TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Archives
• Young Voices
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis

FEATURES

• Election 2008
• Road to Wealth
• Examining Hip-Hop

RELATED LINKS

• About The True Patriot
• Seattle Voices
• Mr. Liu's bio

E-mail a friend

Author explains why patriotism has surfaced as an issue in the presidential campaigns of Sens. Obama and McCain. (3:42)
 

Full Interview. (11:04)
 

Tavis: Eric Liu is a former domestic policy adviser and speech writer for President Bill Clinton who now teaches at the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs. He is also co-author of a new book about patriotism called "The True Patriot." Eric, nice to have you back on this program.

Eric Liu: Great to be back, Tavis.

Tavis: Good to see you. Let me just start with this question I've been dying to ask you, which is why you think that the issue of patriotism, which always comes up in any presidential campaign, but why it's come up in the unique way it's come up in this race between Obama and McCain? I'm not being naïve on this, but what's your take on this?

Liu: Well, I think there's a couple of things. One just has to do with the two candidates themselves. You have this historic figure, possibly the first African American president of the United States whose story is deeply as American as you can get. You have John McCain who is a war hero and somebody who served and sacrificed in wartime, has patriotism and service woven throughout and his family's history.

So just on a biographical level, it's big. But I think the other thing that's going on is that, you know, we're at this swing of a pendulum now. Over the past not just three, four or five years, but the past forty years, the way the people in American politics have been talking about patriotism has been shifting.

I think what's been going on is that patriotism has been used for too many years as this club that you use to bash the other side with and you use it to silence dissent and you use it basically to say, "You're either with us or you're against us." Now, you know, a few years past 9/11, a few years into this war in Iraq, people are recognizing that patriotism actually calls on us to do and be a whole lot of other things than simply blind loyalty or using it as a political cudgel.

Tavis: There are a lot of Black folk who I have talked to who are offended - and that word's not too strong - offended at the very notion that somebody Black running for president even has to defend himself on the notion of patriotism. Obama? You've been asking him to do it. You've been talking about the fact that he should do it. I've said for many, many months that he was gonna have to do it whether he wanted to or not. What does it mean?

I mean, John McCain's hero status notwithstanding, you know, his being a Vietnam vet, but what does it mean that a person of color, in this case a Black man, running for president had no choice really but to give that speech on patriotism, but to put that flag pin on his lapel? What do you make of that?

Liu: You know, I agree. It is outrageous on some level, you know. Because when you stop and think about it, there is not a story that is more deeply, profoundly American than the African American story. I mean, really, in every sense of not only the origins of the country, but this gap that we're always trying to creep closer toward closing between our stated ideals and our actual practice.

That is the narrative of the African American experience generally, and Barack Obama's story in particular is one that, you know, we ought to be celebrating for the ways in which it represents a closing of that gap, a measure of that progress. So I agree that, on some level, it's outrageous. On the other hand, look, this is the world we live in right now. You know, I think there are a lot of folks who, you know, they may not describe it in terms of color and terms of race.

They'll want to talk about Barack Obama's middle name. They'll want to talk about the fact that he grew up in Indonesia. They'll want to talk about these things that make him seem not quite fully American, you know. Americans of every background, but particularly Americans of color, I think we owe it to ourselves right now to really hear those kinds of code words and recognize that, when people say that somebody's not quite American, you got to call them on that and say, "What do you mean?" What would it actually mean to be American enough?

You know, it's not just a matter of bloodlines. It's not just a matter of how foreign-sounding your name is, but it's about deeds and it's about the moral framework you come to particularly in public life about what do you want to do for this country? And that's the basis on which his patriotism should be measured, not on whether he's wearing a lapel pin or he's got a middle name that sounds like a Muslim name.

Tavis: You're just now starting to answer this question now. Obama took his stab at it the other day when he gave his patriotism speech. John McCain has taken his stab at it for all the years he's been a war hero. What ought to be for everyday people our operational, our working definition, of patriotism?

Liu: That's a great question, Tavis. You know, I think patriotism is not just about this blind jingoistic chest-thumping. Patriotism properly understood means country before self. And if you take that simple idea of country before self and you just start to unpack it, you get a set of values like stewardship, shared sacrifice, mutual obligation, contribution before consumption, service to others, a set of values and moral principles that belong to neither party, frankly, but are long out of the political discourse. We need to have political leaders and citizens alike talk about patriotism in terms of that kind of moral framework.

You can look at not just the speeches that a politician gives, but the choices that a politician makes, and say, "Is that choice good for the long-term interests of the country?" Here's the measure of it. "Is that choice good for my children's children?" If the answer is no, it's really much more about being good for me right now or for those of us who are around right now to enjoy the benefits of it. Then chances are, you're probably not going down a patriotic path, you know.

I think the idea that people have around patriotism is that it's just simply expressing love of country. It's not just expressing love of country. It's showing it by your acts, right? People want to say, "Well, patriotism is having pride in your country." It's not just having pride. It's earning the pride. How do you earn it by your deeds and by the moral framework that yields those deeds?

Tavis: There are two thoughts that come to mind as you give that last answer. The first thought, by that definition, given how Congress keeps mortgaging away the future of our children, we got a whole bunch of unpatriotic folk in Congress, if I take your definition literally (laughter).

Liu: You take it literally and correctly (laughter).

Tavis: Because they keep mortgaging away this future. That is not in the best interest of country. It's in the best interest of right now.

Liu: Yeah.

Tavis: But I digress on that point. On a serious note, though - not that that wasn't serious - but on a more serious note, what also came to mind was where you draw the line between patriotism and nationalism? Because I'm afraid that what's gonna happen to Mr. Obama in this campaign is what he's gonna get hit with is not just a notion of patriotism.

He took his best shot the other day at trying to define what patriotism means to him, but what he's gonna get hit with - pardon my English - ain't really gonna be patriotism, but it's gonna be nationalism.

Liu: Um-hum. You know, I think it is really important to distinguish between patriotism and nationalism. Nationalism that's about ethnicity, that's about blood, you know, has no proper place, frankly, in our political discourse. But a patriotism that is about ideals and about living up to a set of ideals begins with this idea.

You know, my co-author, Nick Hanauer, and I, when we wrote "The True Patriot," we have a piece in the book called "The Ten-Principle Plan" on the idea that you were talking about members of Congress. Members of Congress, politicians left and right, have their ten-point plans, their ten issue position plans.

But if you ask them, "What are your ten top principles, your actual core operating beliefs?" Ba, ba, ba, ba; they stumble and stutter, right? I mean, that's just not a question they're used to getting asked or used to answering. We list as number one in that set of principles American exceptionalism.

Tavis: Um-hum.

Liu: That makes some of our friends on the left feel a little bit uncomfortable. That sounds like kind of neocon Bush, you know, straddling around, strutting around and -

Tavis: - sounds a bit like nationalism (laughter).

Liu: Yeah, it sounds a bit like nationalism. We are very clear about what we mean by that. What makes American exceptional is not that we're number one, not that we can throw our weight around, not that we have all this might and all this money. What makes us number one is that we are the only nation on earth dedicated to a proposition.

We're the only nation on earth that has these stated ideals and have we fallen and failed to live up to those ideals time and time again? You bet. Have we in every generation crept closer to living up to them? You bet. That fact alone is exceptional in the world. It's why you and I are sitting here having this conversation. This is not a conversation that would happen easily in India, in Germany, in France, in Italy.

Tavis: And in this country a few years ago.

Liu: Maybe, maybe, but it's happening right now, you know, and I think that is an exceptional thing that progressives as well as conservatives have to recognize. Again, this is an inheritance like the inheritance of debt, like the inheritance of natural resources, and the question isn't, "Wow, I have a great inheritance. This is awesome, all that I have around me right now."

The only question that measures your worth as a patriot, as a citizen, is what are you gonna do to keep it up? How are you gonna leave this joint in better shape than you found it in? That is a question that I think has to be put not only to our presidential candidates, but to one another as citizens.

Tavis: To your point now, putting these questions to citizens, how do we as citizens get back to an acceptable notion of what it means to be a patriot when we live in a post 9/11 world where for all sorts of reasons people are not just becoming more nationalist, more fanatical, but indeed turning inward? They're becoming more nativist, not just nationalist, but nativist. How do you foster this notion of patriotism in a society that's become nativist?

Liu: You know, I know you and your work on this show and elsewhere talk and think a lot about faith and you've had conversations with Rick Warren, you know, the author of "The Purpose Driven Life." What's the first sentence of "The Purpose Driven Life?" "It's not about you," right?

Tavis: Um-hum.

Liu: We have in "The True Patriot" this idea that we need a politics of purpose now. That's not about religion, about Christianity. It's just saying people in public life and civic life want to feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves. They want to feel like they're part of a story that's greater than themselves and that story has to have a purpose. That kind of purpose that moves people and leads people to sacrifice for one another, to engage with one another, is never just about you.

So the question that I would want to put to anybody, not just to our presidential candidates, is in your daily life as a neighbor, as a parent, as a citizen, as somebody whose kids go to public school, as somebody who walks past folks in a park every day, what choices are you making, small and large, every single day that are about connecting with somebody else, about leaving the joint in better shape than you found it in?

It doesn't have to be something on a profound scale of what, you know, Senator Obama's proposing this week and 250,000 people in AmeriCorps or what John McCain might propose down the road. It's just about a simple little set of choices that we make in our everyday lives.

If we say to ourselves, "You know what? My choice to turn away from this person who's sitting on the street corner who's clearly hurting or my choice, you know, not to put anything in the collection plate on Sunday or my choice really to pull my kids out of public school rather than work on making those public schools better."

These choices aren't just bad for your little community. They're bad for the country and framing it in those ways and having conversations at a community level is what we've got to do.

Tavis: It's a book that could fit literally in your pocket, but it is a powerful text and one worth reading on July 4 or any other day of the year, for that matter. It's called "The True Patriot" co-authored by Eric Liu. Eric, always good to see you. Thanks for the work here.

Liu: Tavis, it's great to be with you.