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"Why Don't You Leave the Country?"

By Paul Street at Nov 27, 2005

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Perhaps some of this blog's readers saw my recent ZNet article, titled "The 'Cowardice' Card: Militarism's Last and Self-Fulfilling Refuge." You can read the original piece at www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=9175§ionID=15 or see the version I've pasted in below. The article is a highly critical treatment of the U.S. right's use of the charge of "cowardice" against those who oppose the American occupation of Iraq. Like most of my writing, it is rooted in what I think is a fundamentally American faith in the right and duty of an educated citizenry to militantly criticize elite deceptions and the unjust use of authority by concentrated power. It is one version of the many ways in which I endeavor to exercise the First Amendment liberties that I take to be one of the glorious and quintessential birthrights granted to those born in the land of Tom Paine, hot dogs, apple pie, and baseball (including my beloved World Series Champions the Chicago White Sox). Imagine my patriotic consternation, then, when I learned that my article had provoked the following comment from a "Joseph Germaine," who took time out of his day to write the following brilliant response to my article: "If you have that much against America," Mr. Germaine reflected, "than [sic] why don't you leave?" As any regular American leftist writer or speaker will tell you, the invitation to "leave America" is a fairly common rhetorical device from those who hate the expresison of dissent against specific policies, institutions, and hiearchies in the land we love. I recently had a very polite and attentive student make an awkward comment along these lines in front of a classroom. I was in mid-sentence simply relating well-known facts of wealth distribution in the land I love. I was leading up to a discussion of the American egalitarian ethos and the related difference between "equality of opportunity" and "equality of outcome." Anyway there I was setting up this elementary distinction with the standard contemporary wealth data and the student raises her to hand to say that "maybe people who think that everything is terrible in America should just move to another country." Momentarily dumbstruck, I proceeded to explain that: I for one had no intention of leaving my homeland; I have enough respect for my country to tell what I see to be the truth about its problematic social arrangements and policies; I did not say that "everything is terrible in America;" and it would not improve things here or abroad for people of radical-and social-democratic sentiments to globally redistrict themselves out of the most powerful nation on earth. Sometimes I wonder if "conservative" "Americans" who tell dissenters to become expatriates --- to deport themselves for crying out loud --- have any concept what an essentally FASCIST thing they are saying and thinking? Someone --- an American ---- vociferously dissents from dominant administration policy and rhetoric and you say they should foregoe their citizenship and deport themselves? Holy Shit. Is Mr. Germaine so truly blind as to have identified the Bush administration and miltarism as such (the latter is the main target of my article) with the essence of American democracy? If so then he has become a curse upon his country's spirit and legacy of liberty....a false and dangerous patriot. The “Cowardice” Card: Militarism's Last and Self-Fulfilling Refuge by Paul Street; November 22, 2005 What sort of unpardonable crimes might the United States (U.S.) government commit in the world? Killing tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians in the execution of an illegal and brazenly imperialist invasion of a formerly sovereign nation? Launching a criminal war of aggression sold to the world and the American citizenry on transparently false grounds? Turning Iraq into a chaotic madhouse of violence and a breeding ground for terrorism – all in the curious name of a “war on terrorism?” Illegally torturing countless non-combatants in the name of “freedom” and “democracy” within and beyond occupied Iraq? Indoctrinating its soldiers and imperial prison guards with the false notion that they were in Iraq to “avenge 9/11” and defeat the terror networks that conducted the jetliner attacks of 2001? Alienating world opinion, enraging a region's populace, and sparking a massive cycle of terror and factional violence in the execution of an unjust war? No, the really unforgivable thing would be to lack the courage required to continue these and other reprehensible transgressions. If Uncle Sam were to lose his nerve and call off his vicious assault on Iraq and on standard norms and established rules of international conduct, he would be dishonoring the more than 2000 American soldiers he has already sent to an early grave in the commission of those terrible crimes. He would reveal himself as a powerless paper tiger, ready to get desert sand kicked in its face by any rogue terrorist in the oil-rich Middle East. It would be an open season on America, “civilization,” and “freedom” around the world. Such is the basic argument of America's increasingly embattled but in-power hard right, which accuses the rising number of antiwar Americans of deficient military manliness. “Cowards cut and run,” a veteran solider told Republican Congresswomen Jean Schmidt (Ohio), but “Marines never do.” Schmidt offered this marvelous pearl of proto-fascist wisdom in response to calls from U.S. citizens and some Democratic politicians (e.g. Representative and Vietnam Veteran John P. Murtha) for a rapid withdrawal from U.S.-ravaged Mesopotamia. It is chilling to see Schmidt and other American right militarists reduced to such viciously circular and self-fulfilling arguments in defense of their president's bloody Iraq policy. The Cheney-Bush administration's originally stated war rationalizations have been revealed as alternately false, disingenuous, and idiotic. The White House's Iraq crusade has been exposed as criminal and even – more to the point for most Democrats calling for withdrawal – as dysfunctional for the American Empire Project. As the executive branch's initial proclaimed ends fade into the mists of Orwellian illusion and high-state deception, the right's last ideological refuge is to sell military valor as an end in and of itself. To be sure, part of the administration's response to rising domestic criticism is to merge the attack on Iraq more aggressively than ever with the post-9/11 “war on terror.” Reflecting in part his own curious success in turning Iraq into a terror-ravaged charnel house, Bush now routinely claims that Iraq is ground zero in the struggle between “democracy” and “the murderous ideology” of “Islamic radicalism,” which he now likens to “the ideology of Communism.” Both of these “evil” ideologies, Bush explained to a military audience on Veteran's Day, express a “totalitarian” “contempt for human life” and “freedom” that will not stop of its own accord until “weapons of mass destruction” have destroyed “the blessings of liberty” in “free nations.” The latter term applies especially to the corporate-plutocratic U.S., the “best democracy that money can [and did] buy:” the world's leading incarceration nation, where the top 1 percent owns more than 40 percent of the wealth along with a certainly largely share of the policymakers. But the public's patience with such paranoid, panic-peddling presidential hyperbole (straight out of the dog-wagging Reagan playbook) has faded. A mounting share of the imperial “homeland's” citizenry understands and resents the fact that their government's battering of Iraq – NOT some mythical Islamo-Trotskyist hatred of America's supposedly unmatched internal “freedom” – is the main driving force behind Islamic terrorism in the Middle East. The White House and American right's ability to sell their childish “good versus evil” line on Iraq is undercut by previous deceptions on Iraqi WMD and Saddam Hussein's supposed links to al Qaeda and 9/11. Many of us remain conscious of the fact that similar false (the Soviet Union retreated from the goal of world revolution well before America proclaimed its Cold War on the “international communist conspiracy”) apocalyptic and global claims were used by U.S. policymakers to justify the criminal slaughter of more than 2 million Vietnamese and 58,000 American GIs during the 1960s and 1970s. Beneath the Cheney-Bush cabal's messianic bluster, the right's fear-mongering increasingly doesn't wash with a terror-fatigued American citizenry that is restless about massive internal “homeland” problems – deep and widespread poverty, steep class and related racial inequality, declining benefits coverage, rampant indebtedness and insecurity, absent and increasingly expensive health care, failing and under-funded schools, etc…(the list goes on and on) – that are critically exacerbated by the nation's massive, deficit-fueling military budget. Hence the warmongers' rising reliance on purely atavistic, testosterone-fueled justifications. Forget the originally proclaimed high purposes. By last-refuge logic, it's all about looking tough: military badness as such. It's about militarism as an end in and of itself. With America's status as the center and guardian of what Dick Cheney calls “the civilized world” assumed to be self-evident, it's all about courage, credibility, and macho intimidation. Uncle Sam's goodness requires him to act like the biggest, baddest Mafia Don on the block. For him to call off his mass war criminality in Iraq would be to look weak and to dishonor America's ever rising number of dead soldiers of empire. We must honor our dead with more dead, sacrificed by “good” chickenhawk “leaders” like Cheney and Bush to show “evil men” that a self-evidently virtuous America doesn't “cut and run.” It's a pathetically stupid, viciously circular, and morally bankrupt argument, as is understood by many among the remarkable 52 percent (or more) of Americans who want their government to – well – cut and run out of Iraq within at least 12 months. The sheer criminal madness of it all is increasingly grasped and rejected by working-class Americans, who are spurning military recruiters in record numbers. It's only those near the bottom of America's steep socioeconomic pyramid, many non-affluent Americans understand, who are supposed to lose their lives and limbs so that wealthy, effete war pigs like “Bring-Em On” Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld can look like manly men of empire.

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By Anonymous, Anonymous at May 30, 2007 18:16 PM

Leave the country, can you imagine being on the receiving end of america's disastrous foreign policy!

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Re: "Why Don't You Leave the Country?"

By Kreuzberg_anto, Moderne at Dec 15, 2005 20:11 PM
On the topic of YB's fascism=socialism "theory", a relevant editorial article in the Toronto Star: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar%2FLayout%2FArticle_Type1&c=Article&cid=1132960211791 For those not familiar with Canadian media, the Star is one of our big 3 newspapers, and needless to say I was pretty amazed that an editorial of such clarity would appear in such a mainstream news source. It's a rare occurrence, but a timely one, given the discussion here... not to mention a useful antidote for anyone who might be taking this idea halfway seriously.

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Person

Re: "Why Don't You Leave the Country?"

By Tolsen1, R4d20 at Dec 11, 2005 08:30 AM
Celebrity statements about leaving the USA if GWB was elected did not sound like political statements (aka. "dissent") so much as a cultural statements - it sounded like they were saying "I can't live in a country populated by rednecks and rubes who would vote for this a-hole". Not suprisingly, some people take offense to this and respond in a defensive manner. Plus, there is something odd about the statement "I want to change my country's government, social structre, culture, and sense of national identity - but I love it.". Whats left to love but dirt? Sounds a bit too close to "you are a dirty, evil, filthy, horrible, wretched sinnner - but God loves you" kind of 'love' to me.

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Re: "Why Don't You Leave the Country?"

By Tolsen1, R4d20 at Dec 11, 2005 05:40 AM
"Just what the hell is this country about if not freedom of decent?" I think you're missing the point. Go ahead a criticise the Gov't all you want, but I get annoyed at the pseudo-intellectuals who sneeringly bandy about cliches about the American "lack of culture".

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: "Why Don't You Leave the Country?"

By Street, Paul at Dec 07, 2005 00:08 AM
Bok is an endless source of diversionary amusement: one cannot simultaneously advocate, he proclaims, (a) socialism and (b) free speech. Silly Eugene Debs. Oh, ok. The characterization of "socialism" as opposed to "the individual" is entirely false as is his use of the word "fascism." But even if his discussion of socialism was remotely accurate, his statement would not logically follow. As usual he has ignored the broad content of the post and honed in his typical diversionary and obsessive little way. Just stop your relentless right-wing idiocy, yakov bok. Do yourself a favor and just stop.

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Re: "Why Don't You Leave the Country?"

By Bok, Yakov at Dec 06, 2005 20:20 PM
The point is Paul, that socialism and fascism are cousins, much to the chagrins of modern socialists. It is an insult to the victims of socialism and fascism, in all thier varying forms, for you and other leftists, to continually misuse the word fascist. As you pointed out, mere nationalism does not make one fascist. So as a history teacher, do yourself, the profession, the discipline, your students, and everyone else a favor - use the lable correctly. Futher, a central tenant of socialism is the subordination of the individual to the collective. Free speech on the other hand, subordinates society to the individual. Thus, you as a self-proclaimed socialist cannot truely be for free-speech. This is one more hypocrisy of the left. It's the same for those calling themselves social-libertarians.

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: "Why Don't You Leave the Country?"

By Street, Paul at Dec 06, 2005 20:08 PM
Bok's nuttery deepens and here tries to paint me out as on the lunatic fringe: "What kind of history of history do you teach?" Truth is, only a tiny crackpot minority of marginal history professors would equate fascism with socialism. I suppose for bok that would prove Marxian domination of the professoriate, but such domination is entirely non-existent I can absolutely assure both him and Lynn Cheney.

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Re: "Why Don't You Leave the Country?"

By Bok, Yakov at Dec 06, 2005 05:02 AM
Paul - the essential underpinnings of a facsist economy is socialism: the following description of the Nazi economic system by Leonard Peikoff in his book The Ominous Parallels: "Contrary to the Marxists, the Nazis did not advocate public ownership of the means of production. They did demand that the government oversee and run the nation's economy. The issue of legal ownership, they explained, is secondary; what counts is the issue of control. Private citizens, therefore, may continue to hold titles to property - so long as the state reserves to itself the unqualified right to regulate the use of their property." and what sounds alot like Parecon: Mussolini's fascism took another step at this time with the advent of the Corporative State, a supposedly pragmatic arrangement under which economic decisions were made by councils composed of workers and employers who represented trades and industries. By this device the presumed economic rivalry between employers and employees was to be resolved, preventing the class struggle from undermining the national struggle. In the Corporative State, for example, strikes would be illegal and labor disputes would be mediated by a state agency. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html The fact is, fascism is the skeleton in the socialist's closet. What type of history do you teach Paul?

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Re: "Why Don't You Leave the Country?"

By Buban, Mike at Dec 04, 2005 11:28 AM
While I might not be the most well read person here, I think that a dictionary might be helpful for you Yakov. fascism, n; A system of government marked by a totalitarian dictator, socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition, and susally a pliciy of bellierent nationalism and racism.

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: "Why Don't You Leave the Country?"

By Street, Paul at Dec 02, 2005 21:14 PM
"Love it or leave it" is of course not literally fascist. Literal full-blown fascism would involve roughing someone up and perhaps inccarcerating or even killing them for daring to dissent. But bok makes a considerably more grave error by suggesting that such thinking is "mere nationalism." Love of country (in theis case the U.S.) hardly equates with or leads in any normal or healthy sense to the degradation of Free Speech (a critical part of specifically American identity) that lay at the heart of "leave the country if you dissent." The chilling overlap between such sentiment and fascist authoritarianism should not be ignored. Bok's bigger mistake is to equate historical fascism with "socialist" economy. We can read among other sources William Manchester's classic Arms of Krupp to get a sense of how thoroughly the means of production remained in private monopolistic hands at the height of in-power/full-blown/classic historical fascism. Remember the critical synergy and common ground between monopoly capital and the fascist project both in terms of domestic and foreign policy. Many key capitalists loved fascism's militantly corporate-authoritartian disciplining of labor and the left and were more than ready to profit from its nationalist-imperial projects. Curiously enough, they were more than happy to work with the dictates of what you falsely characterize as socialist command.

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By Bok, Yakov at Dec 02, 2005 02:45 AM
Paul, if you are a historian by training, what is your reason for proclaiming the "love it or leave it" arguement is fascist? What is fascist about it? Mere nationalism? You proclaimed a deep love for our country, does that in turn make you a fascist? Remember, a key component of fascism was a socialist, centralized economy.

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Re: "Why Don't You Leave the Country?"

By Bauerly, Mtbrad at Dec 01, 2005 18:33 PM
I meant dissent. Oh boy what a slip.

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Re: "Why Don't You Leave the Country?"

By Bauerly, Mtbrad at Dec 01, 2005 17:29 PM
Of course many played right into their hands when they proclaimed that they would move to canada if GW Bush won a second term. As if you could run away from the shadow of the empire. It is interesting to see the values of the US come up against free speech and expression. Just what the hell is this country about if not freedom of decent? I think it shows the limits of democracy built in a nation state setting, you will always have certain times of hightened nationalism that will threaten the functionality of the democracy. It could also be traced to simple reactionary insecurity. The economic uncertainty of the current era is creating many disturbing trends in public oppinion and the dominant media is not helping to enunciate the oppropriate responses. People get freaky when they get scared.

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Re: "Why Don't You Leave the Country?"

By Cryofan, Cryofan at Dec 01, 2005 14:00 PM
Ha! Don't feel bad, Paul. Check out fauxLefty responses to my posts on this thread here on this democratic party forum: http://www.peopleforchange.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=28628&st=0 I started that thread to celebrate some democratic activists who were saying that mass illegal immigration had to be stopped because it was driving down wages by flooding the labor supply (of course it is). So then the fauxLefties in that thread attacked me and told me that if I did not like America because of mass immigration that I should just leave the country. LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT, PAUL! Same Same, huh!? But from the putative "other side".... So the Right programs their meat puppets to tell you to leave the country if you question the American war machine (as you saw in class). And the Fauxleft programs THEIR mear puppets to tell you to leave if you question the mass immigration/labor market flooding policies of the America establishment. Gosh, do you think the Dems and the GOP simply represent the same interests? And do ya think that maybe almost ALL Americans are just nonthinking meat puppets controlled by elite memes? I do....

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: "Why Don't You Leave the Country?"

By Street, Paul at Dec 01, 2005 03:07 AM
Jonas you bet. The chilling authoritarianism of "then why don't you people just leave" (uttered in one case by an otherwise polite young lady/student as I barely began to present some actually quite uncontroversial data on socioecconomic inequity)would seem to be somewhat outside the cherished discourse of democracy, yes? But then so would, on a more serious level, the language of a president (as at the Naval Academy today) who justifies his defiance of majority public opinion on Iraq by appealing rather proto-fascistically to the solemn and sacred bond between the "people in uniform" (the members of our structurally mercenary/"volunteer" armed forces) and their "Commander in Chief." A curious pair of messianic militarists are Bush and Cheney, who cut and run from a previous imperial and racist war they both supported but preferred not to fight: Vietnam. Keir: Hilary is like her husband: driven, smart as Hell, and power mad... totally ready to accommodate savage imperial, corporatist, and other racist elements and forces to achieve richly narcissistic dreams. Terence: "about 1905"? I'm an historian by training, so I'm intrigued by such precise temporal specificity....

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Re: "Why Don't You Leave the Country?"

By Cacioppo, Jonas at Dec 01, 2005 00:32 AM
Well, Mr. Street, the first amendment to our Constitution guaranteed something called the freedom of speech for the people. So speech includes strong or even unpopular words. Deportation on that ground strikes at the very heart of patriotism, doesn't it?

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4101

Re: "Why Don't You Leave the Country?"

By Servo, Tom at Nov 27, 2005 07:25 AM
Any person who says "If you hate America so much, why don;t you leave" should be responded to with something like this:"If you think the war in Iraq or elsewhere is so great and the supposed "freedom" it is defending is worth fighting for, why not put down the schoolbooks, sign an enlistment contract, and go fight for it?" The supposition, Paul, is that the person who offers a negative critique of the state and/or system doesn't *really* believe it is all bad, or they would have left it already. The converse, obviously, if we wish to use this flawed logic, is that the state and/or the sytem must not be worth defending, or the person who originally gave the "love it or leave it" would have joined the fight already. hey, maybe there is a bumper sticker in there somewhere..."I'll leave the USofA when you enlist in the Marines"

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