In the days and weeks after September 11, many Americans talked of a nation pulling together, of a people unified in horror at the terrorists' slaughter of so many innocent lives and unified in support of our national effort to root out terrorists and the sources of terrorism worldwide. Levels of patriotism vary across time, and among political communities. They insisted that in a diverse society with many people who had been born in other countries, citizens should pledge allegiance not to "my flag" but to the "flag of the United States of America," a change that Congress formally recognized in 1942.
It abuses neither speech nor sense to say that I love my house and for that reason would feel sorrow and deprivation if disaster forced me to leave it. (I have had such an experience.) A country is, among other things, a place, a language (one's mother tongue"), a way of life, and a set of institutions through which collective decisions are made and carried out.
However, he hardly addresses the deeper structures of cultural translation, patterns of creative appropriation, and the ambiguous functions which American escapist films played for a director growing up outside of the American way of life in postwar Germany.
By admiring or purchasing these patriotic artworks, ultimately citizens show respect to land marking achievements of the nation and the legendary figures and freedom fighters who contributed their lives in the nation's formation and development. It has become an acceptable substitute for actual patriotism, which means love for the people and not a hatred of something.
With all the economic pressures operating on them, this is only partly true at best, but in the presence of political democracy this is enough for them to view their work conditions and relations as legitimate and to produce as much and as efficiently as they do. Thus, whatever democracy's many positive virtues, and despite all the popular struggles that have helped to bring it to life, the main role of democracy in the capitalist era is to legitimate existing social relations and the state's part in reproducing them.
It abuses neither speech nor sense to say that I love my house and for that reason would feel sorrow and deprivation if disaster forced me to leave it. (I have had such an experience.) A country is, among other things, a place, a language (one's mother tongue"), a way of life, and a set of institutions through which collective decisions are made and carried out.
However, he hardly addresses the deeper structures of cultural translation, patterns of creative appropriation, and the ambiguous functions which American escapist films played for a director growing up outside of the American way of life in postwar Germany.
By admiring or purchasing these patriotic artworks, ultimately citizens show respect to land marking achievements of the nation and the legendary figures and freedom fighters who contributed their lives in the nation's formation and development. It has become an acceptable substitute for actual patriotism, which means love for the people and not a hatred of something.
With all the economic pressures operating on them, this is only partly true at best, but in the presence of political democracy this is enough for them to view their work conditions and relations as legitimate and to produce as much and as efficiently as they do. Thus, whatever democracy's many positive virtues, and despite all the popular struggles that have helped to bring it to life, the main role of democracy in the capitalist era is to legitimate existing social relations and the state's part in reproducing them.