Progressive Nation

December 13th, 2005

Contesting America

Here’s the problem: people don’t agree on what it means to be an American anymore. Consider two responses to Harold Pinter’s Nobel address. On the one hand, The Nation rushes to embrace his speech. On the other, Keelin McDonell calls it “vile.” So one camp sees him as a prophet-like critic whose excortiations of our country are justified, and ones that we should really strive to address in national policy. The other thinks he’s an anti-American buffoon. Both sides call themselves ‘liberal’ and paint themselves as essentially concerned for the future of American democracy.

Both sides have gone about this the wrong way. I already made that point. What I wrote was perhaps somewhat controversial. So let me try to flesh the issue out somewhat more from the standpoint of the critic.

Harold Pinter is not an American. Labelling him “anti-American,” in that case, is truly meaningless. Sure, he is. But who cares? He has no ties to this country, and is under no obligation to defend something- American-ness (an issue I will problematize in a second)- to which he has no ties, swears no allegiance. This is a contortion of what Walter Russell Mead calls Jacksonian nationalism. A manifestation of this would be the “oh yeah? I don’t care” response- also known as the “Team America” response.

As I say, Pinter is not an American. So it’s not surprising that his representation of America is highly flawed. He completely ignores the existence of a progressive, pragmatic tradition in American intellectual history that provides a stark counterpoint to the values he inscribes to this country. Harold, how about Emerson, Peirce, James, Dewey, Hook, Mills, Du Bois, Rorty? And to American progressives, why don’t you embrace these thorougly American figures?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 13th, 2005 at 12:17 pm and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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