Tyler and Chris Argue, Finis

Tyler:

I still fail to see how you assert the US to have always been about egalitarianism. If you ignore women's rights, slavery, and gay marriage, I guess, yes, America has "always" been about egalitarianism.

And I maintain that the point is, this story is harmful. It is fuel to the ignorant American fire. Spencer, I believe the point IS that they are New Yorkers. If the hatred for the middle east doesn't have the greatest false reassurances in New York, I don't know where else.

And the reason this story is not about Patriotism is because the man is not standing up to something only people from other countries do. He is standing up to something that American people do all the time. We get back to the beginning. The man IS standing up for a woman's rights. Say some guy from a backward town in the south comes and does the same thing, is it still Patriotism?

The thing that got me going on this whole thing is the fact that this story is PRODUCTIVE as a women's rights story. (Ignoring the fact that the girl herself doesn't stand up to the prince.)

It is destructive as it is.

What burns me up is that this is the kind of story that gets tacked onto chain mails from pro-war nuts. It's the kind of MySpace bulletin post that you see from right wingers as an example of why we're in the middle east. This is the kind of story that rallies the ignorant.

That's my entire point, that's the only reason this pissed me off. This post just reminded me of that "rally around the flag of hate" bullshit that I have to face from people I consider a lot less intelligent. So, maybe Chris, this story coming from your standpoint of having read this person's blog for a long time comes off in a different light, but when you post JUST this excerpt, then I react to JUST this excerpt. And when you post JUST this fraction of the whole picture, I am telling you that it comes off with strong anti-middle eastern sentiment, STRICTLY for the reason that it becomes a story of "patriotism" in the face of a Saudi in New York of all places. Because instead of feeling like a man, standing up for a woman (if you can consider following your boss around taking action), he felt like a patriot, standing up for his country.

To the first point, I can only answer that yes, I am quite aware of the anti-egalitarian crimes of the past and present. My response is that the United States is founded upon the institutional tools needed to rectify them, which it has at a historically impressive rate. That the global cause of human and civil rights has advanced so swiftly during the past three centuries is due in large part to the ideological coherence and practical experience the United States has provided.

I should have been clearer when I first posted the story; it took place during the 1991 Gulf War, not the latest. But I still think you’re missing the crux of the story. The sexism isn’t necessarily important – it’s a stand-in for any form of encroachment on someone else’s rights. The important aspect is that the prince’s party justified the abuse by appealing to an illegitimate source of authority. Insofar as America is a standing reproach to traditional power, rejection of invocations of traditional authority is patriotic.

I’m willing to defend that view to its counterintuitive extreme. The Dixie dandy that harasses the waitress in a similar way? If he appeals to identity, and not to reason, to justify himself, then ridiculing his claims to superiority is an act of uniquely American cosmopolitan patriotism.

Your concern that the story could be exploited by bigots is well-taken. Anything, of course, can be abused by the ignorant, so I’m wary of balancing what I post and what I say against the potential for manipulation by fools. In the meantime, it’s counterproductive and somewhat vicious to try to find chauvinism lurking behind every piece of cross-cultural critique. Holding principles you believe to be universal will, sooner or later, bring you into conflict with some distant culture, and adhering to them is crucial to your integrity as a thinking human being.

Mmm-mmm-good. Debates like this are one of the reasons I started this little monument to my own ego. Let’s do it again soon.

UPDATE: The author of the original story has discovered this exchange and generously weighed in, clarifying his use of the term “patriotism”, relishing a hypothetical confrontation with British royalty, and reminding us that jingoistic nationalists rarely hold – as he does – dual citizenship in Canada.