The New Patriotism Or Nothing Secedes Like Rhetorical Excess
I am puzzled by some of the great patriots of the right. When they are in or near power they are 110% pro America. "My country right or wrong. Go team!" When they are in or near power, dissent is treason, and even asking questions is, well, questionable.
This great dedication to our Grand Old Flag hymn starts going off key when they do not get their way, the only way. Then either liberals should love America or leave it, or they will threaten to prove their love by leaving the Union and taking their states with them. America takes second chair to States' Rights when integration is at stake. A United States of America is not such a terrific idea when they do not rule. They seem to believe that maybe a loose confederation would be better--particularly when the Federal Courts rule against them.
Many of us thought it was a weirdo wacko anomaly when Gov. Sarah Palin's hunter hubby was associated with the Alaska Independence Party. How could a good Republican be a dissident, a secessionist and a part of a movement that questioned the legitimacy of our nation? That should be the exclusive franchise of America-hating liberals. Right?
Now it seems that this is not an isolated anomaly. The Republican Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, threatens to have Texas secede from the Union. I knew these guys were anti-union, but I didn't really think that it applied to our nation. Perry, who is running for re-election, is going far to the right of his likely opponent in the primary Kay Bailey Hutchison. He is running against Washington and claiming that Texas could be its own country. After all: It has oil. It has ports. It has agriculture. He is making the same basic argument as the separatists in Scotland. "We pay too much, get too little and would be better off alone."
While some liberals might be tempted to respond with loud hosannas and hearty wishes of, "Good luck with your new country," I would mourn the loss of Texas. Some of my favorite relatives live there--and they seem to be good, loyal and patriotic Americans.
One of the conditions of Texas joining the Union was the right to leave, or to divide itself into four states. Now, that would be far more interesting. In that way, the land now called Texas would have eight senators and four governors. I suspect it would be far more in their interests to increase their power than to leave.
The deeper point, however, is the leitmotif of secession that is running through far right politics. I do not, as yet, take it seriously as a threat (any more than Alec Baldwin's empty promise to leave the country if W were re-elected in 2004). This is just a strange kind of "sunshine patriots and summer soldiers," who maintain the right to withdraw from our nation when not in agreement, yet call such thoughts when manifest or even suspected of others: treason.
©2009 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.org
I just want to say that this is a brilliant, spot-on piece by Professor Dobrer.
The patriots of the right are torn: they love patriotism in principle, but they fear government in all cases except when it's invading someone else. I always asked my conservative friends, "How will you feel about Cheney's maximizing of power in the executive branch once Hillary takes over that branch?" They never had a thoughtful answer. But the ability to ignore the Palin family's secessionist tendencies is the exemplar of inconsistency.
The Right-wing, like most fascist leaning ideologies, cannot exist without an enemy to hate. The fundamental tenet of the Right is scapegoatism, so much so that if all their center and leftist enemies were vanquished and disappeared, they would fracture into smaller groups and fight each other over minute differences in dogma. As absolutists, the always wish to have it their way, even when repudiated by the electorate. They are mentally unbalanced and should not be trusted with the weapons they insist is their right to possess because they are just as likely to turn those weapons on the rest of us as they are to fracture our country in their paranoia driven need to be dominant. We must never develop the attitude prevalent in Germany in the early thirties that "It can't happen here", because we are just one disastrous step away from their fear and bigoted driven barbarity.