Patriotism, the GOP, and the Fight for Defining America
“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”
Samuel Johnson
In 1919, Bertrand Russell wrote a manuscript in prison, the content of which is considered by many to be the genesis of one of the most important discussions in modern philosophical thought: what is in a name. The theory outlined within it has come to be known as the Theory of Descriptions, and in its most basic sense, states that a proper name is shorthand for a description. By this he means, a sentence containing a proper name like ‘George Washington was the first President of the US’ is in actuality a neat linguistic abbreviation for ‘The man who was in charge of the continental army the longest was the first President of the US.’ The validity of this idea has come under philosophical fire, and while it is important to question the totality of its explanatory prowess, that is not the purpose of this article. Russell’s Theory of Descriptions was the predominant line of thought for how one should study language for many years, and therefore serves as an excellent tool on framing an examination for how politicians use, or in many cases, misuse, words for their own benefit.
Now, what does this have to do with patriotism, the word so brazenly taking up room in the title of this article? Before going any further, I ask you to indulge me. Close your eyes, and for 10 seconds, look at what is conjured up when your brain is presented with that word. For me (20, US citizen, Warren supporter, white, female) it is flashes of the American Flag, visiting the tomb of the unknown soldier, fireworks on a 4th of July night-- things I think are universally thought of. However, when I change this question to ‘people conveying patriotism,’ the narrative immediately shifts. Before I get flashes of veterans, or memories of hearing presidential speeches, I see very clearly long lines of Tea Party members marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That strikes me as very odd and rather disconcerting. I didn’t see any random grouping of Americans, but instead a very specific group with a very specific purpose.
Patriot as a stand alone word is not a proper name technically, but when applied to a grouping of people, has come to be a word that fits how we view a proper name under the Theory of Descriptions. Much like the name ‘Mitch McConnell,’ it carries with it not a dictionary definition, but instead acts as a placeholder for a much broader set of ideas. ‘Mitch McConnell’ is tied to many things: senior senator from Kentucky, Senate majority leader, and so too is ‘Patriot’: members of the military, loving America, and it would seem for me, the Tea Party.
This is where we start to tread dangerous waters. If a proper name is a disguised description of something, then when we use it, we immediately link it in our minds to that thing. I have been a registered Democrat since I was 16, and I love my country so much that I spend much of my day advocating for the things I believe can improve it. Clearly, I am not, nor do I plan to be a Tea Party supporter. So then why in my mind, is Patriot described by the Tea Party? How does a word that should simply mean ‘to love one’s country’ come to be associated with a very specific group with a very specific purpose?
My argument is simple: the Republican party has spent the last forty years controlling the narrative surrounding the word patriot, reshaping it till the descriptions associated with it have much less to do with America, and much more to do with their view of how America should be. Loving my country no longer means wanting the best for it, but rather promoting and agreeing with the GOP’s views on what is best for America. And this is very very bad.
If I am going to argue that a concept has been mislabelled and corrupted, then I am by necessity implying there is a standard and agreed upon definition of that term, because if there isn’t a base to check ourselves against, then there cannot be misuse. For the word patriot, The Oxford Dictionary provides us with the following passage: A person who vigorously supports their country and is prepared to defend it against enemies or detractors. If this is the base to which we must compare uses of the word to, then our task seems relatively simple: for Republicans to be guilty of co-opting, then there needs to be examples where politicians have diverged from the correct meaning of Patriots.
However, what the GOP has done, and what I have stated I am accusing them of, is much more complicated than that. It is safe to assume that when asked, all conservative members of Congress would say that when they use the term patriot, they earnestly mean someone who loves their country. Co-opting a word isn’t a matter of incorrect semantics, it is using the power of something for your own ends. That is what the Republican Party has done: they have bent the narrative on what it means to ‘love your country,’ to fit the needs of conservative ideals and therefore, when they use the word patriot, they do not mean anyone who loves America, they mean someone who loves America in exactly the way the GOP deem correct.
They don’t attack your ideas for being ideas, they use the guise of patriotism to invalidate them. For example, Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson recently referred to United States Senator and Iraqi war veteran Tammy Duckworth as a vandal who ‘screams about how horrible America is,’ a reference to her recent outspokenness critiquing the Trump administrations inaction with regards to racial inequalities in America. It does not take a very close examination to see the jump Carlson makes: someone who disagrees with his view of America has been branded as someone who is an enemy to all of America. The mind boggling stupidity of this statement is compounded by the fact that Senator Duckworth is someone who has literally given her limbs for the preservation of America.
Following this, Carlson rightly got called out by many media outlets and politicians. However, I am going to be so bold as to say, being a veteran should not be a necessary qualification in order to be taken seriously as liberal who criticizes the policies of the President of America. As another reminder to just how pervasive conservative control is over what constitutes anti-American behaviour, look no further than the years of 2008-2016 when Carlson, a civilian and a conservative, had no issue raging against the actions taken by the American government when it was led by President Obama.
Vice President Pence recently gave a speech, ‘The Dangers of Socialism,’ in an attempt to convince people that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s Climate policy is bad for America. I would like to highlight a specific remark that Vice President Pence said:
“They[democrats] believe the federal government needs to dictate how Americans live, how we should work, how we should raise our children — and, in the process, deprive our people of freedom, prosperity, and security. Their agenda is based on government control; our agenda is based on freedom.”
Unpacking that statement yields the following results. Biden’s policy does call for greater government control and regulation of certain industries, an action which Pence promises will result in the ending of a safe and free America. So, following this logic, greater government involvement is equivalent to the destruction of America. There is no reason why wanting more regulation should mean you are Anti-American, it only means you disagree with Republicans’ view on government. If the word patriot is to be correctly applied here, then what Biden is proposing is an incredibly Patriotic undertaking: it seeks to improve the lives of Americans as well as the environmental health of America, only it does so in a way that is not an approved GOP policy.
Republicans have taken this attack one step further. Not only have they labeled policy they disagree with as unpatriotic, but in many instances label those promoting those ideas as individuals we need to protect America from. A five-minute sampling of how Fox News covers Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a sickening example of this. It is a master class in advanced strawmanning: simply denigrating policy is only step one, to be truly effective you need to ensure that the person behind it is as unpatriotic as their rhetoric. Framing both the policy and the people making it as the very thing ‘real patriots’ need to defend from is the ultimate insidious action taken. The word has come completely full circle; the linguistic maneuvering performed by the GOP has changed the meaning of patriot from anyone vigorously supporting their country, to someone vigorously supporting Republicans’ views of their country, to finally someone willing to launch vitriolic attacks on anyone who dares to diverge from the conservative policy hardline. And this is exactly by design. They have created a political machine so large it puts Tammany Hall to shame. Think about it in terms of a purely campaign sense: Republicans do not need to spend millions convincing people their views are the best, they already have that for free, by using conservative media to signal to the masses that any detractors are hell-bent on erasing America from existence.
I love my country. I prove this fact to myself every day, regardless of the opinion of Fox News. What makes being an American patriot so powerful is the inability to encapsulate the totality of the word in a single definition. Patriotism looks different for each person, and that is because patriotism is different for each person. We have spent far too long surrendering our agency over freedom of thought, and if we want to change the narrative, we must hold intrinsic the belief that difference strengthens the narrative. Now is not the time to be afraid of voicing opinions for fear of retribution, for it is now more than ever that each and every person's voice should demand to be heard. I don’t love America because it is a place of homogeneous discourse, I love America because it is a place made stronger by its dissenters.
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