"At face value, baseball’s an individualist sport because it’s all about the man at the bat. He swings, he runs, he’s in command of his destiny. But he’s also playing for the team, and sometimes sacrifices have to be made. If someone’s already at third base, the goal of the batter is to hit the ball far enough to allow his teammate to get to fourth – accepting that he’ll probably get taken out himself as he sprints to first. It’s a reminder that a necessary ingredient for the flourishing of the individual is the health and the wealth of the people around him. For you to succeed, others must succeed, too – and as with baseball teams, so with nations. We’re all in this together.
Another, more stark, reminder of that truth is the role that military pageantry plays at a baseball game. At the start of the contest, the CIA honour guard trooped the colours and we were all invited to stand and applaud the folks serving in the US military. But nothing prepared me for the moving rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner, as sung by a female soldier in combat fatigues. The stadium stood proudly – hats clasped to chests – as she powerfully, beautifully sang the national anthem. “Does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave/ O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?” It sure does.
I have a rule on these occasions to stand but not sing or put my hand to my chest. I am an Englishman and my loyalty is to Her Majesty (“My country right or wrong, my mother drunk or sober”). So, I can’t in good faith join in. But I’m always inspired by the earnest love that ordinary Americans show for their country. I envy it. Nationalism in the UK is a dirty word (largely because it’s been sullied by racists), so instead we have a soft patriotism that prefers to keep itself to itself. For us, love of country is probably best expressed by a Sunday afternoon walk across the Surrey Downs. It’s a half remembered school hymn about vowing something to someone-or-other, or a fevered argument about the best way to make a cup of tea. English patriotism is about as fulfilling as a Greggs pasty.
In contrast, American patriotism is sharper and more certain – and more fixedly about ideas. Its promise is individual freedom. But that freedom is guaranteed – just like victory in a baseball game – by thinking and acting as a team or a nation. One of the reasons why civil society works in the US slightly better than it does in Britain is that they understand the balance of rights and responsibilities between the individual and the group. Without the security of a welfare state, Americans are acculturated to risk and sacrifice, and so (ironically) they can be a little more charitable than us.
- They are certainly more free."
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Ed. note: I saw Frances Fox Piven interviewed the other day on a local access cable show in Manhattan. She thinks the US should be converted to a complete welfare state. She said welfare states are considered 'good things' everywhere but the US, that we're the "only one" that doesn't think they're a good idea. (Piven is a longtime anarchist.) She didn't mention all the reasons why we aren't carbon copies of places like Belgium, such as two of our borders are big oceans, and that we have no need to fund a bunch of lazy, jet setting parasites who lecture us while working a 3 day week and taking 6 week vacations. The left likes to use "the US is the only one" line. The idea is everyone should be the same--except them, the elites. There will be no reason to strive for anything because the state decides everything.
via Baseball Think Factory
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