George Kateb, Patriotism and Other Mistakes (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2006).
From the book jacket: "In these essays, Kateb often admonishes himself, in Socratic fashion, to keep political argument as far as possible negative: to assert what we are not, and what we will not do, and to build modesty from there some account of what we are and what we ought to do." "Drawing attention to the nonrational character of many motives that drive people to construct and maintain a political order, he urges greater vigilance in political life and cautions against 'mistakes' such as patriotism, which too often result in terrible brutality and injustices. He asks us to consider how commitments to ideals of religion, nation, race, ethnicity, manliness, and courage wind up in the service of immoral ends, and he exhorts us to remember the dignity of the individual.".
From "Notes on Pluralism": "The evil done in the world by nationalism and patriotism, commonly abetted by racism or ethnocentrism, and often by religion as well, is immense." Id. at 21, 23.
From "Undermining the Constitution": "We owe the Constitution attention because if we took it seriously, we would immediately see that it is a social contract or, perhaps in a better phrase, it is an agreement of the people. If any given generation does not abolish the Constitution, acceptance of it means that, by rational imputation to that generation, they have written it. Of course, if we were literally to start over again and devise a new agreement of the people, we would not likely reproduce the exact Constitution, in every detail, we now have. Furthermore, acceptance of it is much of the time tacit. I mean that citizens keep the Constitution in place out of habit, deference, a feeling for lawfulness, and some pride. These attachments are praiseworthy. But I think that the United States Constitution deserves better from its citizens. It deserves to be seen as the charter that people should re-create in approximately the same form, if it were to fall--to suffer defeat or piecemeal erosion or aggravated forgetfulness. What is more, people could perhaps renew their consent to a charter they did not write by saying to themselves that they share it commitments. It should not matter that they perhaps would change it is some ways if they had a free hand and a blank slate. I think that the Constitution merits a perpetual renewal of consent because it stands for something rare and fine." Id. at 41, 42.
From "On Being Watched and Known": "I maintain that one is being harmed when one is being observed by a surveillance camera or when detailed information about oneself is cumulatively and permanently available to state agencies, businesses, and other groups and individuals. The harm is to one's right of privacy. But the emphasis so far cannot be on actual rights violations, grave assaults on the ability of the great majority to make major decisions in their lives r to remain free of manifest molestation; instead, it must be on injuries to those elements of personhood that may not lend themselves to formulation as constitutional rights, but only a moral rights, The trouble is that in the absence of grave injuries, it is not easy to articulate one's feeling that one i being harmed, and it may not be possible to seek legal redress on constitutional grounds." "Let me initially put the issue this way: one is insulted, and insulted deeply, because one loses all possibility of innocence. Nothing I do under surveillance is innocent when I know that I am under surveillance. It is worse to know or not to know that I am? Is is worse to be afflicted by inappropriate self-consciousness or to be duped without being aware of it? Then, too, there is no innocent detail in one's life when the anonymously curious can know it. Instead, one is crudely treated as interesting and even as presumptively or potentially guilty, no matter how law-abiding one is. Or, one is rated simply as an ambiguous or pathological specimen to be observed. The power to observe, by itself, induces in the observer the sense that the observed is ambiguous or pathological. One is placed under constant suspicion just by being played under constant watchfulness and subjected to the implicit interrogation that exists when the accumulated information on oneself is seen as a set of integrated answers that add up to a helpless, an unauthorized, autobiography. Such a loss of innocence just from these two sources is so massive that the insult involved constitutes an assault on the personhood or human status of every individual." Id. at 93, 97.
From "Aestheticism and Morality: Their Cooperation and Hostility": "This essays grows out of a thought I have recurrently had, which is that human conduct often exhibits a stronger preference for many aspirations and attainments than more morality. People have always behaved as if morality had no relevance to them when they did certain things and pursued certain aims. Naturally I do not have in mind the obvious and overwhelming truth that people are deliberately, unthinkingly, or impulsively immoral because of self-interest, selfishness, or viciousness. I mean, rather, that we are all caught up in, and carried away by, enterprises and undertakings that involve us in immorality in an apparently idealistic way. Indeed, one is tempted to say that we are involved in an apparently innocent way. The innocent may show itself in unconsciousness of immorality or in a rationalization that denies immorality or makes it marginal or that expressly asserts that there are considerations of greater importance than morality. But whether there is unconsciousness or rationalization--an both come in several varieties--people and thinkers constantly demonstrate that they prefer, that they love, quite a number of ideal aims more than they love morality. They tacitly demonstrate an, as it were, innocent preference for, or love of, certain things despite the high, sometime infinitely high, moral cost, or they expressly assert the subordination or irrelevance of morality . . ." "My particular concern in this essay is the power of unaware and unrationalized aestheticism to move people to act immorally with an apparent innocence . . . " Id. at 117, 117-118.
