Last year, eleven Muslim students at U.C.-Irvine protested the speech by the Israeli Ambassador to the United States by shouting, "It's a shame this university has sponsored a mass murderer like yourself." They weren't asked to leave like most everyone else who disrupts a speech. No, they were criminally prosecuted of "conspiracy" and "disturbing an assembly" and today they were convicted. They are each facing a sentence of up to one year in prison.
About a year ago, a DI reader named Mike Baker offered me his collection of quotes, including these quotes on patriotism. Thanks, Mike.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
~ Edward Abbey
Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.
~ John Adams (1735 - 1826)
I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
~ James A. Baldwin
"My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober."
~ G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)
"True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else."
~ Clarence S. Darrow
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. ~Diogenes
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
~ Albert Einstein
When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
~ Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson
Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.
~ Guy de Maupassant
Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?
~ Blaise Pascal
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Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph:
~ Haile Selassie
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
~ George Bernard Shaw
"My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its office-holders."
~Mark Twain
It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.
~ Voltaire
I am extremely fortunate to be in a city (St. Louis) where a group of dedicated civic leaders arranged for the opening of a new public charter school for the arts opened last year. It is called Grand Center Arts Academy; it has three grade levels this year--sixth through eighth grades--and it will add one grade level each year, eventually including grades six through twelve. How unusual and wonderful that one can find such a publicly-funded arts oasis at a time when so many schools are cutting their arts classes in order to concentrate on "essentials."
In the September/October 2011 edition of Orion Magazine, Jay Griffiths is tired of defending the arts. Why defend them any longer, when you can use the topic of public funding of the arts to slash at the deep rotten core of the belief that money is the measure of all things? Here's an excerpt from what Griffiths has to say in his excellent short article, titled "The Exile of the Arts" (This article does not appear to be available online at this time).
Disregarding art's transcendent value, modern states ask the arts to justify themselves in commercial terms, money the only measure to calculate a simile, to price the melody of a violin, and to calibrate the value of transformation. A phoenix must write its own cost-benefit analysis. While art tells multiple stories, knows the plural values of beauty, dream, and meaning, money tells a monstrosity. Money should never be the judge of art, but its servant: funding it, supporting it, aiding it. Perhaps one of the reasons for the hostility against the arts today is precisely that they are implacable witnesses against this terrible lie of our times: that money is the measure of all. Art refutes this lie, disentangles "money" from "values," and argues with its deepest authority that there is another sky, intimate and boundless, open to all, where the poet can tow a star across the liquid river of night, like a child with a toy boat on a string.
This has been a long time coming in a candidate. Elizabeth Warren has a long track record for being hard-working, smart and incorruptible. Is there some way to clone her? Just listen to her eloquent rebuff to the Tea Party and her diagnosis of what ails us financially. Does anyone really disagree with any of this?
What is Republican morality? Such a provocative question! Before we get to an answer, though, what is morality? Jonathan Haidt has much to say about this in this 2008 Edge article. I have often mentioned Haidt in my posts. I find him to be a first rate thinker and writer. Now, back to the topic of morality. Here's how Haidt defines morality:
Morality is any system of interlocking values, practices, institutions, and psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible. It turns out that human societies have found several radically different approaches to suppressing selfishness.The first thing he teaches, then, is that "morality" is not an "it." Rather, it is a set of (potentially conflicting) approaches that all aim for the same end: "making social life possible." Haidt sets forth the sort of society that passes as "moral" for many of us:
First, imagine society as a social contract invented for our mutual benefit. All individuals are equal, and all should be left as free as possible to move, develop talents, and form relationships as they please. The patron saint of a contractual society is John Stuart Mill, who wrote (in On Liberty) that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." Mill's vision appeals to many liberals and libertarians; a Millian society at its best would be a peaceful, open, and creative place where diverse individuals respect each other's rights and band together voluntarily (as in Obama's calls for "unity") to help those in need or to change the laws for the common good. Psychologists have done extensive research on the moral mechanisms that are presupposed in a Millian society, and there are two that appear to be partly innate. First, people in all cultures are emotionally responsive to suffering and harm, particularly violent harm, and so nearly all cultures have norms or laws to protect individuals and to encourage care for the most vulnerable. Second, people in all cultures are emotionally responsive to issues of fairness and reciprocity, which often expand into notions of rights and justice. Philosophical efforts to justify liberal democracies and egalitarian social contracts invariably rely heavily on intuitions about fairness and reciprocity.I'll call this Society #1. Now consider a different social arrangement, Society #2: [More . . .]