However desirable that might be abstractly, these loyalties have to have a material basis. People cannot jump over their own heads. And at the moment there is no material basis for a 'human race patriotism', which is why it always remained restricted to a thin layer of intelligentsia. The French working class may have voted Communist, but they remained patriotic Frenchmen.

And the Left in general has always been far more 'internationalist' and less patriotic than the Right, and not for bad reasons. Patriotism can easily shade over into aggressive nationalism. We've seen a lot of that in the 20th Century. Liberals, being mainly of the intellectual class, were repelled by that.

It was noted long ago -- decades before the rise of the current Me-generation -- that liberal meetings did not usually begin with a Pledge of Allegiance. I'm not noting this as a "gotcha" point -- it's just a fact.

You can hate the Right, but you cannot argue that they do not love their country. It's the current government that they don't love, and even liberals should recognize that it's very dangerous to try to identify a particular political tendency with the country. (Yes, people on the Right do this sometimes as well.)

When America entered WWII, no one thought that liberals were unpatriotic because, in general, they were hesitant about having a strong military, or that conservatives were unpatriotic, because they had been isolationist during the 1930s. We shared a commitment to democracy, which the average person saw as more or less co-extensive with America. (Most people fight for their country, not abstract ideals. In fact, in actual combat, people fight for a much smaller collective, namely, their unit, their squad or platoon, the people they know and rely on.)

That's gone now. The liberal New York City Council can pass a resolution honoring the Soviet spy Ethel Rosenberg, and no one on the Left turns a hair. Not long ago this would have been literally inconceivable.

Of course, "patriotism" is a useful word to have on one's side, the Left is not stupid, so it pretends to be patriotic when this benefits them, just as the Right pretend to be ardent anti-racists. That's just how the game is played.

 

[Doug1943]

DINO.

Enough said right...or do I need to add a deep state?

Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean here.

 

[frigidweirdo]

You have fallen into the error that almost everyone on the Right makes: you list "patriotism" along with other virtues like "honesty" and "kindness". But patriotism, like courage, is a neutral virtue: it can be enlisted for good or evil.

It simply means intense loyalty to the state and the desire to see it flourish. Hitler was a German patriot. Mao was a Chinese patriot. Castro was a Cuban patriot. Ho Chi Minh was a Vietnamese patriot. (Interestingly, although originally Communism was internationalist, it only succeeded in countries where it managed to capture nationalist opposition to domination by foreigners.)

Patriotism is an extension of our genetically-driven loyalty to those who bear a lot of our genes, our kin.

Many states are in fact tribal-states, where most of the population are genetically related. America is different, by design. (And whether this is, in the long term, an adequate basis for a state is a matter of dispute on the Right: the "civic nationalists", who believe genetic kinship is not necessary in order to have a cohesive state, that America is a "propositional nation" (from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address), and the others -- I don't know a phrase that describes them -- who believe that it isn't, that, at the maximum, a state must be based on 'race'.)

So patriotism is one step beyond tribal loyality, if we think of a progression, each step of which involves less immediate self-interest: me, my close relatives, my clan, my tribe, my 'nation'. In fact, from a very abstract view, "patriotism" is not at the peak of that list: beyond that would be 'patriotism' to the entire human race (with maybe an intermediate step of 'patriotism' towards one's civilization). That was what drove the Marxists: internationalism.

However desirable that might be abstractly, these loyalties have to have a material basis. People cannot jump over their own heads. And at the moment there is no material basis for a 'human race patriotism', which is why it always remained restricted to a thin layer of intelligentsia. The French working class may have voted Communist, but they remained patriotic Frenchmen.

And the Left in general has always been far more 'internationalist' and less patriotic than the Right, and not for bad reasons. Patriotism can easily shade over into aggressive nationalism. We've seen a lot of that in the 20th Century. Liberals, being mainly of the intellectual class, were repelled by that.

It was noted long ago -- decades before the rise of the current Me-generation -- that liberal meetings did not usually begin with a Pledge of Allegiance. I'm not noting this as a "gotcha" point -- it's just a fact.

You can hate the Right, but you cannot argue that they do not love their country. It's the current government that they don't love, and even liberals should recognize that it's very dangerous to try to identify a particular political tendency with the country. (Yes, people on the Right do this sometimes as well.)

When America entered WWII, no one thought that liberals were unpatriotic because, in general, they were hesitant about having a strong military, or that conservatives were unpatriotic, because they had been isolationist during the 1930s. We shared a commitment to democracy, which the average person saw as more or less co-extensive with America. (Most people fight for their country, not abstract ideals. In fact, in actual combat, people fight for a much smaller collective, namely, their unit, their squad or platoon, the people they know and rely on.)

That's gone now. The liberal New York City Council can pass a resolution honoring the Soviet spy Ethel Rosenberg, and no one on the Left turns a hair. Not long ago this would have been literally inconceivable.

Of course, "patriotism" is a useful word to have on one's side, the Left is not stupid, so it pretends to be patriotic when this benefits them, just as the Right pretend to be ardent anti-racists. That's just how the game is played.

Patriotism is "love of country"

A Communist who loves their country will want it to be a Communist country. A Fascist will want it to be a Fascist country.

I have fallen into no error, I see how OTHER PEOPLE use the term, and in the way it was used in the article posted, it's "I'm this, that makes me a patriot and everyone else not a patriot if they don't agree with me"

 

[Mac1958]

It's not about dishonesty from Left wing hardcore partisans. It's not about dishonesty from Right wing hardcore partisans.

It's about dishonesty from ALL hardcore partisans. And neither end wants to see that.

 

[scruffy]

It's not about dishonesty from Left wing hardcore partisans.

Yes it is.

It's not about dishonesty from Right wing hardcore partisans.

Yes it is.

It's about dishonesty from ALL hardcore partisans. And neither end wants to see that.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

 

[Doug1943]

Patriotism is "love of country"

A Communist who loves their country will want it to be a Communist country. A Fascist will want it to be a Fascist country.

I have fallen into no error, I see how OTHER PEOPLE use the term, and in the way it was used in the article posted, it's "I'm this, that makes me a patriot and everyone else not a patriot if they don't agree with me"

The article quoted is an essay by Naomi Wolf. I don't recall her mentioning "patrotism" at all. You must be thinking of somehing else.

What she says is that she bought into the mainstream media's narrative about 6 January, but after seeing the videos that were released, she realized she was lied to. Then - she being a high-powered intellectual -- she want back and pulled up many episodes from American history which showed that the Capitol is not some sacred space, off-limits to the public. (I'm not sure how relevant these episodes are, except to show that you could have been there on 6 January, have walked into the Capitol past non-resisting police officers, quite innocently. She also shows that there is something fishy about the fact tha the Capitol was not better protected ... almost as if the powers that be wanted something like this to happen, which is not implausible.)

As for Communists and Fascists 'loving their country'. Nationalism is at the heart of fascism. But Communism was, originally, an internationalist doctrine. After the Russian Revolution, Communists considered the Soviet Union their country. This is just the ABCs of Marxism. Since, at the beginning, most Communist Party members in the US were foreign-born, many of them Russian, this wasn't emotionally difficult. Later, as the Party expanded to include native-born Americans, there probably was some tension between theoretical committment and actual feelings.

Fortunately for the Communists, after 1935, and the turn to the Popular Front strategy, Communists could feel they were being 'good Americans'. In fact, one of their slogans after this turn was "Communism is 20th Century Americanism". So (after 22 June 1941) they could be enthuasiastic participants in the war against Hitler, both for American-patriotic reasons and for Communist-internationalist-Soviet-patriotic reasons.

It's just a matter of fact that the Left tends towards internationalism, and the Right, towards nationalism. There isn't anything inherently good or bad about these tendencies: both can be mis-used for evil purposes.

 

[Blues Man]

It's important for patriots to realize that the Left is not monolithic. There are free thinkers there, classical liberals (not in the free market sense, but in the 1960s sense, ie pro-free speech), Leftists who have not been pulled into the neo-con corporate globalist orbit. All human life is there.
One such person is Naomi Wolf, who was a leading feminist theorist, an advisor to Bill Clinton and Al Gore ... certainly an enemy of the Right. But ... she is a deeply honest person, with a strong sense of personal morality, and the courage to defy the popular opinion of her friends. Her Wiki bio is here -- her enemies have dredged up every bit of negative trivia they can find, but who she is comes through very clear: [ Naomi Wolf - Wikipedia ]

She bought into the Jan 6 narrative at first. But then
... read her story here. I've excerpted the first few paragraphs: The comments are also interesting.
[ Dear Conservatives, I Apologize ]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Dear Conservatives, I Apologize
My "Team" was Taken in By Full-Spectrum Propaganda
Dr Naomi Wolf
Mar 9
There is no way to avoid this moment. The formal letter of apology. From me. To Conservatives and to those who “put America first” everywhere.

It’s tempting to sweep this confrontation with my own gullibility under the rug — to “move on” without ever acknowledging that I was duped, and that as a result I made mistakes in judgement, and that these mistakes, multiplied by the tens of thousands and millions on the part of people just like me, hurt millions of other people like you all, in existential ways.

But that erasure of personal and public history would be wrong.

I owe you a full-throated apology.

I believed a farrago of lies. And, as a result of these lies, and my credulity — and the credulity of people similarly situated to me - many conservatives’ reputations are being tarnished, on false bases.

The proximate cause of this letter of apology is the airing, two nights ago, of excepts from tens of thousands of hours of security camera footage from the United States Capitol taken on Jan 6, 2021. ..."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Her whole essay is well worth reading: she goes into the history of protest a the Capitol ... it's very interesting!

[ Dear Conservatives, I Apologize ]

you are implying that ALL people on the "right" are honest

And we all know that's not true either.

 

[Doug1943]

It's not about dishonesty from Left wing hardcore partisans. It's not about dishonesty from Right wing hardcore partisans.

It's about dishonesty from ALL hardcore partisans. And neither end wants to see that.

Yes, hardcore partisanship tends to blind one to any virtues that people on the other side may have. In some immediate, short-run sense, this may be advantageous. It makes you fight without any hesitations if you think you're fighting pure Evil.

In the long run, it's not smart because it keeps you from making intelligent tactical decisions. You don't see any contradictions in the enemy camp, so you can't exploit them.

More than that, it prevents you from pursuing compromises with people on the other side when these may be all that's available. I think that the illness that has gripped the West, and in particular, America, is incurable, and will just have to run its course, whatever the outcome may be.

But I could be wrong, and we might find a way out. If we do, it will almost certainly be because a section of the Left, alarmed at the development of 'woke' insanity within it, rebels, and seek an alliance with the moderate Right, at first on issues where they both agree, like free speech, and then on 'populist' economic questions, and on a realistic foreign policy.

(In fact, although most people won't admit this, there is already a substantial amount of agreement between large sections of the Left and Right on things like Free Trade and unlimited immigration ((the harmfulness of its unrestricted variety)), a proper welfare state (one that rewards irresponsible behavior as little as possible), and foreign policy. That explains Trump's appeal to people who would never think of themselves as Republicans.)

 

[Mac1958]

Yes, hardcore partisanship tends to blind one to any virtues that people on the other side may have. In some immediate, short-run sense, this may be advantageous. It makes you fight without any hesitations if you think you're fighting pure Evil.

In the long run, it's not smart because it keeps you from making intelligent tactical decisions. You don't see any contradictions in the enemy camp, so you can't exploit them.

More than that, it prevents you from pursuing compromises with people on the other side when these may be all that's available. I think that the illness that has gripped the West, and in particular, America, is incurable, and will just have to run its course, whatever the outcome may be.

But I could be wrong, and we might find a way out. If we do, it will almost certainly be because a section of the Left, alarmed at the development of 'woke' insanity within it, rebels, and seek an alliance with the moderate Right, at first on issues where they both agree, like free speech, and then on 'populist' economic questions, and on a realistic foreign policy.

(In fact, although most people won't admit this, there is already a substantial amount of agreement between large sections of the Left and Right on things like Free Trade and unlimited immigration ((the harmfulness of its unrestricted variety)), a proper welfare state (one that rewards irresponsible behavior as little as possible), and foreign policy. That explains Trump's appeal to people who would never think of themselves as Republicans.)

If a person from either end calls the other end "pure evil", I instantly lose interest in anything else that person has to say. That is not a person with whom I can have an interesting, productive conversation.

I believe that ideology -- political, cultural, religious, whatever -- is so destructive because it robs a person of their fundamental human curiosity. An ideology provides all the answers, it lays out the whole narrative, serves up the whole script, and all a person has to do is follow it. Zero (0) honest critical thinking required. Original thinking discouraged. To me, that's a goddamn tragedy and a waste of the human spirit.

Which end is to blame? I don't care. Left, Right -- when the shit is coming out of both ends like water through a fire hose, I couldn't care LESS who is MORE to blame. It's past time for each end to get over itself and stop waiting for the OTHER end to grow the hell up first.

 

[Doug1943]

you are implying that ALL people on the "right" are honest

And we all know that's not true either.

I don't expect you, or anyone, to read everything I've posted here, but if you did, or just a representative sample, you would see that this is just the opposite of what I believe. I've repeatedly said that there are decent, honest people on the Left, and nasty people on the Right. All human life is in both camps. Perhaps I should always put in a quantifier: "some".

America is divided into to highly partisan camps, and it will get worse. It's similar to war -- which our situation resembles, in a not-yet-fully-expressed form. In war, you don't tell your troops that the other side has some good people, that many of the men you'll be fighting aren't grown men at all, but frightened teen-age conscripts; that they think that they're fighting for their country and that their country's cause is just; that they have mothers and fathers and sweethearts who love them and will be devastated if you kill them; that the bombs you drop on their cities will kill little children. No, you tell them that they're fighting Evil. The reasons for this are obvious.

The reality is, the educational level of the base of the Right is, on averge, lower than that of the Left. Perhaps for this reason, people on the Right are more inclined to accept wild conspiracy theories. This doesn't make them "dishonest" but it does make some of them a bit less willing to hear disconfirming evidence, and a lot of them bit more open to seeing the world as Hollywood has taught them to see it: Pure Good vs Pure Evil, with the Good side being eventually rescued by a single Hero. The (modern) Left has its own weaknesses, which we can go into another time.

 

[frigidweirdo]

The article quoted is an essay by Naomi Wolf. I don't recall her mentioning "patrotism" at all. You must be thinking of somehing else.

What she says is that she bought into the mainstream media's narrative about 6 January, but after seeing the videos that were released, she realized she was lied to. Then - she being a high-powered intellectual -- she want back and pulled up many episodes from American history which showed that the Capitol is not some sacred space, off-limits to the public. (I'm not sure how relevant these episodes are, except to show that you could have been there on 6 January, have walked into the Capitol past non-resisting police officers, quite innocently. She also shows that there is something fishy about the fact tha the Capitol was not better protected ... almost as if the powers that be wanted something like this to happen, which is not implausible.)

As for Communists and Fascists 'loving their country'. Nationalism is at the heart of fascism. But Communism was, originally, an internationalist doctrine. After the Russian Revolution, Communists considered the Soviet Union their country. This is just the ABCs of Marxism. Since, at the beginning, most Communist Party members in the US were foreign-born, many of them Russian, this wasn't emotionally difficult. Later, as the Party expanded to include native-born Americans, there probably was some tension between theoretical committment and actual feelings.

Fortunately for the Communists, after 1935, and the turn to the Popular Front strategy, Communists could feel they were being 'good Americans'. In fact, one of their slogans after this turn was "Communism is 20th Century Americanism". So (after 22 June 1941) they could be enthuasiastic participants in the war against Hitler, both for American-patriotic reasons and for Communist-internationalist-Soviet-patriotic reasons.

It's just a matter of fact that the Left tends towards internationalism, and the Right, towards nationalism. There isn't anything inherently good or bad about these tendencies: both can be mis-used for evil purposes.

Well then, it was you using the term like that. "It's important for patriots to realize that the Left is not monolithic."

The reality is even if you don't have these nationalistic thought processes, you can still "love your country". It's a very vague thing.

 

[pknopp]

I'm still trying to figure out what Trump supporters are supporting here. She says Tucker misrepresents what the video's show and that everyone that was violent should be protested.

What is it exactly?

Did anyone actually read the piece?

 

[Blues Man]

I don't expect you, or anyone, to read everything I've posted here, but if you did, or just a representative sample, you would see that this is just the opposite of what I believe. I've repeatedly said that there are decent, honest people on the Left, and nasty people on the Right. All human life is in both camps. Perhaps I should always put in a quantifier: "some".

America is divided into to highly partisan camps, and it will get worse. It's similar to war -- which our situation resembles, in a not-yet-fully-expressed form. In war, you don't tell your troops that the other side has some good people, that many of the men you'll be fighting aren't grown men at all, but frightened teen-age conscripts; that they think that they're fighting for their country and that their country's cause is just; that they have mothers and fathers and sweethearts who love them and will be devastated if you kill them; that the bombs you drop on their cities will kill little children. No, you tell them that they're fighting Evil. The reasons for this are obvious.

The reality is, the educational level of the base of the Right is, on averge, lower than that of the Left. Perhaps for this reason, people on the Right are more inclined to accept wild conspiracy theories. This doesn't make them "dishonest" but it does make some of them a bit less willing to hear disconfirming evidence, and a lot of them bit more open to seeing the world as Hollywood has taught them to see it: Pure Good vs Pure Evil, with the Good side being eventually rescued by a single Hero. The (modern) Left has its own weaknesses, which we can go into another time.

The corrupt duopoly holds reign because that is what the people want.

People actually want all this partisan squabbling and tit for tat politics.

Our politicians are just a reflection of all of us and if they suck that means we the people also suck

 

[Catsnmeters]

Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean here.

Sorry about that.

 

[Doug1943]

If a person from either end calls the other end "pure evil", I instantly lose interest in anything else that person has to say. That is not a person with whom I can have an interesting, productive conversation.

I believe that ideology -- political, cultural, religious, whatever -- is so destructive because it robs a person of their fundamental human curiosity. An ideology provides all the answers, it lays out the whole narrative, serves up the whole script, and all a person has to do is follow it. Zero (0) honest critical thinking required. Original thinking discouraged. To me, that's a goddamn tragedy and a waste of the human spirit.

Which end is to blame? I don't care. Left, Right -- when the shit is coming out of both ends like water through a fire hose, I couldn't care LESS who is MORE to blame. It's past time for each end to get over itself and stop waiting for the OTHER end to grow the hell up first.

The "pure evil" is what the people at the Top tell their troops at the Bottom. They themselves are probably too sophisticated to believe it.

Ideology is tempting, because it seems to bring the power of science into politics. Newton's three laws of motion, and his theory of gravitation, plus a bit of algebra, let you explain why one celestial body orbits another, and even to predict that the planets will follow elliptical, not circular orbits.

A few simple laws of electron disposition in the elements lets you explain why iron is more reactive than gold. So the impulse to bring this same powerful method to the understanding of human behavior is not a bad one. It's trying to be scientific.

It's the fundamental insight of conservatism -- the 'Right' -- that human society is too complex to be analyzed in the same way we analyze the motion of galaxies or the nature of light, and that basic human nature -- the pursuit of self-interest -- is in tension with schemes for social betterment. Therefore, we should make changes in society slowly, if at all, and be very suspicious of proposals for social betterment that require people to act selflessly.

It is the fundamental insight of liberals/progressives/socialists -- the 'Left' -- that the current arrangements of human society are simply the result of past dispositions of raw power, and are not 'fair' (if we assume all humans should have equal rights to pursue happiness).

Politics over the last two hundred or so years has been a kind of dialectical conflict and combination of forces -- social classes -- embodying these two insights, which imply contradictory policies abstractly, but which end up with compromise combinations of the two.

And this has been allowed to happen because economic growth and technical progress have allowed a steadily-rising standard of living for everyone, so the bottom half can become better off without despoiling the top half.

We may be at the end of this period, which depended on cheap energy.

It's true that a theory which seems to explain everthing can stifle human curiousity, but, fortunately, there are always eccentrics who enjoy challenging basic assumptions. Thus Newtonian mechanics plus Faraday's (and others) theories of electromagnetism, plus the laws of thermodynamics, seemed to have everything wrapped up by the end of the 19th Century ... just a little niggling problem to do with the nature and speed of light... and then along came Einstein.

As the reply to a famous couplet by Alexander Pope, intended as an epitaph for Newton, had it:

"Nature, and nature's laws, lay hid in night,
God said, 'Let Newton be', and all was light."

The 20th century reply:

"Then the Devil, shouting "Ho!", said
'Let Einstein be', and restored the status quo."

And much worse was to follow with quantum mechanics.

The new political dispostion in the US, in which Right and Left seem to have switched their positions on various issues, stems from the current arrangement of economic classes: the base of the Left doing well out of globalization, the base of the Right not doing well out of it. (Here we can let 'globalization' include things like the disintegration of the traditional family, the decline in patriotism and the rise me-me-me individualism in general.)

An excellent analysis of the economic situation can be found in progressive Michael Lind's book, The New Class War.
[ https:// .amazon.com/New-Class-War-Democracy-Managerial/dp/0593083695/ ]
[Michael Lind - Wikipedia ]

No one knows where we're going but the ride is unlikely to be a smooth one.

 

[Doug1943]

The corrupt duopoly holds reign because that is what the people want.

People actually want all this partisan squabbling and tit for tat politics.

Our politicians are just a reflection of all of us and if they suck that means we the people also suck

Yes, it's summed up in the saying that people get the government they deserve.

What's wrong with this is that, if we look at history, we see 'the people' changing their governments, radically, from time to time. Modern life isn't static. It's what has made the last 500 years so different from the previous 10 000, when only wars or natural disasters interrupted our ancestors' unchanging cycle of plant-and-harvest, plant-and-harvest.

In America, this took the form of Mr Trump, who has such fanatical loyalty from his base, despite so many obvious personal flaws, precisely because he broke the mold of trival partisan squabbling. His supporters don't expect him to 'squabble' with the other side.

 

[Blues Man]

Yes, it's summed up in the saying that people get the government they deserve.

What's wrong with this is that, if we look at history, we see 'the people' changing their governments, radically, from time to time. Modern life isn't static. It's what has made the last 500 years so different from the previous 10 000, when only wars or natural disasters interrupted our ancestors' unchanging cycle of plant-and-harvest, plant-and-harvest.

In America, this took the form of Mr Trump, who has such fanatical loyalty from his base, despite so many obvious personal flaws, precisely because he broke the mold of trival partisan squabbling. His supporters don't expect him to 'squabble' with the other side.

Trump is the epitome of bipartisan squabbling.

Just look at his constant personal attacks and derision of anyone who dares disagree with him.

 

[Doug1943]

Well then, it was you using the term like that. "It's important for patriots to realize that the Left is not monolithic."

The reality is even if you don't have these nationalistic thought processes, you can still "love your country". It's a very vague thing.

Yes, you're right. Almost all people feel more in common with those with whom they share a language and much of a common culture, than with others, even if they see the others as fellow humans. We can call this vague affection 'patriotism', and it's useful for political people to do so, since being anti- or non-patriotic is, or used to be, a career-ender in politics.

As I said, if someone is not patriotic -- because they are 'patriots of all humanity' -- I don't see that as something wicked. Patriotism is a neutral virtue, like courage. (When George W Bush called the Islamists who hijacked airlines and flew them into buildings, 'cowards', it was a deeply stupid thing to say. It took ultimate courage to do something like that. Courage is a neutral virtue.)

My quarrel is with people who burn the American flag, or stand idly by, grinning, in their demonstrations while their fellow-demonstrators do so, and then turn around and call my side 'traitors'. Or with people who pass resolutions praising the Soviet spy Ethel Rosenberg, and then call Robert E Lee a 'traitor', while claiming to be 'patriots'.

I'd have more respect for them if they were like this man:
[ Patriotism is racist ]