'Is not nationalism—that
devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass
murder—one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with
religious hatred?'
by Howard
Zinn
Editor’s note from The
Progressive: The late historian and Progressive columnist Howard Zinn shared
these words with us back in 2006. Eleven years later, for July 4, 2017,
his message is still just as compelling A World War II bombardier, Zinn
was the author of the best-selling book A People’s History of the
United States.
On this July 4, we would do
well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of
allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out
America to be blessed.
Is not nationalism—that
devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass
murder—one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with
religious hatred?
These ways of
thinking—cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on— have been
useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.
National spirit can be benign
in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for
expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like
ours—huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction—what might have been
harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to
ourselves.
Our citizenry has been brought
up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world,
uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization,
liberty, democracy.
That self-deception started
early.
When the first English
settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the
violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was
seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The
Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: “Ask of me, and I shall give
thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth
for thy possession.”
When the English set fire to a
Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian
Cotton Mather said: “It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were
brought down to hell that day.”
On the eve of the Mexican War,
an American journalist declared it our “Manifest Destiny to overspread the
continent allotted by Providence.” After the invasion of Mexico began, The
New York Herald announced: “We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize
that beautiful country.”
It was always supposedly for
benign purposes that our country went to war.
We invaded Cuba in 1898 to
liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as
President McKinley put it, “to civilize and Christianize” the Filipino
people.
As our armies were committing
massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of
conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: “The American soldier
is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war
began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of
peace and happiness.”
We see in Iraq that our
soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature,
killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves
capable of brutality, of torture.
Yet they are victims, too, of
our government’s lies.
How many times have we heard
President Bush tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or
legs, or blinded, it is for “liberty,” for “democracy”?
One of the effects of
nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300
people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on September 11
becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
And nationalism is given a
special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a
president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign
trail in 2004 that God speaks through him.
We need to refute the idea
that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial
powers of world history.
We need to assert our
allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.
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