Hilary Moore: Practice what your patriotism preaches

Flashed in 15 inch letters across Time Square, pasted on billboards and plastered to thousands of windows, "God Bless America" is a phrase that has been echoing in hearts, minds and mouths over the last six months. Commercials, taxicabs and neon lights have screamed the same message -- a message that inspires a nation to be courageous and strong.

But what of those who have no chance -- regardless of interpretation -- of finding salvation under this resounding slogan? What of those who have an ambiguous sense of belonging when it comes to America?

Since Sept. 11, non-Americans and Americans have been struck deeply with trauma and grief. I, like those around me, grieved for the thousands of lives lost and sat stunned before the horrific images shown over and over on the TV. The shattering reminder that humanity could create such atrocity and the terrible, grinding fear for our safety left me shaken to the core.

But "God Bless America" offered me little comfort. It's not that I don't hope someone, or something, is going to make everything OK for the United States. Nor is it that I have any sympathy for the "other side." My support lies unequivocally with America and its current campaign.

It's that as a foreigner (or "resident alien" as the State Department phrases it), "God Bless America" really doesn't offer me much chance of loving.

In the wake of the attacks, reports came through that international students might be monitored and fingerprinted. Some seemed to think an "outsider" couldn't feel the same sense of violation, and you could smell the fear in the immigrant taxi cabs. Hastily placed flags did little to conceal outsider status.

Recently, emotions have calmed. But there are still eerie signs of discomfort and hostility towards the foreign.

Last week on MSNBC News two worrying comments came in quick succession.

The first: "What's up with these French?" came in response to a newly published French book questioning the events of Sept. 11.

The second: "Now you have a nice American accent... we talk the same language..." came when addressing an American spokesman after a series of interviews with Middle Eastern politicians.

On our own campus, an instance of hysterical racism has just claimed the limelight -- a poignant reminder that fundamentalism is not just the realm of the foreign, deprived or uneducated. Rather, it's a problem that threatens collapse from within.

That's why discomfort with political dissent is not just a problem for the foreigners. As America becomes less tolerant of outsider difference, it also becomes less tolerant of difference within its own borders.

The multifarious meanings that America has engendered in the hearts of her inhabitants over the last few centuries seem to have been melded into one, monumental belief. "United We Stand" is a rousing slogan, but conceals just this danger -- the need to "unite" being interpreted as the need to agree.

A few months ago the American Council of Trustees and Alumni -- headed by the vice-president's wife, Lynn Cheney -- issued a report entitled "Defending Civilization: How our Universities are Failing America." The report lists over 100 comments made on U.S. campuses since Sept. 11 that they judge to be "insufficiently patriotic." The majority of these statements are by no means pro-terrorism. Many involve simple questioning of American strategy decisions.

This attack on our universities' freedom of speech met with remarkably little resistance. Perhaps because criticism of America has become newly polemic -- even dangerous -- within our society. People choosing to question the dominant line of thought are often flayed with accusations of anti-Americanism.

Looking back in history, it's easy to find times when blind patriotism was an implicitly compulsory act -- to be publicly trumpeted in order to avoid accusations of treachery. The conviction behind such movements -- that political divergence must be suppressed for the "good of the nation" -- is fundamentally flawed.

Dissent, criticism and difference do not always weaken. They are an essential part of staying strong. When personal freedom and patriotism become mutually exclusive, America's most important quality -- the liberty it offers its citizens -- will be lost.

So let God (or some other entity) bless equality. Let it bless diversity. Let it bless freedom and tolerance. These are the tenets upon which America should be built anyway, and are values the whole world can emulate.

That way, no one needs to be left out in the cold. And rather than parroting support for the monolithic "nation" -- shorn of all individualism -- we can fight for the rights that America (and the rest of the world) should truly come to represent. Hilary Moore is a third-year Ethnomusicology graduate student from Perth, Scotland.

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