Patriotism

"Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles. - George Jean Nathan

"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

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

. . . while Woody Guthrie was many things - even admirable things (he carvied an an indelible place for himself in American culture for example ) - the one thing he was not was a patriot. He was a patriot of the Soviet Union and the Communist dream. But a patriot as someone who loved and would defend the capitalist democracy he was born in he was not. - David Horowitz

David Horowitz wants an America where everbody accepts that the only true patriotic Americans are Conservatives, so it's not surprising that he doesn't like Woody Guthrie. Patriotism does not, however, necessarily mean a loyalty to the exact country you were born in. America changes every minute, and it shouldn't take September 11th to hammer that home.

Woody Guthrie as I read him, and I'm hardly an expert, wanted America to prosper for all it's citizens. He believed in democracy so much that it offended him to see the un-democratic tendancies of some of our wealthier citizens. He believed in Socialism, and with the benefit of hindsight, I believe that he was wrong. But I'm not sure I wouldn't have made a similar call in his place, particular with the misinformation being put out by Stalin.

More to the point, this is part of Horowitz's and other Neo-Conservatives efforts to define liberalism as unpatriotic. Thank goodness they haven't succeeded just yet.