Patriot acts.

• Date: 22 March 2003
• Author: Platt, Tony,O'Leary, Cecilia
• Published date: 22 March 2003
• Author: Platt, Tony

We are at the gravest of moments. --Senator Robert Byrd, October 10, 2002 I woke up this mornin' and none of the news was good. --Steve Earle, Jerusalem, 2002 For a nation to be, in the truest sense, patriotic, its citizens must love their land with a knowing, intelligent, sustaining, and protective love.... And they must not allow their patriotism to be degraded to a mere loyalty to symbols or any present set of officials. --Wendell Berry, February 9, 2003 Introduction

THE NEW CENTURY HAS USHERED IN PROFOUND CHANGES IN THE PAX AMERICANA, both in the global aspirations of the American Empire and in the realignment of political and ideological power within the United States. Right-wing internationalists now play a decisive role within the Bush administration and public discourse over foreign policy doctrines. The ascendancy of hawks is complemented by the decisive shift to the right in domestic policy. The conservative program, initiated in the Reagan years, emphasizes lowering the cost of labor, regressive tax cuts, reductions in environmental regulations, gutting of affirmative action and welfare benefits, and expansion of the military and criminal justice system (Wallerstein, 2002). The Bush administration, strengthened by decisive Republican victories in the midterm elections (November 2002), promises to fulfill these policy goals, with the Right now occupying significant positions of power in Congress, the Department of Justice, and key government departments. (2)

Under the banner of patriotism, the Right is making full use of its power within government and its influence in civil society to put ideas into action. Within months of September 11, 2001, the government propelled far-reaching antiterrorist legislation through Congress with minimal debate, gave the domestic intelligence apparatus unprecedented powers, justified racially motivated arrests and curtailment of civil liberties in the name of national security, and created a new federal bureaucracy to combat terrorism.

The history of the United States is filled with examples of the use of orchestrated state-sponsored campaigns to limit political dissent, rally a populist nationalism, and justify policies of repression in the name of national security during times of international crisis. Precedents for the government's invocation of prescriptive patriotism can be found, for example, in the crackdown on the pacifist movement during World War I, the roundup of Japanese Americans during World War II, and McCarthyist witch hunts during the Korean War. The current initiative to expand and justify "homeland security" evokes earlier campaigns, but it is also different in some important respects.

First, the speed and scope of changes in policies, institutions, and government bureaucracies is unprecedented. Second, the collapse of the Democratic Party and serious opposition within government and the organized political system has given the Bush administration carte blanche to implement an agenda that will have long-range structural consequences, not easily checked or reversed. Third, unlike previous conventional wars--in which there is a targeted enemy, clear rules of engagement, and time-limited goals--the "war on terrorism" is open-ended, multifaceted, and unlimited. "This is not a linear war; this is not a sequential war," explained General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We have a notion of things we would like to happen, but it's not in the sequential sense or this linear sense that our brains tend to work in" (quoted in New York Times, October 23, 2001: B2).

Our focus in this essay is on the extraordinary changes that have taken place within the repressive state apparatus since September 11, and on the cultural expressions of patriotism that inform and justify the rollback of post-Watergate reforms and chilling of civil liberties. We examine coercive and prescriptive measures taken in the name of patriotism during times of war in the 20th century before assessing the consequences of the 2001 Patriot Act and related changes in policy and government. We conclude with a discussion of the contemporary discourse of right-wing nationalism and the possibilities for reviving a progressive tradition of patriotism that stands for "a vigilant distrust of any determinative power" and an insistence on "asking the hardest questions in our darkest hours." (3)

Patriotism in Historical Perspective

An historical overview of the 20th century suggests that a militarist patriotism--propelled by an activist nation-state, shaped by the demands of war, infused with racism and gendered images of masculinity, and narrowed by political intolerance of dissent--has more often than not undermined the very ideals it purports to protect. In the U.S., where being an American is seen as a choice rather than a birthright, cultural authority to determine what the flag stands for has far-reaching consequences. Patriotism is a powerful cultural phenomenon, which not only generates solidarity, unity, and remembrance, but also mistrust, divisions, and amnesia. For patriots, loyalty to family, friends, religion, and place are subsumed under allegiance to one's country. But who decides what the flag represents and the country for which it stands? (4)

Although patriotic symbols and rituals might appear consensual and neutral, they are neither fixed, nor timeless, nor monolithic. Until nationalism became a government-dominated affair in the early 20th century, there had been considerable debate among a spectrum of groups over the meanings of patriotism. When President Wilson's administration joined forces with right-wing organizations and vigilante groups during World War I, progressive interpretations were marginalized and the government enforced a specifically chauvinist conception of the nation. It was during this period that the institutional and ideological basis for what later became the national security state assumed its modern form.

Concerned about the peace movement's broad appeal, President Wilson criminalized opposition through the Espionage Act and made criticism of the war, the flag, or the government illegal under the Sedition Act. During the war, African Americans were lynched--even as Black troops fought in France--and "100 Per Cent Americanizers" attacked German immigrants and other "hyphenated Americans" by banning books, shutting down newspapers, and allowing no language other than English to be spoken in the public schools. "The war has set back the people for a generation," concluded Senator Hiram Johnson. "They have bowed to a hundred repressive acts" (in Goldstein, 1978: 242).

During World War II, there was little opposition to the "good war," but the government nonetheless meted out stiff jail sentences to conscientious objectors and imprisoned over 110,000 Japanese Americans, despite the government's inability to prove a single act of treason (Zinn, 1995: 407). In the late 1940s, President Truman launched a far-ranging security program that subverted constitutional liberties and legitimated extensive political repression under the Cold War banner of anticommunism. Senator Joseph McCarthy, the national spokesperson for ferreting out "un-Americans," finally misjudged his power when he accused General Marshall and General Eisenhower in 1951 of "serving the world policy of the Kremlin (Litwack and Jordan, 1991: 748-753). But the damage to American democracy had already been done: lives lost, careers destroyed, spying on fellow citizens, and wholesale violation of constitutional liberties, all in the name of assuring national security.

During the Vietnam War, 1961 to 1973, the national security state responded to broad-based opposition movements with overt and covert repression. The FBI launched COINTELPRO operations--targeting its most vicious tactics against Black organizations, infiltrating antiwar groups, sending undercover agents into university classrooms, authorizing electronic surveillance of domestic "subversives," and commissioning agents provocateurs to disrupt legal organizations and demonstrations. (5) Conservative patriots expanded the cultural rhetoric of "un-Americanism" crafted during the Cold War by demanding that dissenters "Love It or Leave It."

The Vietnam War generated a profound divide over the meanings of civic loyalty. The crisis in American nationalism deepened when Richard Nixon became the first president forced to resign in U.S. history (Goldstein, 1978: 461). In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan sought to overcome the "Vietnam Syndrome" and distrust of government--aggravated by public exposure of the illegal Watergate break-ins under the Nixon presidency--through visionary calls to "dream heroic dreams" and hard-talking rhetoric adapted from the genre of movie westerns. Reagan called for a military buildup against the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union and used the religious Right to try to discipline the morality of the nation (Slotkin, 1992). (6) In 1988, George Bush literally and figuratively wrapped himself in the flag, leading campaign audiences in pledges of allegiance aimed at consolidating the association of patriotism with the Republican Party (Goldstein, 1995: 200-201). But while both Presidents Reagan and Bush promoted a deeply conservative, racist, and ideological patriotism, post-Cold War nationalism meant little more to most people than a "choice between hedonisms: tax cuts or spending" (Packer, 2001: 15). That is, until the destruction of the Twin Towers and loss of civilian lives on the morning of September 11, 2001.

Homeland Security

In the aftermath of September 11, the Bush White House revived and expanded the national security state with unprecedented speed and minimal debate. In a period of about 14 months, Congress passed wide-ranging antiterrorist legislation and created a new antiterrorist federal bureaucracy; the White House authorized the revival of military tribunals and gave...