"Patriotism, That Least Discerning of Virtues"

How many American flags are there in this picture? Closest without going over gets a free Inductive coffee mug.I thought of titling this one "Conservatism Eats Itself". but we've already got one of those, so I'll attribute the title of this post to Borges without providing a link. (press me on it and I will.)  What does it mean?  It skips over the incoherent question of whether or not patriotism qualifies as a virtue and goes straight to saying that patriotism is the easiest virtue to attain.  To be only patriotic is to settle for the lowest common denominator of goodness and to do so without thinking, without considering that there may be conflicts between patriotism and more sublime virtues.  To be patriotic is to acquiesce to groupthink for its own sake.  I'll leave it at that, because I don't want to violate Godwin's Law.

Recently our President has taken heat from the absurd right for being insufficiently patriotic.  I'll skip ahead to the cogent analysis from Andrew Sullivan (It's hard to get excerptable statements from that guy when he's on a roll.):

This is the era of the Big Lie, in other words, and it translates into a lot of little lies - "death panels," "out-of-control" spending, "apologies for America" etc. - designed to concoct a false narrative so simple and so familiar it actually succeeded in getting into people's minds in the midst of a brutal recession. And integral to this process have been conservative "intellectuals" who should and do know better, but have long since sacrificed intellectual honesty for the cheap thrills of enabling power-grabs. And few lies represent this intellectual cooptation of talk radio/FNC propaganda better than the lie that Obama has publicly rebutted the idea of American exceptionalism.

Where does one start? Where one always starts with these things - Jonah Goldberg:

Last year, when asked if he believed in American exceptionalism, President Obama responded, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

This reminded me of the wonderful scene in Pixar's "The Incredibles," in which the mom says "everyone's special" and her son replies, "Which is another way of saying no one is." But at least the president made room for the sentiment that America is a special place, even if he chalked it up to a kind of benign provincialism.

Oh really?

Here is the full Obama quote:

I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I'm enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world. If you think about the site of this summit and what it means, I don't think America should be embarrassed to see evidence of the sacrifices of our troops, the enormous amount of resources that were put into Europe postwar, and our leadership in crafting an Alliance that ultimately led to the unification of Europe. We should take great pride in that.

And if you think of our current situation, the United States remains the largest economy in the world. We have unmatched military capability. And I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional.

Now, the fact that I am very proud of my country and I think that we've got a whole lot to offer the world does not lessen my interest in recognizing the value and wonderful qualities of other countries, or recognizing that we're not always going to be right, or that other people may have good ideas, or that in order for us to work collectively, all parties have to compromise and that includes us.

And so I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships because we create partnerships because we can't solve these problems alone.

In other words, Obama emphatically doesn't reduce the idea of American exceptionalism to "benign provincialism." Quite the contrary: he explicitly asserts that the values enshrined in the Constitution are exceptional, and defends them and the US's history in front of a foreign audience. 

What ever happened to Gary Cooper?  You know the strong, silent type?  The quintessential American, the embodiment of conservative, rugged, independent virtues?  And when did trumpeting one's own greatness become a virtue?  Modesty - more discerning than patriotism - really should be the true (conservative) virtue here.  As a country, we've reached a stage where if I don't wear my American flag lapel pin to meetings where everybody is an American, if I don't sing "God Bless America" at baseball games where every fan is an American, and if I don't chant "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" at rallies for American elections where everybody participating is an American, I am not a true American.  I'm actually a bit embarrassed to admit that I cringe when these things happen.

Here's an appropriate analogy: I love my family.  Nobody questions that I love my family.  Yet I don't wear a pin of my wife's face on my lapel, I don't sing "God Bless Penelope" at work, I don't tell other fathers that my daughter, Rosalind, is more beautiful that their daughters.  If I find out one of my kids is saying "my dad can beat up your dad," I'd be disappointed.  

Why the inconsistency?