Is Higher Education Compatible with Patriotism?

An interesting panel discussion put forward by the National Association of Scholars Forum Higher Education & Democracy in Peace & War, and broadcast on C-SPAN. Of course I watched via the web. Go to www.c-span.org and search education, the program originally aired on may 31st of 2002. What's that? Its fourteen months old? Well, the internet is asynchronous. The panel is two hours long and there are a pair of speakers from the right and a pair from the left. Gertrude Himmelfarb chairs the panel. One of the speakers drew a distinction between patriotism based on mine-ness and on goodness. He advocated the primacy of goodness.

In a related note, I have been intrigued by the catagorization of Walter Russell Mead of American policy into Jeffersonians, Wilsonians, Jacksonians, and Hamiltonians. You can read a discussion of his book and its thesis between the author and James Fallows in the Atlantic unbound. Well, I came across an artical by Mead in The National Interest. Mead argues that it is very difficult to sustain policies in America without the acceptance of the Jacksonains. And the Jacksonians have a patriotism based on mine-ness.

This reminds me of a lost article in one of the conservative journals in which the author dwelled upon the differences between a conservative writer for a magazine, living on the east coast, a member of the establishment, and someone who sat next to him at an event who represented the middle American conservative. This, I think is the contrast between Jacksonians and, say Hamiltonians. This distinction is the one I am most aware of, identifying with Alexander Hamilton, rather than my neighbors who are Jacksonians. Being well versed in Stoicism, and the principle of the brotherhood of man, being well educated in European history and therefore prone to cosmopolitanism, I am attracted to a patriotism of the goodness of America. We promote free societies and free markets. Our principles are very good, and even our practice, I will argue, is demonsrably good. Our less good practice is the result of neccesary comprimises in difficult circumstances and are often the result of competing goods (say victory over communism in a fourty year death struggle). The patriotism of mine-ness seems to me to lack a certain amount of reflection. Like the author I cannot cite, who acknowledged the electoral neccesity of an alliance between establishment conservatives writing for magazines in New York and the many middle American conservatives who are much more socially conservative, I as a Hamiltonian see the neccesity of the Jacksonians, even though I sometimes see their preferences as regretable. Ultimatly, my preference for democracy trumps my ideological preferences and I think that the will of the majority should be policy even when its not always the best policy. It is simply up to those with the best policy to convince the majority, not to impose their better judgement through administrative or judicial fiat.