What's Located Close to Ground Zero?

Here is what's located at the same distance from Ground Zero as the Cordoba House. A "gentlemen's club", OTB, McDonald's, bars, stores, coffee-shops. And this is what Sarah Palin refers to as "hallowed ground'? Seriously?

The amount of hypocrisy surrounding this topic is very telling. There is so much starry-eyed, flag-waving, chest-thumping quasi-patriotism around. Of course, it's easy to wave flags and screech about your love for America. It's a bit more difficult to familiarize yourself with the American Constitution and live according to its tenets. For those who have forgotten, this is the text of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Freedom of religion lies at the foundation of this country's existence. Somehow, it's become acceptable in the recent years to insist that one is ultra-patriotic while stating that the US is "a Christian country." The founding fathers are surely turning in their graves every time such statements are made.

I'm glad that we finally have a president who is familiar with the constitution and who reminded people that his duty is to defend everybody's right to practice their religion freely:


We can be proud of the President's stand on this issue. Especially, when we remember how the previous administration spit on the constitution every time it got in the way.

Patriotism Without a Nation

There are numerous modern examples of this renewed love of country that open up to a love of humanity. . . The political times and the mode of production have changed. We have to construct the figure of a new David, the multitude as champion of asymmetrical combat, immaterial workers who become a new kind of combatants, cosmopolitan bricoleurs of resistance and cooperation. These are the ones who can throw the surplus of their knowledges and skills into the construction of a common strugle against imperial power. This is the real patriotism, the patriotism of those with no nation.

                                                                                                 - Hardt and Negri, Multitude.

When Hardt and Negri talk about immaterial workers they refer, among others, to people like me. Those whose job consists of absorbing, reformulating, creating, and disseminating knowledge represent the very group of people who can affirm a new kind of patriotism.

As most people know, national patriotism (i.e. the kind that includes being proud of a specific country, being emotionally attached to its flag, its anthem, its symbols, its history, its achievements, etc.) is a very new historic formation. It was created by the Enlightened thinkers of the XVIII century for a variety of reasons. One of this reasons was the impossibility of maintaining huge mercenary armies and the need to get people to die enthusiastically and for free in the numerous wars that needed to be waged.

One of the neatest tricks in the arsenal of national patriotism is its capacity (its absoulte need, even) to take the most recent historical developments and invest them with an aura of longevity. Nationalism manages to convince people that the nation existed long before it actually did. Nationalism's heavy reliance on all kinds of emotional manipulation devices ensures that people never question the validity of nationalist myths.

Today, it is becoming increasingly obvious that national patriotism has run its course. It has had a huge historic importance and helped create the world system in place today. Still, the world has changed and today nationalism has, for the most part, lost its useful functions. Nowadays, it is the reason for endless warfare, acts of terror, suicide bombings, death, and destruction.

For all their previous errors, Hardt and Negri suggest something very useful in the quote I placed at the beginning of this post. Increasing numbers of people today spend their lives on the move. They are born in one place, grow up in another, acquire their education someplace else, and inhabit different countries and regions in the course of their working life. Their patriotic allegiance is not to a specific nation whose papers they carry. I agree with Hardt and Negri in that patriotism of those without a nation is the hope for humanity today.

Everybody Wants to Be America

Here is a discussion I have been having with somebody at Opinion Forum:

Larry: 'There is no other place like this country.The dream of every foreign country I’ve visited is to be America."

Clarissa: "You couldn’t be more wrong, Larry. It is a myth that most people around the world want to have a life that’s all work, work, work, saddled with a 30-year mortgage, where you feel you have to kill yourself working to buy that new plasma screen TV, where there is little sex and even less fun, where people feel enormous guilt for relaxing even for a while, where neither healthcare or higher education are guaranteed to everyone, where you have to be pretty rich to go to college (or saddle yourself with enormous debt.)

Don’t get me wrong, this is a wonderful country, but the idea that people of all cultures would see this life as perfect and actually want it is truly wrong. I am an immigrant and people from my old country don’t envy me in the least. They think I’m an idiot for wanting to live here. Both my friends and I are right in our own way. Different cultures have different priorities. The very doubtful American prosperity that comes at such a steep price is hardly the envy of everyone."

I want to add: I consciously chose to emigrate to North America. I chose to live here and I love it. This doesn't, however, make me think that everybody in the world would want the same. people are different, their needs are different, what's good for me, might be intolerable for somebody else. I know many, many immigrants who bought into the myth of America while knowing nothing about the reality of America and are now truly miserable. I know immigrants who went back home and those who are saving money to go back home.

There is no way of life that's perfect for everyone. The idea that "everybody is jealous of the American lifestyle" is promoted by the likes of George W. Bush in order to justify American intrusion into world affairs and promote the kind of hysterical patriotism he needs to sustain its military adventures.