Nationalism

My niece called me last night to ask me a very interesting question.  "Uncle," she asked, "is nationalism good or bad?"  Turns out her history teacher asked his students to collect statements from friends and family about nationalism.  It was an interesting exercise to be put on the spot to answer the question.  So now, kiddos, it's your turn.

First, the punch line.  My niece called me back today to tell me that the assignment didn't amount to much.  She came to school loaded for bear with four paragraph-length statements from various family members, myself included, but she wasn't asked to present any of them.  None of the students were.  "It seemed," she said, "that half the people didn't even know what nationalism was.  Nobody else had paragraphs.  Other folks just had a sentence, if that."  

My niece is blessed with a keen mind and an active wit.  She's one of those kids who doesn't seem to do well with friends in high school because she's incredibly put off by teenagers' focus on fashion, gossip, and other harmless trivialities.  She does love music, bless her, but she loves good music.  And she laughs at emo.  She's a good kid.

So how did our overly verbose family answer the question?  I only know what I said.  I don't even really know what I said because my answer was truly off the cuff.  But it was something like this:

Nationalism is sometimes good and sometimes bad.  It's good when we come together as a nation in response to catastrophes or when we celebrate as a nation when something extraordinary happens.  It's good when the resources of the nation are mobilized to defeat fascism or to abolish segregation.  In a sense, the election we're in the middle of right now is just about the purest expression of American nationalism.  Some folks might say that that's not nationalism, but I have to call concerted action by large numbers of citizens to write a wrong or to realize the promise embodied in our Constitution the epitome of American nationalism.

Nationalism is bad, though, when it becomes jingoism.  When "we" are seen to be necessarily better than "them".  When folks who look different or talk different or name their kids different are put into a bucket of non-Americans.  That sort of nationalism is a lie, because the real American nation isn't one color or one creed, and it's certainly not one political viewpoint.  

So, as with all things, nationalism has a time and a place, but it can never be a substitute for justice for all people.

I suppose that's a bit of shameless indoctrination, but my niece already has her own sophisticated political beliefs, so I didn't feel too bad about it.

But it got me thinking.  I suspect most folks here think that "freedom fries" and "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" are bad manifestations of American nationalism.  But that leads to two questions I want to put to the community:  

1.  Are silly Republican talking points about non-Americans really expressions of American nationalism, or are they utterly contrary to what America, as a nation, is all about?  (That's a leading question, I realize.)

2.  At what point does nationalism become bad?  Is "buy American" good nationalism or just good business?  What, if anything, is nationalism good for?

This isn't a stealth attempt to write my niece's assignment for her.  She doesn't know I'm writing this and, unless she's a kossack and I don't know it, she doesn't know that "socratic" is me.  

But I'm genuinely curious about what you think.  Liberalism tends to look down on simplistic expressions of nationalism.  But do we liberals embrace nationalism on any level, or is nationalism somehow distinct from the patriotism that most of us probably feel?

Anyway, have at it.