Kamala Harris’s Liberal Patriotism

By Andres Velasco and Daniel Brieba 16-09-2024

The US presidential candidate’s appeal to love of country is the right thing at the right time. Disregard the surfeit of flags and overwrought rhetoric: a healthy dose of patriotism is required to win an election, in the US or anywhere else, and it is – and should be – an essential component of liberal and progressive politics.

There was not one American flag behind Kamala Harris as she accepted the nomination at the Democratic National Convention. There were six, draped from golden masts topped with bald eagles. As she finished speaking, red, white, and blue balloons and cutout stars fell from the ceiling. The aesthetic was more Trump Tower kitsch than San Francisco hip.

The language was just as old-fashioned: Being an American is “the greatest privilege on Earth,” because “in this country, anything is possible [and] nothing is out of reach.” Everywhere she goes, claimed the newly-anointed candidate, she meets people who are ready for “the next step in the incredible journey that is America.”

“With Kamala Harris, It’s Cool For Liberals To Be Patriotic Again,” trumpeted one headline in HuffPost. That sums it up pretty well.

Of course, Harris’s patriotism is not entirely new for a Democrat. President Barack Obama loved to tell the story of the child with a funny name (his own), the son of a Kenyan student and a Midwestern mother, who, after growing up in Indonesia and Hawaii, went on to become president. “Only in America,” he would conclude – which is the title of a country music song  beloved by Republicans.

What is new is to peddle patriotism before a changed party, some of whose most visible leaders, like US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, probably do not believe that the United States stands for unalloyed good in the world. Indeed, the biggest fear at the convention was of protests over US support for Israel during the Gaza war. It is also new for a Democrat to sell so muscular a brand of patriotism: “As commander in chief,” Harris declaimed, “I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”

But new or old, Harris’s patriotism is the right thing at the right time. Disregard the surfeit of flags and overwrought rhetoric: a healthy dose of patriotism is required to win an election, in the US or anywhere else. It is – and should be – an essential component of liberal and progressive politics.

Patriotism is, first of all, clever tactics, because Harris will not be president of the US unless she can win over those tens of thousands of white, working-class men, in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, who four years ago voted for Joe Biden, but in the past have voted Republican and this time around could be tempted to support Donald Trump. For those voters, Berkeley-style pacifism and organic oat breakfasts would be a turnoff; red, white, and blue balloons and golden eagles are not.

Patriotic rhetoric is also smart because a truism of electoral campaigns is that whoever seizes the mantle of hope and the future wins. Trump’s approach has been one of doom and gloom, depicting America as a nation in decline, overrun by immigrants and disrespected abroad. Harris and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, by contrast, stress opportunity in America. When their first child was born after a long series of fertility treatments, Walz told the convention, his voice breaking, he and his wife called her Hope.

The Oxford political philosopher David Miller has pointed out that “liberal nationalism” can sound a bit like “friendly Rottweiler”: incongruous at best, oxymoronic at worst. But there is no contradiction. On the contrary: Miller and others have articulated a strong philosophical case for a liberal version of patriotism.

Liberalism starts from the idea that all people, no matter who they are or where they live, have equal moral worth. But from the claim that every person deserves dignity and respect it does not follow that what we owe all others is exactly the same, regardless of the passport they carry.

Nation-states are the product of the sustained engagement of people who work together for a better life – “a fair system of cooperation,” as the philosopher John Rawls called il. So, nationality has ethical significance, and it engenders duties of reciprocity to our fellow nationals that are different from, and more extensive than, the duties we owe human beings generally.

We owe it to all humans not to mistreat them, but we owe it only to co-nationals to contribute through our taxes to, say, their health care, just as they owe it to us. That is why there is nothing illiberal about patriotism.

But not all kinds of patriotism are created equal. “My nation, right or wrong” nationalism is not liberal. Nor are the “blood and soil” chants of the nationalists and white supremacists Trump once described  as “very fine people.” For patriotism to be liberal, it must pass three tests.

First, it must imply love for one’s own country, not hatred of others. As George Orwell put it, “by ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people.” Social psychologists have also made this point: just as love of my friends does not imply that I must hate or harm non-friends, love of my group does not require or imply a dislike of other groups.

Harris is in tune with both Orwell and modern psychology. In her speech she used the word love eight times, including twice to signal love of country (once more than she told her husband she loves him).

Second, membership in the nation must be determined by citizenship – an institutional criterion – rather than by the color of one’s skin, the religion one professes, or the number of generations one’s ancestors have been tilling the local land. Harris is the living embodiment of this principle: the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother is just as American as the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant descendants of those who arrived on the Mayflower.

Lastly, in a nation-state that practices liberal patriotism, national identities involve shared values – standing for “freedom, opportunity, compassion, dignity, fairness, and endless possibilities,” as Harris described as what it means to be an American. But that is only one layer of who a person is. Beyond that, individual identities take over. Americans can be pious or Godless, gay or straight, carnivorous or vegetarian, devoted to any sport, art, or cultural practice they choose. The candidate is crystal clear about this. The word freedom popped up in her speech even more often than love – 11 times – including one mention of the “freedom to love who you love openly and with pride.”

Will it be enough to secure victory in November? Another liberal virtue – measured skepticism – suggests we cannot be sure. Regardless, liberals around the world should take note. To counter populists’ toxic nationalism, they will need to deploy a strand of patriotism that passes liberalism’s three tests.