Publisher: University of Chicago Press (2003)
Length: 280 pages
ISBN13: 9781476732473
The Lost Promise of Patriotism
Debating American Identity, 1890-1920
During the years leading up to World War I, America experienced a crisis of civic identity. How could a country founded on liberal principles and composed of increasingly diverse cultures unite to safeguard individuals and promote social justice? In this book, Jonathan Hansen tells the story of a group of American intellectuals who believed the solution to this crisis lay in rethinking the meaning of liberalism.
Intellectuals such as William James, John Dewey, Jane Addams, Eugene V. Debs, and W. E. B. Du Bois repudiated liberalism’s association with acquisitive individualism and laissez-faire economics, advocating a model of liberal citizenship whose virtues and commitments amount to what Hansen calls cosmopolitan patriotism. Rooted not in war but in dedication to social equity, cosmopolitan patriotism favored the fight against sexism, racism, and political corruption in the United States over battles against foreign foes. Its adherents held the domestic and foreign policy of the United States to its own democratic ideals and maintained that promoting democracy universally constituted the ultimate form of self-defense. Perhaps most important, the cosmopolitan patriots regarded critical engagement with one’s country as the essence of patriotism, thereby justifying scrutiny of American militarism in wartime.
Just when the patriotism of Americans who disagree with specific policies of the government is being called into question, Hansen’s judicious and incisive book arrives to remind us how vigorously leftists a century ago refused to yield the flag to the White House. The debates involving Theodore Roosevelt, Eugene Debs, William James, Woodrow Wilson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Horace Kallen, and a host of others during the crises of the Spanish-American War and World War One, Hansen shows, remain relevant to today’s disputes over what it means to love and defend one’s country.
David HollingerThe real value of this study lies in Hansen’s thorough discussion of these and competing ideas. This is an intelligent, engaging, and useful work
Theoretically rich, sophisticated in argument, and attentive to the interplay of diverse historical forces…the book succeeds… as a reminder that Americans can be critical of their state and still be patriotic. In the present age, this message is particularly urgent.
… a provocative and strong effort to unite a wide range of influential public intellectuals under the banner of an alternative mode of civic loyalty… a highly readable example of contemporary American intellectual history.
This beautifully written study provides vivid portraits of major thinkers and activists who pondered the new meaning of nationalism when the United States emerged as a world power a century ago. As Hansen demonstrates, they envisioned a form of patriotism more cosmopolitan that the provincial Americanism of their day, but more robust that the thinned out universalism of the Enlightenment. By providing a sturdy historical foundation for contemporary arguments offered by thinkers such as Michael Walzer, Amy Gutman, David Hollinger, and Werner Sollors, Hansen establishes himself as a major contributor to debates among political theorists and historians over the meaning and possibility of American patriotism. At a moment when many American intellectuals consider the idea of national loyalty irreparably damaged, he shows why we should think again
James KloppenbergHansen’s incisive book refocuses attention on neglected aspects of these outstanding public intellectuals who, at a local, national, and international level, confronted the most challenging issues of the new imperial order…. It is worth stressing again the profound modernity of the cosmopolitans’ theorization of democracy and war… It is quite astonishing to realize how closely these remarks apply to public discourse after September 11 on democracy and the erosion of civil liberties in the face of the general issue of national security.
Also by Jonathan M. Hansen
