<ahem, s'cuse me> Canadians sing the national anthem before games too. But I'm not sure why. Is it because visiting American teams expect to be able to sing there's, so, well, we better do it too? Because, well, we are a different country...aren't we? Or is just plain pathetic emulation? Whatever the reason I'm sure it rarely has nothing to do with a joyous outburst of patriotism.

The Irish national anthem, which is a terrible piece of music, is played before all matches in the All-Ireland gaelic football and hurling championships. In my experience, about a quarter of the crowd sing it and the rest don't bother. The fans also start bellowing en masse ("Come on the Dubs!" "Go on Kerry!" etc) well before the end of the song.

It's actually only the chorus to the national anthem. There are verses as well. I'd bet that less than 5% of the population even knows the air to the verses.

Playing abide with me before the FA cup final is just a tradition stemming from the dawn of time. It would be comparable to the american national anthem if everyone sang it before every football game up and down the country. Of course english people had patriotic expressions like anthems and flags back in the day when they were a globe spanning empire too.

And I am the Life wrote:

QUOTE:
The Irish national anthem, which is a terrible piece of music, is played before all matches in the All-Ireland gaelic football and hurling championships. In my experience, about a quarter of the crowd sing it and the rest don't bother. The fans also start bellowing en masse ("Come on the Dubs!" "Go on Kerry!" etc) well before the end of the song.

It's actually only the chorus to the national anthem. There are verses as well. I'd bet that less than 5% of the population even knows the air to the verses.

You got any verses about killing Scots?

Our modern sense of exceptionalism, of course, largely stems from having shored up Europe on two occasions when they were doing their utmost to bring human civilization to an end.

You see that's the sort of mass deluding lie that I was talking about at the beginning of the thread. It paints america as the country being dragged into foreign entanglements to save the day against their will. I was surprised at how many americans think this way.

Perhaps a more accurate reading would be that an expansionist ruling class/government eager to expand the scope of america's power had to eventually overcome the ingrained isolationism of the american population by engineering a cassus belli (remember the maine/lusitania/pearl harbour......)

America didn't enter the war in Europe to save Europe from itself. America entered the first world war in europe because they wanted to dismantle the hapsburg, german, ottoman, and russian empires, gradually opening up the middle east. just as they had dismantled the Spanish empire in 1902, giving them effective dominion over the whole continent bar canada.

The second world war enabled them to destroy the japanese empire, giving them control of SE asia, and through financial means destroyed the british empire and the French empire, leaving America as the sole global empire (with Russia being a lot more landlocked)

So America may have appeared on the outside to get dragged into these conflicts against their will, but always at the end, America became increasingly more powerful on the global stage, and became the imperial power in these countries. (without planting the flag)

I'm very proud to have kicked off this thread like this.

I don't have much to add. I agree with WE and UA pretty much and Bruno has raised some good points.

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I definitely don't think there's any undue pressure in the United States to be seen acting patriotic, or subscribing to some triumphalist narrative - which isn't necessarily how I meant to characterize the broad assumptions behind American exceptionalism anyway.

I don't think that's true everywhere. There are a lot of places in America where not showing patriotism will cause problems. Note the occasional news stories about a kid refusing to say the plege of allegiance.

Likewise, the attitude toward singing the National Anthem at a game depends on the sport and the location. At a DC United game, most people stand respectifully - respecting the singer as much as anything else - but a lot of people sit or continue to move about getting beer or finding their seat.

At a recent minor league baseball game I went to in my home town, everyone stood, everyone stopped walking around. Most people put their hand on their heart and many, many people tried to sing along with the kid who was singing it on the PA.

In the former case, most of the fans are urban, younger and probably about half were not born in the United States. In the latter situation, the crowd was much older on average, more rural, almost 100% white and mostly "native."


To go way back a few pages, there are parties in the US that are a bit more like the NF - the American Conservative Union, I think is one. Lately there's been an upsurge in xenophobia and anti-immigration, but even the most idiotic of Republicans usually try to explain their xenophobia in terms of anti-terrorism or job protection and try to go out of their way to claim they aren't racist. My impression is that the BNP and NF, etc, don't mind being a bit racist.

As Bruno pointed out, we do have, in general, a pretty open immigration door compared to a lot of other places. If you're born here or one of your parents was a citizen, you're a citizen. That's not true in a lot of countries or, at least, hasn't been true as long as it has here.


Also, last I read, historians see baseball as a cousin to rounders, not a decendant. And Abner Doubleday had fuck all to do with it.

Professor Chomsky? Is that you?

Edit: in response to AIATL

And I am the Life wrote:

QUOTE:
Playing abide with me before the FA cup final is just a tradition stemming from the dawn of time. It would be comparable to the american national anthem if everyone sang it before every football game up and down the country. Of course english people had patriotic expressions like anthems and flags back in the day when they were a globe spanning empire too.

Exactly so, which is one reason I don't quite buy all the innocent joyousness of it all. Historically, this kind of patriotic display, on the part of stronger, bigger nations, is strongly associated with triumphalism.

Bruno: I suppose I'm pleased that Newton and Darwin and Shakespeare and Austen and Hume come from the same island as me and that I'm in some sense heir to what they bequeathed. But first, let's not pretend the story is all sweetness and light, or even mostly sweetness and light. "We" once sought to enslave half the world. Secondly, it's absurdly overstating things to claim Britain is the "fount of modern civilisation". Leaving aside the identification of "civilisation" with "Western civilisation" (which, well, how can we leave that aside?), are we saying Beethoven and Diderot and Rembrandt and Dante and Cervantes and Dostoyevsky can all fuck the fuck right off? That's some crazy Thatcher talk.

Thirdly, why should our "love" be directed towards the State? I mean, I'm glad there is a State as opposed to a war of all against all or something, and I think ours could be a lot worse, but the fact is that our State, like most States, has frequently operated as a conspiracy of the powerful against the powerless. Not invariably, but often enough that we should at the very least cultivate an unsentimental attitude towards it.

Finally, feelings of "love" towards a state are flat anthropomorphic and daft, and there's no getting round that.

I don't want to get dragged into a debate about the nefarious self-serving reasons America chose to engage in two world wars, but to at least reply to this:

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So America may have appeared on the outside to get dragged into these conflicts against their will, but always at the end, America became increasingly more powerful on the global stage, and became the imperial power in these countries. (without planting the flag)

I mean, let's see. So America was just waiting around for the golden opportunity presented by two blatantly imperialist powers, Germany and Japan, taking over the world, so's they could finally start their own empire? Is that it? The country that defeats Germany (with the help of another would-be empire, the USSR) and Japan (pretty much all by itself) - two countries that literally threatened to take over the world - is a comparable culprit because it enjoyed the spoils of victory? Or something like that? Aren't there cleverer, less destructive ways of extending one's influence?

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America didn't enter the war in Europe to save Europe from itself. America entered the first world war in europe because they wanted to dismantle the hapsburg, german, ottoman, and russian empires, gradually opening up the middle east.

In school we were taught that the US got into the first world war because so many wealthy Americans were creditors to the British and French. We wanted to protect our investment. And fly cool bi-planes.

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just as they had dismantled the Spanish empire in 1902, giving them effective dominion over the whole continent bar canada.

That's not right. The Spanish empire was falling apart on it's own with help from Britain and France long before the US had any power to do anything. As I recall, France sold us the Louisiana purchase partially to keep the Spanish out.

Also, we didn't have control over Mexico in 1902.

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The second world war enabled them to destroy the japanese empire, giving them control of SE asia, and through financial means destroyed the british empire and the French empire, leaving America as the sole global empire (with Russia being a lot more landlocked)

I won't defend everything the U.S. did in Asia, but the Japanese Empire was due for a good kicking. The world would not be better off with the latter-day samurai class running over all of East Asia. I mean, look at what they did to China.

Also, as part of the Marshall plan, the US supported Britain and France's interests in Southeast Asia. That's one of the things that got is into Vietnam in the beginning, in fact. Also, as I recall, we helped Britain overthrow the democratically elected government in Iran that was going to nationalize their oil supply. They're still pretty sore at us for that, btw.

So it's not correct to say that the US destroyed the French and British Empire. Y'all did that on your own pretty well.

Wyatt, it was a nod to the Book thread about how Country X Changed The World. Sorry, a bit too opaque I guess.

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Thirdly, why should our "love" be directed towards the State? I mean, I'm glad there is a State as opposed to a war of all against all or something, and I think ours could be a lot worse, but the fact is that our State, like most States, has frequently operated as a conspiracy of the powerful against the powerless. Not invariably, but often enough that we should at the very least cultivate an unsentimental attitude towards it.

Well, when you put it like that ("the State") indeed it doesn't sound very lovable. I love Britain though, and feel quite sentimental about much of it. The bit about conspiracy against the powerless, that's everywhere, brother. "Love" is not the same as unquestioning devotion, btw. Love guides us toward our better selves.

Reed, AIATL seems to be accusing the United States of the crime of opportunism, which on the whole I'm fine with, vis a vis the larger crimes they were generally responding to. Starting World War I was surely the most catastrophic decision ever undertaken on behalf of civilization. At least the Americans ended it and tried to patch things up.

Come on Bruno, patriotism is skewing your worldview, as patriotism always does. The American entry into WWI was a huge psychological blow to the Germans, and may very well have tipped the balance in favour of their suing for peace; certainly they knew then that they couldn't actually win outright.

But the material contribution of US troops was (with all respect to those that did contribute) minuscule in relative terms. On the actual battlefield, Germany was (eventually) defeated, pretty much, by Britain and France, together (crucially) with those countries' colonies. America's entry helped Germany realise that.

Which was very important, and as I say possibly decisive in shortening the war, but this habit some Americans have of forgetting that their forefathers fought as allies, alongside other allies--well, it's interesting in the light of what we've been discussing.

Most Americans know next to nothing about WWI except that it was the war in which Snoopy fought the Red Baron.

I agree with WE's explanation. As I understand it, the US intervention was like a striker coming on late and scoring to make it 5-3 in the 80th minute of an extremely chippy game in which Germany were down to 9 men and the allies had 10.

It doesn't loom very large in our national imagination as it does in Europe.

It's things like this (just the most convenient example from today, by no means the only or strongest example) that make it hard for me to accept that American nationalism is as harmless and as "meaningless" as some here make out. I realise it's different for politicians, but it wouldn't be so if it didn't have wider resonance. McCain is running on a slogan of "Country First" while simultaneously attacking Obama for not being "one of us" (nudge, wink) and uppity. Even if Obama were white it would be pretty offensive, yet hardly anyone in the media thinks it's remarkable and it seems to be working pretty well for him. As it is McCain is able to claim that what is pretty obvious coded racism is really virtuous patriotism..