Historical and Contemporary Nativism

America has been asked, from forces within, to supply answers to questions of cultural values. We're at a political juncture that demands, once again, that we define who we are as a people: whether our orchestras of fear will drown out our cries for tolerance, and whether our impulses toward ethnocentrism will bully our collective pysche into submission. This call for affirmation is not new. Nativism has played an important role in shaping American history, and, once again, promises to take center stage in the theater of cultural agitation. My paper on the wave of nativism from 1900 to 1930 is apropos, if you will:

American society esteems itself as a sanctuary for the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses of the world. It adamantly claims to celebrate the principles of rowdy ethnic pluralism and colorful cultural diversity at the core of its identity. However, the proverbial melting pot of American society has not, and perhaps never will, epitomize the egalitarian spirit of the American Dream ‚– the belief that this nation is an unlimited beacon of hope and opportunity. From the 1798 Alien Acts, which required the immediate expulsion of foreigners ‚“dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States,‚” to modern-day Islamophobia, American patriotism and fear during times of change have drummed up anti-foreign stirrings to a shrill pitch. Nativism, in simple terms, is a dogged adherence to the belief that race functions as the most important determinant of cultural identity; this played an important role in the shaping of America at the dawn of the twentieth century. The self-righteous clamoring of reformers during the progressive era coupled with the drastic changes of post-World War I America incited a new sense of nativism during the 1920s and 1930s that aimed to preserve a rose-colored conception of true Americanism.

Read the rest of the essay.

We've Got a Helpin' Hand to Lend

If the Democrats in Washington knew what’s good for them, they’d come out in vocal and unequivocal support of immigration. In the days of my youth (hmm), I wrote on the importance of immigration in American society. I would now like to comment on the importance of immigration for the Democratic Party.

On a principled level, the goals of the immigration movement are at the very heart of the progressive agenda. A popular argument against immigration claims that jobs are taken away from lower-class workers. However, the plight of the working-class American is the plight of the exploited-class immigrant, so the American and immigrant labor movements -- superficially adversarial -- are in fact united under the sweat and blood of the down-trodden worker everywhere. Immigrant and American workers are brothers within the larger battle against economic injustice. The fight for higher wages, labor law enforcement, greater health-care coverage, and tighter checks against worker exploitation does not discriminate against race or nationality; it is a fight that promises higher living standards for all workers everywhere.

A progressive embrace of immigration is not just humane policy, moreover, but wise politics. Numerically, the Hispanic population could become a powerful voting block for the Democratic Party; Ideologically, they're not far off. Standing at literal geographical crossroads, immigrants tend to oppose globalization and colonialism. They see the government as an agent of human welfare, as a force against the economic injustice that they embody. Racially profiled and socially discriminated against, they know first-hand the importance of civil liberties and personal freedom. And the list goes on. Importantly, immigrants remind America that border patrollers and barbed-wire fences cannot snuff-out the brutally real problems of global injustice. We should ask not, how are immigrants crossing into our country, but why. We should investigate the practices that perpetuate the destitution which forces these people into our nation -- not just deport them.

Yes, Hispanics are a fixture of social conservatism, but political alliances are fostered not spontaneously self-assembled. We should acknowledge the Immigration Movement as born from the struggles of progressivism, and love it as our own.

Update: El Norte, all your questions will be answered. Salta la sangre '06.

Essay Excerpt: 9/11 Patriotism and Dissent

On September 11, 2001, the architectural embodiments of American capitalism and culture, The Twin Towers, two symmetrical exclamation points on New York City’s industrial skyline, were destroyed by enemies from abroad. In the weeks and months that followed, America’s guiding spirit of rowdy democracy and individual freedom too was severely damaged, not by the loosely knit group of jihadist who praised Allah and shouted death to America, but by the very government who proclaimed to fight for its protection. After September 11, George Bush, empowered by Christian righteousness and emboldened by American patriotism, began a campaign to extend America’s hegemonic power and redistribute its wealth into the hands of the very wealthiest. Gagging the dissenters with the flag and drowning out their voices with renditions of “America the Beautiful,” the Administration fought not for the protection of American democracy against the nation’s enemies, but for the protection of the nation’s plutocratic elite against the dangerous questions of American democracy.

The strength of American society depends less on the size of its guns, and more on the tenacity of its citizenry to speak up against injustice, to question the status quo, and to challenge the dictations of the government. Prohetic writer Lewis Lapham, in Gag Rule, writes “Tyranny never has much trouble drumming up the smiles of prompt agreement, but a democracy stands in need of as many questions as its citizens can ask of their own stupidity and fear" (1). A healthy democracy is boisterous and loud; an effective dictatorship is quite and subdued.

A remarkable silence washed over post-September 11 America, where dissent became treasonous and momentary lapses into free thought became vices of the unpatriotic. Flag bumper stickers filled store shelves, the President was immediately and unanimously endowed by the Senate the power to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines panned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks,” and Americans were warned that, “they need to watch what they say, watch what they do” by White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.

In the months that followed, an obedient chorus of compliance from the Senate greeted attempts by the Administration to promote its political agenda: no substantial debate was engaged when the Administration petitioned for money for wealthy businesses (Dick Armey [Texas-R] pointed out that “This country is in the middle of a war. Now is not the time to provoke spending confrontations with our Commander-in-Chief”), no objections were mounted when the Administration asked to undermine personal freedom and privacy through the PATRIOT Act, and barely a word of disagreement was heard when it violated every moral truism and international precedent available to the civilized and not-so-civilized world by invading a defenseless country based on fabricated pretexts and person aggrandizement. “Told that the truth didn’t matter, that motive was irrelevant, and that the Bush administration was free to do as it pleased, the heirs and assigns of what was once a democratic republic greeted the announcement with an audible and respectful silence” (Lapham 40).

An educated citizenry is a bulwark of liberty and democracy; an ignorant and complacent electorate is easily trampled over and effortlessly misled. The brightly color textbooks of America’s sprawling corridors of educational mediocrity are so completely purged of controversy, scrubbed clean of seditions connotations, expunged of gruesome depictions of war, and free from unsettling concepts of reality, that citizens are allowed to wallow complacently in blissful ignorance. Moreover, the dull political dialogues between the media centers serving their business-class masters and the people provide for an elaborate fairy-tale of a preferred picture of the world. In short: democracy dies in ignorance, and tyranny flourishes within it.

As the smoke rose into the air from the rubble at ground zero, America was presented with a unique and important opportunity to question its role within the world and to engage in a public discourse on the price of freedom and the importance of national security. However, the nation’s collective reason was eclipsed by the nation’s collective patriotism, and the questions, quite simply, weren’t asked.

Why We Fight, a Political Documentary

Questioning why we fight is natural and important during a time of war. If we can resist the urge towards knee jerk patriotism, we quickly find that the question reveals many layers of complexities. Indeed, perception of American foreign policy takes different forms: democracy and imperialism perpetually oppose each other on the broad landscape of our nation’s military involvement and our motivations for war. Eugene Jarecki’s documentary Why We Fight convincingly argues that it’s imperialism—not freedom and not democracy—that is winning out, and that it’s the survival of mankind, we can only assume, that is losing out. Deliberately freeing himself from intellectual chains of impassioned rhetoric or partisan talking points, Jarecki, neither inflammatory nor conciliatory, paints a picture of an American war machine powered by a systematic desire for global hegemony, and greased by political collusion, big business profits, media obedience, and exploited patriotism.

In 1961 a war-weary Eisenhower, in his farewell address to the nation, warned the American people of the unholy alliance between big business and big military, and the damage that this “military-industrial complex” can inflict on the crucial decisions of American policy makers and on the free and democratic process of public policy debate.

Jarecki’s documentary, simple in concept but broad in scope, patiently explores how the hulking military-industrial complex has entrenched itself ever deeper into American culture—and how the world must soon pay the price. Jarecki explains that a complex web of causality makes war a big money business itching for military expansion; he explains that rationales like “freedom” and “democracy” placate a nation in mourning, and divert a populous grasping for certitude; he explains that ignorance and obedience are both comforting and dangerous. The documentary follows the war-time money trail from military supply companies—the Kellogg, Brown and Roots, the Halliburtons, and the Boeings—that leech off the inflated war budget to turn tremendous profits (up over 25 percent since the war), to congressmen who exploit armament development for district job creation and votes, and finally to the United States government that establishes military bases around the world for oil and political influence.

The documentary powerfully maintains that the cost-benefit ratio of military invasion, of war, and of destruction is computed not based on human suffering or on death or on humanity, but based on political importance and economic gains. Once the decision is made, it’s the thinks tanks that engineer the war justifications and it's the media that advertises them. Indeed, our political polemic--what we know and what we do not know--is defined by those making the foreign policy, and truth is constructed based on political needs. Fundamentally, the lurking military-industrial complex will continue to snake itself throughout society until we cast down the shackles of emotional comfort and intellectual ignorance--and Mr. Jarecki wishes to begin the process.

The question becomes, so why do we fight? Well, we fight because the impoverished people of our nation need some direction in life, and the army is hiring. We fight because we’re scared, we’re hurt and we want to feel a little security, and the army has big guns and lots of American flags. And we fight because our leaders want to globalize our nation and line their pockets, and they just don’t give a damn about who lives and who dies.

We fight because, “not enough people are standing up saying, ‘I’m not doing this anymore.’”

Sobering truths. Bravo Mr. Jarecki.

Great Gatsby and the American Dream

I just finished F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby—what a fantastic book. Right at the heart of Fitzgerald’s novel is what we American’s like to call “the American Dream.” Sure the phase is pompous and self-righteous. And sure, Americans and their so-called “American Dream” have no right to monopolized the idea of hope and self-betterment, those are concepts shared by all people, everywhere. Points duly noted. However, for millions, since our origins as an untamed virgin mass of land, America has represented a ray of hope in a world of semidarkness. Additionally, America, for quite a long time, has symbolized a unique type of hope, different perhaps than that represented by other nations: the countries of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, with great empires speckled throughout history, are nostalgic about their past—Americans are nostalgic about their future.

The truth is, however, it is only a dream, a happy story told to a hopeful many, a fairytale told to kids as they go off to bed. Just take a look around. The grim reality is millions without healthcare, millions without jobs, or education, or food on their tables. The Dream has been used to justify the slaughtering of millions of Indians and the usurping of vast areas of land. Yet, the thought, the idea, the hope, somehow, still lives on.

Great adversity has always run parallel to the great Dream. People are quick to pulverized nuance and complexity in order to grasp hold of hope, Americans are no exception: we think we are Good only because they are Bad, we dream of the ultimate Happiness only becuase we live in the ultimate Sadness. We’ll fight the Indians because they are Bad, we’ll fight nature in the Great Midwest because it is Bad, we’ll fight Hitler because he is Bad, and we’ll fight the Soviet Union and communism because it is Bad. The American Dream is defined by those who wish to destroy it; indeed, Good doesn’t exist when Bad dies out. We define ourselves by our enemies, there's no doubt.

It is precisely the necessity of adversity, the need for Bad and for struggle, that makes the Dream itself so destructive. The American Dream catalyzes our desire for a better life, for self improvement—once the Dream is realized, once we have no fight to win, we have no hope to call our own, and we have reason to live on. It is for this reason that the decadent and wealthy 1920s, the context of The Great Gatsby, was characterized by hopeless nihilism and pitiful hedonism. They had no dream with no adversity. With no future promise of greater wealth and prosperity, Daisy and Tom Buchanan had nothing more to hope for; they had nothing more to live for. In the 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Good triumphed and Evil died out. However, just as Gatsby was destroyed by realizing his own Dream, America too, when those fateful planes hit our Twin Trade Centers, was destroyed by its own success.

In the end, the Dream was never just about wealth and prosperity, it’s been about living a better and brighter future, about living contently and happily; indeed, money’s been a vehicle of idealism; a means, not an ends. The American Dream is about hope, not money. The dream, inflated by myths and misconceptions, represents not an attainable goal that we can hope to achieve, but hope itself. Without this hope we’ll all surely perish.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Revolution’s Impact on American Society

I've posted my essay about the American Revolution and the fundamental imbuement of liberty within American society thereafter, hmmm tasty. As a sidenote, I hope to start posting regulary every Friday, so do check then.

Friends of America

During my daily cyber-visit to TLC’s quasi-political quasi-comical rival blog, Friends of America, I checked out one of the latest "posts" (if that's what you'd call it) about the radical Coloradoan professor, Ward Churchill. Burrowed within the incoherencies, flagrant plagiarism, and unduly prejudicial rants, I came accross a taunt within the post:

So now Max, if you would like to defend your party please counter this post on "The Liberal Conviction" and you can also try to tell us how the United States is going to hell.

So, Ricky, though I won’t defend Mr. Churchill’s statements and I won’t write about how the ‘United States is going to hell’, I will briefly school you in the importance of preserving dissent.

Clearly Ricky, the most important question here is not “why doesn't [Ward Churchill] attempt to run for office” nor, what the “innocent people and families” did to deserve what they received (because they did nothing), the real partisan contention of this debate is between a proclivity towards nationalism and anger verses a respect for freedom of thought. No one here supports the defamatory, benighted comments of Mr. Churchill, but the support they afford him is his federally protected right to voice his academic opinion regardless of public perception. Although Ricky, you claim that you “simply love America”, you evidently have little respect for the ideals that lay its ideological foundation, ideals like unquestioned freedom of speech and thought.

Analogous to the Lawrence Summers controversy, Mr. Churchill’s controversy surrounds the poignancy of his beliefs and ridiculousness of his rhetoric. If we attempt to restrict the beliefs of those who dissent within an academic capacity, then we tread a slippery slope. As A View from the West pointed out, if we restrict his ludicrous statements now, then we may, some day, begin to restrict other rhetoric which questions the status quo.

An important point is that Mr. Churchill is being paid by the state of Colorado. If his statements, rather than directed at the victims of 9/11, were direct to African Americans, Jews, or gays, would I be defending him? The answer, sadly, is yes. Should the state keep him on his payroll? That's up to the state. However, I will defend individual dissent because it is the lifeblood of democracy—regardless of how heartless, ignorant, derogatory, or insane the belief is. Luckly, in a true democracy, factions of one extreme will oft counterbalance factions of the opposite extreme. The United States can either be entirely censorious towards individual freedom of speech, or completely permissive. If we are completely permissive then one man's extreme will beget another extreme; by allowing an unregulated market place of ideas, minority opinions will countervail eachother.

As much as you "simply love America" Ricky, it is the fascists, not the democratic leaders, who advocate the death of dissenters like you do (“can someone put a cap in his ass to shut [Ward Churchill] up”). It is fascists who thrive using the same jingostic rhretoric that you employ. And, finally, it is fascists who believe that through non-violent speech, people can take their first amendment rights "to [sic] far". I say that the true “Friends of America” are those who respect the ideals enumerated within the constitution, not those who advocate the subversion of these ideals in the name of patriotism.

Patriotism from a Liberal: I Say The Pledge

When the second period bell rings, I leave my chair, face the flag, and pledge allegiance. I do not to pledge allegiance to the United States, because I am allegiant to no government, and I do not pledge allegiance to the validation of god, because secularism dictates my actions, but I do pledge allegiance to the flag and the noble ideals that embody its existence—life, liberty, and the justice of the people, by the people, for the people.

On November 19^th 1863, Lincoln recited the Gettysburg Address not because he believed that slaves should be free, which he did, and not because he wanted a united nation, which he yearned for; rather, he said those 278 words because he truly believed that the ruination of a country whose very existence is founded in liberty, justice, and equality would portend the destruction of mankind as a whole. The Gettysburg Address, along with the Declaration of Independence, set a historic precedent that altered the face of history. I pledge my allegiance to the ideals the flag represents, not the administration that attempts to fulfill them.

The Liberal Conviction

It is my strong belief that the Democrats of the future will not cloak their beliefs in ambiguity in order to attain mass appeal; instead, the liberals of the future will clearly define what it means to be a Democrat. The Liberal Conviction is my humble attempt at the interpretation of modern liberalism and how a strong conviction of liberal principles equates to defining the actions of the Democratic Party. Rather than merely a group of un-unified factions, the Democratic Party of the future will be seen as a pervasive movement towards civil liberty, mandated legal equality, and universal humanity. As Woodrow Wilson once said, “I’d rather lose a battle that I’d eventually win, than win a battle I’d eventually lose”