Like Chuck Klosterman, I think Billy Joel is an underrated artist who’s completely devoid of “cool”, but that’s not what I’m interested in writing about. Instead, I’d like to highlight this introduction to the Billy Joel essay in his last book :

Several months before nineteen unsmiling people from the Middle East woke up early on a Tuesday in order to commit suicide by flying planes into tall New York office buildings, I sent out a mass e-mail to several acquaintances that focused on the concept of patriotism. At the time, “patriotism” seemed like a quaint, baffling concept; it was almost like asking people to express their feelings on the art of blacksmithing. But sometimes I like to ask people what they think about blacksmithing, too.

So ANYWAY, here was the content of my e-mail: I gave everyone two potential options for a hypothetical blind date and asked them to pick who they’d prefer. The only things they knew about the first candidate was that he or she was attractive and successful. The only things they knew about the second candidate was that he or she was attractive, successful, and “extremely patriotic.” No other details were provided or could be ascertained.

Just about everyone immediately responded by selecting the first individual. They viewed patriotism as a downside. I wasn’t too surprised; in fact, I was mostly just amused by how everyone seemed to think extremely patriotic people weren’t just undatable, but totally [freaking] insane. One of them wrote that the quality of patriotism was on par with “regularly listening to Cat Stevens” and “loves Robin Williams movies.” Comparisons were made to Ted Nugent and Patrick Henry. And one especially snide fellow sent back a mass message to the entire e-mail group, essentially claiming that any woman who loved America didn’t deserve to date him, not because he hated his country but because patriotic people weren’t smart.

That last response outraged one of my friends, a thirty-one-year-old lawyer who had been the only individual in the entire group who claimed to prefer the extremely patriotic candidate to the alternative. He sent me one of the most sincerely aggravated epistles I’ve ever received, and I still recall a segment of his electronic diatribe that was painfully accurate: “You know how historians call people who came of age during World War II ‘the greatest generation’? No one will ever say that about us,” he wrote. “We’ll be ‘the cool generation.’ That’s all we’re good at, and that’s all you and your friends seem to aspire to.”

Now I’ll admit that I’d choose the candidate that doesn’t consider themselves “extremely patriotic”, but it has nothing to do with wanting to be “cool” and I definitely don’t see patriotism as a downside. The way this question is worded, “extremely patriotic” is a loaded term. More than that, however, is that the term when applied that way, is a divisive one.

Let’s take a step back and imagine this question in a different way. If you had to choose a friend between two people who are for all practical purposes alike, except for that fact that one “really loves Jesus”, who would you pick? I would choose the first, not because I see loving Jesus as a negative, but because “really loves Jesus” implies a certain level of religious devotion that I’m not comfortable with. Considering the religious makeup of our country, I see it as almost a given that anyone I meet would self-identify as a Christian. That being the case, saying that someone “really loves Jesus” isn’t done to emphasize their normality but to but to differentiate them from an already Christian majority. For that reason, my interpretation of “really loves Jesus” isn’t that the person in question is merely religious, but a zealot.

The same holds true with the original question. I consider myself “extremely patriotic”, but I’d never think to describe myself as such. To do so wouldn’t send the message that I love my country, but that I think other people don’t love the country as much as I do. If someone else was described to me as “extremely patriotic”, I would jump to the conclusion that the person in question is not necessarily a patriot, but a self-righteous nationalist. Even before 9/11, the overzealous patriot archetype was a breed of American that was used to divide people ideologically, not celebrate their common heritage. I won’t bother delving into the specifics of this stereotype, but you probably know what I’m talking about.

Of course, this all opens up a further line of questioning. Why do these hypothetical Christians and patriots bring to mind a particular right-wing variety of Christianity and patriotism? I’ve explored the religious question plenty of times on this site (most recently in “Take Back Jesus”), but the patriotism question is a little more elusive. There’s a long history of politicians of all stripes beating back opposition by questioning their opponents patriotism, but this is something that’s really intesnified in recent years and something that conservatives excell at.

Which is really just a long way of saying that, with the exception of the “exceptionally snide fellow”, I don’t think Chuck Klosterman’s friends are America-hating jerks. They’re just exhibiting a predictable reaction to a social climate that’s sought to make “patriotism” seen as a conservative value. It’s not, of course, but making that point relies upon making to careful distinction between patriotism, nationalism, and jingoism. Considering the results of last year’s election, I don’t know if the American people have a tolerance for subtlety.