Ethics

Coates on Nationalistic Machismo

By Ed Brayton

Ta-Nehisi Coates has an excellent post about the right's continual insistence on the most shallow and arrogant conception of patriotism, the macho nationalism that is so ubiquitous among conservatives. He is responding to this statement by Liz Cheney objecting to Obama's unwillingness to offer such a vision:

We've now seen several different occasions when he's been on the international trips, where he's not willing to say, flat out, 'I believe in American exceptionalism. I believe unequivocally, unapologetically, America is the best nation that ever existed in history, and clearly that exists today.' Instead we've seen him do what we saw him do in the speech in Cairo, which is sort of, 'on one hand this, on the other hand that,' and then attempt to put himself sort of above it all. I think that troubles people.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on July 02, 2009 (boomark / email).