Nationalism

One of the objections to affirmative-action programs or special treatment for minorities in general is that it punishes modern-day white people for the sins of those long dead. I recently spoke with a woman who felt as though some Native- and African-Americans expected her, as a white woman, to atone for the land-stealing, slave-owning whites of the 19th Century. Since she had never taken anyone's land nor enslaved anyone she felt this was a lot to ask.

This brings up a larger point about nationalism in general. Most of us are quick to tout the great things in our country's history. We wave the flag, we sing the national anthem, and if challenged, we can usually recite a number of our countrymen's achievements, of which we are duly proud. In short we are quick to jump on the successes of people who happened to be born within the same geographic area as us.

As my new friend's comments indicate, however, when the less boastworthy aspects of our nation's history emerge, we are equally quick to distance ourselves from those acts. Moreover, if one brings up these events in rebuttal to some self-congratulatory nationalism, one is accused of hating one's country and told to either 'love it or leave it'.

Is it too much to suggest that if we are to bask vicariously in the glow of past success that we cannot then disassociate ourselves from our less proud moments. We have to take the good with the bad, and if you can't accept the bad then don't brag about the good.

Frankly I'm with George Bernard Shaw:
'Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it'