Howard Dean, in case you didn't notice, would not fare well in an atmosphere hostile to dissent, especially on matters such as the Patriot Act, the Iraq invasion and the alliance with Israel. Supposedly it's not easy being Dean.
Right-wing censors evidently took their day off when the former Vermont governor remarked that Attorney General John Ashcroft "is not a patriot. John Ashcroft is a descendent of Joseph McCarthy." Consider the irony of a man like Dean who, with many others in his corner, deplores accusations of anti-Americanism only to turn about and hurl those accusations at his enemies.
What is more, Ashcroft's "McCarthyite" rhetoric gives us little to censure. Not that conventional wisdom has it that way: The neoconservative writer Joel Mowbray exhorted concerned Americans in late 2001 to "remind ... John Ashcroft that we are at war against terrorism, not dissent." Mowbray lamented Ashcroft's performance at a Senate hearing in which "he took square aim at detractors of his policies, declaring that 'their tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity.'" Mowbray went on to report that "Ashcroft chastised civil libertarians for 'scaring peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty.'"
What Ashcroft actually told the committee was that we need "honest and reasoned debate, and not fearmongering." He later said, "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve." This is hardly a blanket denunciation aimed at respectable civil libertarians. You can't easily accuse a man of shunning a debate when he himself calls for one.
In Dean's comments, by contrast, you don't find much contextual wiggle room. Dean doesn't mind having a patriotism police, as long as he's in charge of it. The First Amendment welcomes him to make that judgment, but let me offer one of my own: Dean impugned the patriotism of a dedicated public servant. Inasmuch as we trivialize our patriotism when we milk it for political capital, the former Vermont governor has cast real doubt upon someone's patriotism - and it is not John Ashcroft's.
You could find instances of Dean-like, pseudo-patriotic hypocrisy in the media and on campuses like this one dating back to the first days following Sept. 11. A few peace slogans caught my attention: "War is not patriotic." "Peace is patriotic." "Dissent is patriotic." "Support the troops: Bring them home." Those who chant these slogans may love their country, but they also suggest that their sentiments are intrinsically patriotic and that, one would logically conclude, all true patriots share them. Yet, anyone who argues that patriotism inheres in war and assent and militarism would be justly derided.
This phenomenon exists not only among fringe campus leftists. Journalist Bill Tammeus gives us further corroboration that questioning others' patriotism is not the special province of the right. Tammeus lists many patriotic virtues, many of them right and true, but he crosses the line when he says patriots "support education, especially the public schools." Reasonable people may differ on the merits of public education; Tammeus has little basis for doubting that those who see greater promise in private education (as I do) believe in their country.
Bill Tammeus, so it seems, questions my patriotism. I could have sworn I was supposed to take this personally. Alas, I do not. For all the exhortations the left has made not to attack their patriotism, my experience is that such attacks don't hurt that much.
There do exist some examples of right-wing, pseudo-patriotic jingoism. Professional nag Ann Coulter makes her living dishing them out. In her self-described "history book," Treason, she writes, "Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason. You could be talking about Scrabble and they would instantly leap to the anti-American position. Everyone says liberals love America, too. No they don't. Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence."
The absurdity of this statement precludes its having any relevance. Coulter's words may baffle reasonable thinkers, but if democracy isn't chilled when a Democratic presidential frontrunner attacks the patriotism of a fellow public servant, who cares when some idiot newspaper columnist does it? (The point, mind you, is not that Ashcroft should take much umbrage at Dean's discourtesy; it is simply to look askance at the notion that vibrant democratic debate chafes under the stranglehold of that great intellectual Ann Coulter any more than it does under that distinguished statesman Howard Dean).
Let's also thrust aside the notion that to challenge one's patriotism is to utter the harshest of insults. It is important to be patriotic, but is it really less important to be compassionate, intelligent, humane, or honest? When Ted Kennedy challenges Republicans' commitment to civil rights during a debate on the minimum wage - to which, it seems to me, civil rights are at best tangentially related - is he going any softer than a Republican attorney general who suggests that fears of the Patriot Act have sometimes been overblown?
Eagle contributor Julia Ahlers might think so. Writing in the September 11 Eagle, Ahlers commemorated the attacks with a reminder that "Americans cannot get over their racist notions and, instead, have chosen to label other countries as 'the bad guy.'" This statement is about as patriotic as it is original, i.e. not very. She may not like others to call her un-American. But, then, others may not like her to call them racist.
Here's how we might make this debate more honest: Patriotism denotes, as Merriam-Webster has it, "love for or devotion to one's country." That definition may not fit the parameters of current discourse. Perhaps patriotism should mean "a nebulous but unquestionably important virtue which liberals shall always be acknowledged to possess, but which can be doubted with regard to crazy right-wingers like John Ashcroft."
I'll bet Howard Dean would agree with that. At this game, two can play; and the left can sometimes play harder.
