The Truth about Patriotism
eBook - PDF

The Truth about Patriotism

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The Truth about Patriotism

About this book

The Truth about Patriotism is a bracing repudiation of the claim that patriotism is essential—or even beneficial—to democracy. Contending that even at its best patriotism subverts the democracy it purports to value, Steven Johnston turns to patriotism's defenders to show how they must jettison much of democracy to champion patriotism. Closely examined, patriotism itself effectively demonstrates the impossibility of love of country. Patriotism, Johnston argues, tends toward narcissistic self-regard, blind to its violent ways of being in the world and its dependence on death. Thus we would be better off without it.

Drawing largely from aspects of American political and popular culture, this wide-ranging book presents a wealth of examples to disclose patriotism's self-defeating character. They include Richard Rorty's and John Schaar's enmity-driven love of country, Socrates's angry judicial suicide, the violent obsessions of High Noon and Saving Private Ryan, the triumphalist self-display of the World War II Memorial, Oliver Stone's and Don DeLillo's spectacular representations of the assassination of President Kennedy, George W. Bush's symbolic sacrifice of more Americans in commemoration of September 2001, and yet other memorials to and apologies for patriotism. Ultimately, Johnston calls for a vision of democracy that uses the tragic possibilities inherent in politics as a spur to a life-affirming civic ethos of reciprocal generosity.

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Yes, you can access The Truth about Patriotism by Steven Johnston in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politics & International Relations & Political History & Theory. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. 1 “Without External Picturesqueness,” Or, Why IAm Not a Patriot
  4. 2 This Patriotism Which Is Not One
  5. 3 Iconic Drama I: The Mortal Logic of Enmity
  6. 4 Iconic Drama II: The Socratic Way of Death
  7. 5 The American Memorial/Monument Complex I:The Architecture of Democratic Monuments
  8. 6 The American Memorial/Monument Complex II: Political Not Patriotic
  9. 7 Patriotism and Death: Wounded Patriotic Attachments
  10. 8 Bruce Springsteen and the Tragedy of the American Dream
  11. Notes
  12. Bibliography
  13. Index