JONAH GOLDBERG

‘Unity is the great need of the hour,” insists Barack Obama. Unity and the hope for unity and the need for unity in the pursuit of hope and the hope that our unified hopefulness will carry us to ever greater heights of hopeful unity until each and every one of us is the person he longs to be: That’s what Barack Obama is all about. And don’t you dare say otherwise. These are not “just words.”

One might be forgiven for asking, What the heck do these words mean? Specifically, what’s so special about unity? Unity for what? Unity around what? Obama has an answer: We need unity “not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it’s the only way we can overcome the essential [empathy] deficit that exists in this country.” His wife, Michelle, dilates on the subject: “We have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done. That is why I am here, because Barack Obama is the only person in this who understands that. That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.”

If you go on to read or listen to more of this stuff, you’ll eventually see what they’re getting at: Americans need to rally around Obama and his platform if they are going to mend their souls and make this a better country. You might buy this or you might think it’s hogwash, and there’s no shortage of arguments out there for both perspectives, but what is it with this obsession with unity? American politicians used to have a word to describe their appeals to collective action for the betterment of the whole society. They called it patriotism. But that word summons the banshees of the Democratic party. To raise the issue of patriotism, say the Democrats, is to question whether someone is patriotic at all — at least when Republicans do it.

Except that Republicans don’t actually use the word “patriotism” very much. Nevertheless, Democrats hear it in almost everything Republicans say. When Republicans disputed John Kerry’s commitment to national defense, Democrats said they were questioning his patriotism. When John McCain released an ad calling himself the “American president Americans have been waiting for,” one could hear outraged caterwauling from the Democratic jungle: What’s John McCain trying to say? We’re un-American? Who’s he calling unpatriotic? FFred Barnes, writing in The Weekly Standard, calls this anticipatory offense “patriotism paranoia.” Indeed, there does seem to be psychological insecurity on display. If I say to a male friend, “Those are nice shoes,” and he responds with “How dare you call me gay!” it’s fair to say he’s the guy with the issues.

Obama himself has gotten in on this act: “In this campaign, we will not stand for the politics that uses religion as a wedge and patriotism as a bludgeon.” His campaign manager, David Plouffe, chimed in later: “Questioning patriotism is something we don’t think has a place in this campaign.”

This is a mess. Barack Obama and other Democrats use the word “unity” as a substitute for something like “patriotism.” They consider “questioning the patriotism” of Democrats — even when it’s not actually being questioned — beyond the pale and “divisive.” All the while they use the word “divisive” with diuretic abandon as code for “unpatriotic.” And if that’s not confusing enough, many Democrats routinely declare flat-out that Republicans are unpatriotic. For example, Howard Dean, when running for president, insisted that John Ashcroft was “not a patriot. John Ashcroft is a direct descendant of Joseph McCarthy.” John Kerry complained that Bush’s “creed of greed” led him to “unpatriotically” allow corporations to move overseas. And what is the “chickenhawk” epithet if not an attack on the patriotism of war supporters who do not enlist, lubricated with the spittle of anti-hypocrisy hysteria?

Perhaps we should “unpack” some of these concepts, as the academics say.

DEFINITIONS GOOD AND BAD
Suppose there were someone who believed it might do America “a ton of good to have our butts kicked” (in the words of left-wing novelist Tom Robbins). Or that the world would benefit from “a million Mogadishus,” and that “the only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military” (Columbia professor Nicholas De Genova). Or that America is “just downright mean” — brimming with “broken souls” — and hasn’t done anything worthy of pride in her lifetime (Michelle Obama). Or that because of the racism of “U.S. of KKK A” at home, and its cruelty abroad, we shouldn’t sing “God bless America” so readily as “God damn America” (Rev. Jeremiah Wright). It would stretch the bounds of neither reason nor decorum to say these people are less in love with America than is your typically patriotic person. Try replacing “America” in the above quotes with just about any other noun. “The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the New York Yankees!” “Cleveland is downright mean!” “God damn my KKK-car!” And so on. In any of these instances, a reasonable person might question the speaker’s love for the Yankees, Cleveland, or Chrysler. But no reasonable person may ever — ever! — question someone’s love of country when he attacks it with similar words.

If patriotism is a thing, if it has meaning as a concept and as a description of attitudes or behaviors, it isn’t surprising that some people will be more patriotic than others — whatever definition we finally settle on. And we need not settle on just one, because there are many kinds of patriotism. Walter Berns argues in his book Making Patriots that, because America is a nation founded on individual rights, American patriotism differs markedly from, say, Spartan patriotism, which extolled loyalty to the collective and the state above all else. Many liberals would agree with this at first blush. But they can’t seem to hold on to the idea that American patriotism has something to do with America.

John Edwards, whose bifocal vision of “two Americas” involves pity for one and contempt for the other, says, “Patriotism is about refusing to support something you know is wrong, and having the courage to speak out with strength and passion and backbone for something you know is right.” Well, no. Dissent is about all that. Patriotism is about loving your country. So, yes, dissent could be patriotic — or it could be treason. Everyone from American Communist spies and saboteurs dedicated to the overthrow of the U.S. government during the Cold War to the protesters carrying signs saying “Bomb Texas, Not Iraq” at your typical ANSWER rally is patriotic, according to Edwards’s definition, which is 200-proof nonsense.

Or consider this supposedly brilliant bumper-sticker insight: “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” Mark Steyn has had great fun with that line, pointing out that Thomas Jefferson — usually credited as its author — never said anything of the sort. Steyn traces the fakery back to a 1991 quote from Nadine Strossen, the head of the ACLU, an organization with a vested interest in putting the founders’ imprimatur on relentless knee-jerk complaining. (The oldest reference I can find in major newspapers is a 1969 line from New York mayor John Lindsay, who was congratulating anti-Vietnam protesters at Columbia for their patriotism. He was booed after he left the stage, and Paul Boutelle — a cab driver and Socialist Workers party mayoral candidate known after 1979 as Kwame Montsho Ajamu Somburu — vilified him in absentia. The crowd loved it.)

It is worth pointing out that if Jefferson had in fact said something like that, he would have been what social scientists call a moron. As John O’Sullivan once noted, tongue firmly in cheek, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Treason is the highest form of dissent. Therefore treason is the highest form of patriotism.” Yet when you listen to the verbal contortions many on the left go through to defend the New York Times’s efforts to reveal national-security secrets, or to journalists who think expressing open sympathy for America in the international arena is a grave sin, or simply to the usual battiness of countless America-haters, you can appreciate the wisdom of the Italian proverb that the truest things are said in jest.

Like the layers of steel in a Japanese sword, the logic of “Jefferson’s” wisdom folds in on itself until one is left with an adamantine blade of invincible ignorance and razor-sharp asininity. For example, if George Bush and conservatives are little better than Prussian heel-clickers for wearing their patriotism on their sleeves, what does it say about you when you wear your patriotism on your bumper? After all, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism” is bandied about almost exclusively by self-styled dissenters. “This is not the first time in American history when patriotism has been distorted to deflect criticism and mislead the nation,” harrumphed the Great Dissenter John Kerry in 2006. “No wonder Thomas Jefferson himself said: ‘Dissent is the greatest form of patriotism.’” Get it? John Kerry is bragging about what a great patriot he is by calling attention to what a wonderful dissenter he is. “I am more patriotic than thou” sneaks up on us in the Trojan Horse of “I dissent more than thou.”

Now it must be said that no conservative standing upon the shoulders of Burke, Nock, Buckley, Hayek, Goldwater, and Reagan would for a moment dispute the suggestion that dissent for the right reason can be one high form of patriotism. But it depends on the reason. The dissenter-for-dissent’s-sake is among the most common species of pest in the human ecosystem. The reflexive contrarian who cares not what he is contradicting is quite simply the most useless of citizens.

When confronted with the assertion that the Soviet Union and the United States were moral equivalents, William F. Buckley Jr. famously responded that if one man pushes an old lady into an oncoming bus and another man pushes an old lady out of the way of a bus, we should not denounce them both as men who push old ladies around. Likewise, we should not say that the man who dissents from a church-burning mob and the man who dissents from a fire brigade are morally equivalent “dissenters.”

“FASCIST,” YOU SAY?
Part of the problem is that many on the left think patriotism is essentially fascist, another name for nationalism and jingoism. And some may use it that way — but some may also call a duck a “cat,” which doesn’t mean we should all be hostage to this usage. The misuse of “patriotism” and “dissent” is worse, because a country without a word to describe its love for what is best within it is a country ill-equipped to defend what is best within it. And, for the record, it should be noted that fascism wasn’t about patriotism, but nationalism. Hitler himself insisted he was no patriot, but a nationalist. In the United States, a creedal nation dedicated to limited government and individual rights, fascist nationalism is almost the complete opposite of patriotism.

Alas, that’s too much for many liberals to process, so they have come to extolling the word “unity.” But here’s the thing: Unity by itself has no moral worth whatsoever. The only value of unity is strength, strength in numbers — and, again, that is a fascist value. That’s the symbolism of the fasces, the bundle of sticks that in combination are invincible. Rape gangs and lynch mobs? Unified. The mafia? Unified. The SS? They had unity coming out the yinyang. Meanwhile, Socrates, Jesus, Thomas More, and an endless line of nameless souls were dispatched from this earth in the name of unity. Returning to Buckley, the mob that pushes old ladies in front of a bus and the posse that tries to stop the mob are not morally equivalent. Indeed, the lone man who faces the mob with justice on his side is the greatest of heroes.

American patriots pay heed: The founding fathers dedicated a great deal of thought to the subject of unity, and they found it was something to view with skepticism at best and, more often than not, with fear. Hence we have a constitution designed to thwart the baser forms of unity. Our government is set up so that the Senate cools the populist passion of the House, the executive thwarts the passions of the legislature and vice versa, and the Supreme Court checks the whole lot, to which its composition is in turn ultimately subject. “Divisiveness” — the setting of faction against faction, one branch of government against another, and the sovereignty of the individual above the group — was for the founders the great guarantor of our liberties and the source of civic virtue.

Rightly ordered unity in a democratic republic is the end result of ceaseless debate and discussion. But today, ceaseless debate and discussion is precisely what many liberals object to. As Al Gore is fond of saying about global warming, “The time for debate is over.” Legions of liberals insist that we must move beyond ideology and partisan differences on this, that, and the other. But have you ever heard anyone say that we need to “move beyond ideology” for the sake of bipartisan unity and then abandon his own position? Of course not. When someone says that we need to get past labels and move beyond ideology, what he means is that you need to drop your principled objections and get with the program. That is why Time magazine heralded Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michael Bloomberg as “new action heroes”: These “post-partisans” had dropped any pretense of a Republican vision and simply embraced the liberal agenda. That’s what the AARP intends when its ad campaign for health-care reform proclaims: “Divided we fail.” The mascot for this campaign is a chimera, the GOP elephant’s head and the Democratic jackass’s body. Of course, such a creature cannot be created without shrinking the Republican brain or vastly inflating the Democratic ass.

The fact that we take liberals seriously when they talk about patriotism doesn’t mean they are doing the same. John Edwards wouldn’t call a Communist saboteur a patriot, and Barack Obama’s love of unity would hardly drive him to praise the virtue of the mob. But what’s important to understand is that it is the Left, not the Right, that speaks in code. The supposedly neutral language of “unity” and “division” is not neutral at all. “My rival in this race,” Obama proclaimed early in 2007, “is not other candidates. It’s cynicism.” His insistence that “divisiveness” is his greatest enemy is belied by the fact that he is unwilling to repudiate Jeremiah Wright, who is about as divisive a character as we’ve seen in American politics in a generation. Meanwhile, Obama sees nothing wrong with demonizing Geraldine Ferraro — or even his own grandmother — for crass political purposes. He uses seemingly conciliatory language to give the impression that he is above the fray, transcendent and enlightened. Only those who see through his act are cynical, only those who disagree with his agenda are divisive. But he won’t name names, because that would spoil the illusion. “It would,” in the words of Andrew Ferguson, “at last be plain that his politics of unity, his politics of ‘addition not subtraction,’ is simply another way of recasting the old ‘politics of us vs. them’ that he says he disdains.”

It’s worth asking, then: If Obama and the Democrats believe unity in all things is the supreme political value, but the American tradition holds that liberty is a greater good, then could it not be argued that Barack Obama’s rival in this race is not the other candidates, but patriotism?