Interview with Dr. Walter Berns

Dr. Walter Berns is a Resident Scholar at The American Enterprise Institute.

Helen: We’re writing this book for the average American citizen who feels that they don’t have time for politics in their lives. They’re usually happy people who just want a nice life. Many we’ve spoken to say they don’t think there is much difference between Republicans and Democrats, or liberal and conservative ideas. Many just want to get along with the rest of the world and, because they don’t know the basic principles of America, think the easy way out is the best way. We want to inform through conversations such as ours today. So please tell us about your personal awakening to the Great Experiment.

Mr. Berns: The Great Experiment being America? I had no great awakening. I’ve been an American all my life… stars and stripes American all my life. My Father served in WW I and there was no question but that I would serve in WW II. So there was no awakening in my life; and I don’t think my life was special in that respect.

When I was young I was a tennis player, a serious tennis player, and as I recall when we talked, more and more the talk turned to America going into the war. We debated it and some talk was about not being seduced by British propaganda and the stories of Belgian babies having their hands cut off, but there were no unpatriotic Americans among my associates.

Peter: When you said you were debating with your friends at the tennis club, how would you characterize that debate compared to the debate we were having in this country before we went into Iraq?

Mr. Berns: We were then concerned about the British propaganda of Nazi brutality. There were of course cases of Nazi brutality, but with respect to Belgian babies’ hands being cut off, that was not true. Anyway, what we were really arguing was whether we should go into that war to pull Britain’s chestnuts out of the fire again. At a certain point in my own experience, after France had fallen and the prospect arose of England being invaded, I realized that was a horrible possibility. I realized the heritage, the connection we had with Britain. We read our textbooks in English, I had learned to memorize Shakespeare, Elliot.

Peter: So there was a cultural motivation to get into the war?

Mr. Berns: There was never any question of who’s side we would go with, but whether or not to make the commitment to go.

Peter: You mentioned you grew up as an American. It was a revelation at some point. You never thought about being a patriot; you sort of found yourself a patriot. Was there anything that revealed to you that not everyone was as patriotic as you were?

Mr. Berns: As a matter of fact, I can’t remember any associate of mine who was different in that respect, and I don’t think I lived in a special part of America. Nowadays, however, the universities are distinct in that respect. That wasn’t so in the 1930′s.

Helen: So, when you grew up, it was perfectly normal to be patriotic. Now, the elite seem to want to make it abnormal. They portray it as “not intelligent”. What sort of misconceptions about America do you think lead to that idea?

Mr. Berns: I can answer that through speculation about university people. To be patriotic is to be bourgeois, and they are anti-bourgeois. They regard themselves as people of science and they have contempt for bourgeois business people. People who work in universities are endowed by wealthy people, but they have contempt for them. They hate the people who feed them. There is nothing uniquely American about this. George Orwell spoke about the same thing in terms of British intellectuals. It seems that intellectuals think they are above the fray.

I remember something that happened in Cornell in my days of teaching . It was the 4th of July celebration in the stadium with fireworks; the townspeople and the college faculty got together for this event. At a cocktail party later one professor’s wife was asked in my presence whether she enjoyed the celebration. “Yes,” she said, “but I could have done without all the flag waving.” I thought of that old song that was around when I grew up, “if you don’t like my peaches, why do you shake my tree?” In other words, what did she expect at a 4th of July celebration! But that was typical of universities when I taught there.

Helen: Let’s talk about your book, “Making Patriots.” What do you think the alternative to waving the flag at our Independence Day celebrations would be for that person? In your book you speak about various cultures having different allegiances. For example, it was very simple for the Spartans of old.

Mr. Berns: I’ll use the example of Yale where I taught for a while. In the yard is a statue of Nathan Hale and inscribed on it is the motto, “For God, for Country and For Yale.” Two of those things the Spartans didn’t have: God and Yale. Each city-state had it’s own God and there was no difference between religious allegiance and country allegiance. We make that distinction as a matter of principle in America. So it is possible to be a conflict between the two and we’ve always known that and we’ve always known that. During the first Congress there was a discussion whether there should be an exemption from military service for the pacifist sects, such as the Quakers, the Mennonites and the Schwenkfelders.

Now, there wasn’t a problem with allegiance in Sparta, but there was in Athens. The Athenians had an intellectual life and, as you know, Socrates was executed for allegedly corrupting the youth. There is always a possibility that what you learn in Sunday school, what you’re taught at home and what you learn in university will conflict. We’ve always had those tensions in this country.

Helen: Do you think those tensions make us greater?

Mr. Berns: What they do is they affect our patriotism. They prevent it from being a blind patriotism, along the lines of, “this country right or wrong” sort of thinking. There is something to be said for intelligent patriotism. To illustrate that point I quote Lincoln in his eulogy on Henry Clay: Lincoln said Clay was a patriot who “loved his country partly because it was his own country, but mostly because it was a free country; and he burned with a zeal for its advancement, prosperity and glory, of human liberty, human right and human nature.” To answer your question, an American patriot is a better patriot than a Spartan who loves his country simply because it’s his country and doesn’t know anything else.

Peter: The implication is that the American patriot has made a conscious decision and the Spartan was just indoctrinated.

Mr. Berns: Yes, you’ll find that I go into that in great depth in the first chapter of the book.

Peter: One of the ideas that might be around in academic circles is that patriotism is a lower level, gut-feeling thing, that it comes from the lower passions, the unthinking emotions and that it’s too nationalistic. I’m interested in the origins of this leftward trend and I believe it has something to do with the rationalistic or analytical attitude, what might be called the “scientific method.” You mentioned that the intellectual elites feel superior to and removed from the masses and can look at things objectively. So things like patriotism or faith in God are judged by them to be subjective, not objective.

Mr. Berns: Let’s be more precise about this. When I make my statements about university faculties I’m referring essentially to the fields of the arts and sciences, not the engineers. At Cornell, a distinguished engineering school, we in arts and sciences had little to do with the faculty of engineering, yet I can say the faculty of engineering were more likely to be bourgeois. They were not likely to be what I’m talking about when I condemn the rest of the facilities as having a contempt for the bourgeoisie.

Peter: In my university we use to call them the “plumbers.”

Mr. Berns: The distinction, I think, is we intellectuals thought we were above the rest. Also science as I use the term is not quite accurate because engineering is science. Also, the professors of English, then, were more likely to be patriots. Now, they seem to be more deconstructionists and I won’t go into what that is because I’ve written about it extensively. However, those principles are incompatible with a simple attachment to the principles of the United States because, according to deconstructionism, nothing has meaning.

For a while at Cornell we had the leading deconstructionist, a man named Paul de Man. We were there at the same time. What was later revealed about him was very interesting. He was a Belgian and during WW II he was a Nazi. I don’t use that term carelessly. These facts weren’t revealed until the 1980′s. Had they been known earlier, he never would have been able to get a job here. Yet, he had no difficulties being accepted as a distinguished professor. He had a career at Cornell, Johns Hopkins and Yale. Had he been a communist, that would have been all right, but he wanted to cover up his ties to Nazism because that would have been beyond the pale. These things came out after he died yet there was no question about it; he was a real Nazi.

Peter: No just an apologist or propagandist?

Mr. Berns: No, he was a real Nazi… and that tied in with his deconstructionism.

Peter: Do you think there is a useful distinction to be made between nationalism and patriotism?

Mr. Berns: Sure, a nationalist is someone who falls into the category of “my country right or wrong.” I have a couple of pages about that in the book. It really was an outgrowth of the French attempt to spread the principles of the French revolution. The agent of this attempt was, of course, Napoleon and this led the German philosopher Fichte to say, “I speak for Germans simply, of Germans simply.”

Peter: In the French national anthem they speak of “les enfants de la patrie”, i.e., “the children of the country.”

Mr. Berns: That was a French revolutionary song, originally, and the French revolution was not a nationalist enterprise at all. On the contrary.

Peter: I think of nationalism as the “place of birth”.

Mr. Berns: There are terms within our vocabulary that are not in other languages. We have “Americanism,” yet you won’t find such things as “Swiss-ism,” for example. That phenomenon was known to G. K. Chesterton in the 19th century and he spoke about it.

I guess the question is “what does it mean to be an American?”. The answer is not simply being born in this country and being a citizen. What does it mean to be a good American? Well, you pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of American and to the Republic for which it stands. So, what does the Republic stand for? It stands for certain ideas and that takes us back to the Declaration of Independence. The principles of the Declaration of Independence are not peculiarly American. They were not intended to be. They didn’t say they were. They were universal principles.

Peter: “We hold these truths to be self evident… “

Mr. Berns: So that’s the line you have to take when you ask what it means to be an American. It doesn’t simply mean you were born or naturalized here. It’s someone like Henry Clay. Think about Lincoln’s eulogy. He also talks about ‘human’ liberty, ‘human’ nature. It’s not American, it’s human. In one of his last letters Jefferson said that in the course of time every country would recognize principal truths about human nature and become like this country. What makes us one people is not where we were born, but attachments to these principles.

Peter: There is some current thinking that we should reject nationalism because we really need to be thinking globally. Our allegiance should be to the world, not just to a nation. There seems to be a contrast between “thinking globally” and adhering to universal, self-evident truths.

Mr. Berns: Yes, Martha Nussbaum, for example. Her argument was that patriotism led to a narrow nationalism, and that we should be devoted to the “cosmopolitan principle of justice” and so forth and so on. Unfortunately, there is no concrete manifestation of ‘cosmopolitanism’ anywhere! If you are really devoted to these principles you really ought to be devoted to the United States, because the United States is the one country where we actually try to live these principles.

Peter: Exactly!

Mr. Berns: Remember in Tienanmen Square in China several years ago the students made a statue of the American Statue of Liberty. Apparently they had a discussion whether the face on the statue should be Chinese or not and they decided it really didn’t make any difference, which is quite proper. The United States is the beacon to the world.

Peter: So we get back to nationalism and do you think Americanism can be contrasted with nationalism?

Mr. Berns: Sure. Our principles are not parochially American.

Peter: So, if he sees his country drifting away from these principles, a patriot will work to guide her back to them. Would that be a valid statement?

Mr. Berns: Yes, a loyal citizen would see to it the best he can that the country doesn’t drift away from those principles. For instance, if this country had joined the German Reich against the English in 1940-41, that would have been a desertion of our principles. An American patriot would have resisted that mightily. An obvious contest of this sort was, of course, the Civil War. People were torn. The best example was General Lee who said he could not go against his country, which he considered to be Virginia. He said that when he Lincoln offered him command of the Union Army. He was tormented by his loyalties. There were other famous Southerners, George Thomas, for example who went with the Union even though they were born in the south. It was an agonizing time for many of them. One should understand that. Even Tocqueville makes this observation and claim that most Americans were loyal to their states at that time. The Union was still an abstraction. The Civil War changed that. Lincoln changed that.

And now I’ll go back to that original question of the Great Awakening in my case, I can remember going down Michigan Avenue on Memorial Day and watching the troops and there were still Union soldiers in the parade feebly carrying the standard. That was 1926. Illinois was a big Union State. I quote the words of the official state song, ” When the Southern host came through / pitting the Grey against the Blue / there were none more brave than you / Illinois”. We used to sing that in the schools.

Peter: There have been changes in the schools in the interim, not just in the universities! It seems currently we have a shift from patriotism to individualism. People seem to think of the State as an appliance that helps them carry on with their own desires and pursuits of happiness.

Mr. Berns: Tocqueville coined the term ‘individualism,’ meaning, thinking only of oneself and perhaps one’s own family. He didn’t intend it as a term of praise at all. Now we use it as meaning non-conforming. For Tocqueville individualism was a problem. He thought it might possibly lead to a kind of despotism which he describes in one of the last chapters of the second volume. People who would allow the State to do everything for them and become incapable of governing themselves. This is in contrast to despotism based on fear… of the “do this or we’ll kill you” sort. His notion of despotism in modern democracies is different. In modern democracies the State becomes sort of a tutor, keeping the people in a state of tutelage. Some Republicans complain about the amount of care the government is providing the people now.

Helen: I’d like to get back to a quote of yours, In 1776, Tom Paine spoke of “the summer soldier and sunshine patriot who will shrink from the service of their country.” A few years later, and to the same effect, Alexander Hamilton said, “The industrious habits of the people of the present day, absorbed in the pursuits of gain and devoted to the improvements of agriculture and commerce, are incompatible with the condition of a nation of soldiers.” Payne and Hamilton were apprehensive about allowing people freedom. Nothing is said about our duties. How do we cultivate those duties?

Mr. Berns: Most Americans are proud Americans. That was manifest in dramatic fashion in the aftermath of 9/11. The willingness to help was tremendous. My secretary here, only about 27 years old, went to New York. She was unclear as to what she could do, but wanted to help. She ended up wrapping sandwiches for the firemen and policemen. What happened on 9/11 was a common pain, in part because the approximately 3,000 people killed where men, woman, blacks, whites, Chinese, Americans, what have you. The pain suffered by the victims and their families were suffered by all Americans. That’s a good sign. The flag appeared all over the place.

Helen: A few days after 9/11 a message come over the internet to go out at night and shine a flashlight up to the sky. A satellite was supposed to record it to show the terrorists that the lights would never go out. We did it, found out later it was a hoax, but still felt good doing it. Sometimes it seems we need something to do; anything from wrapping sandwiches to a show of defiance.

Mr. Berns: And with the military being volunteer we’re separated from the people who defend us. Such a situation didn’t exist in 1941.

Helen: We seem to be concentrating on changing the parts of government we don’t like and forgetting that we have duties. We act as though government should be taking care of those for us.

Mr. Berns: It doesn’t make sense to talk about a public sentiment of duties. They are two different things; to have a sentiment of duty and to have a duty to perform. Here’s an illustration of this difficulty: The church I go to, an Episcopal church in town, they have what is called a forum between the two morning services. These are not necessarily religious forums. In fact, twice I was asked to speak, once on Lincoln, and on one occasion a headmaster of a private school was speaking about self esteem. As we listened I realized no one except myself objected to the term “self-esteem.” I listened to him and remembered the words of the prayer which go something like this, “we have not done what we ought to have done, we have done what we ought not to have done, there is no health in us.” Yet, this fellow was talking about self-esteem and whereas, if you’re a good Episcopalian, you don’t think of the self.

Peter: That’s the sin of pride isn’t it?

Mr. Berns: Where did this idea of self-esteem get into the curriculum, that people should think well of themselves? Where is the idea that we should ask God to forgive us for not doing what we’re supposed to do?

Helen: Since the 1960′s a lot of churches, especially the new ones, have turned from demanding that the individual work to better himself, toward an activism intended to “change the world” so that the individual can feel better about himself.

Peter: I have a cynical notion about why self-esteem is playing such a central role. Basically, it feels good. Back in the 60′s we were instructed by Jerry Rubin to “do it if it feels good”. Feeling good, the feeling of success, the feeling of achievement, those all do feel good, and obviously if we can create that good feeling without the hard work of actually being successful or doing good it will appeal to alot of people. Education and work are difficult and if we can get kids to feel good about themselves and feel accomplished then we will have served our purpose.

I don’t believe anyone would overtly say that’s the purpose, but I believe it has to do with many ideas (misconstrued, I believe) of toleration, sharing and equality. It reaches the absurd level of kids being prevented from keeping score at ball games.

Helen: Again, we shift from my ‘duty’ to my ‘rights’. How many rights does an individual have? There are many people who are believing this and they are not bad people; they just haven’t thought it through.

Mr. Berns: In part, the government doesn’t expect them to do anything. What duty do we have? To obey the law, to pay taxes. Are we asked to defend our country?

Peter: I will be. As a naturalized citizen I was asked to sign a paper saying I will bear arms for my country if asked to.

Helen: Yes, as part of a great national emergency, but then every citizen would be asked to do something, militarily or civically. It’s assumed so, but I bet alot of people would question that. It reminds me of the snowfall we had last year. The snowplows were late getting to our street. We shoveled out our car and an old couple’s car, but we saw many of our neighbors standing around complaining, basically not knowing what to do because it wasn’t being done for them. It never occurred to them to do it themselves. If the government doesn’t do it, it doesn’t get done.

Again, they’re not necessarily bad people, they just haven’t thought about it; it’s not part of their world anymore. And our government keeps saying, “We’ll do more and more for you. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it for you.” So, we’re trying to bring back that love of county where we can learn to be the best we can be through our love of country. Just as marriage is a sacrifice to another, we sometimes have to sacrifice or have duties to our country; more than duties to just ourselves.

Mr. Berns: War has the capacity to remind us what it means to be a good American. 9/11 reminded us of that and brought forth sentiments and a willingness to do for the country. The government doesn’t force us to do anything. The government has set up a volunteer program, it’s there, but it’s voluntary. People have found that they feel good about themselves when they actually volunteer and do things.

Helen: Back to self esteem, feeling that you’re good is not the same as doing good, and people really do know the difference in their hearts.

Mr. Berns: The thing that disturbs me are articles in the New York Times, or the press in general, talking about body bags, emphasizing the deaths that occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan. They didn’t do that in WW II. In fact, it wouldn’t have been possible to bring back all the bodies in body bags. If you’ve seen the Memorial on the Mall you know there were over 400,000 deaths. Yet, that didn’t stop us from doing what we had to do. Yet the press wants us to believe that, because of a few hundred deaths, we should stop, that the American people can’t stand it. I don’t believe it.

Helen: What we’re talking about is that when you love someone or something you voluntarily sacrifice for them or it.

Mr. Berns: You’re willing to, yes.

Helen: We’d like to work that idea into patriotism. It’s not just a duty, but rather a duty that grows out of the love. It’s not an obligation.

Mr. Berns: Well, what’s a good Christian? A good Christian loves his neighbor as himself. I’m thinking of the Good Samaritan and thinking that we don’t have need of him so much anymore since the government and insurance does it for us.

Helen: So, would less government cultivate more patriotism?

Mr. Berns: Not necessarily, but it might promote the idea of taking care of your neighbor because you realize your neighbor is your neighbor in need. If there is no department of the government to do it, you do it.

Helen: We were speaking to someone at a party who told us that if the government doesn’t take care of our “neighbor” no one will do it. He forgot that neighbors used to help each other, that churches and charities help people. Before the depression, that’s the way it was done. Philanthropy was rampant. Do you think that was patriotic?

Mr. Berns: I’m not sure about that, maybe it was “being a good citizen.” One last word: don’t despair, because when the chips are down and when they start bombing us again, which they will try to do, Americans will again remember to take care of each other.

Peter and Helen: Thank you very much.

Dr. Berns is a Resident Scholar at The American Enterprise Institute and authors of the following books:

- Making Patriots

- After the People Vote

- Taking the Constitution Seriously

- For Capital Punishment

- The First Amendment and the Future of American Democracy

- In Defense of Liberal Democracy

- Freedom, Virtue, and the First Amendment

Professional Experience of Dr. Berns

- Professor Emeritus, 1994-present, John M. Olin University Professor, 1986-1994, Professorial Lecturer, 1979-1986, Georgetown University

- Faculty, University of Chicago, 1984, 1989; University of Toronto, 1969-1979; Colgate University, 1970; Professor of Government, 1959-1969, Chairman, Department of Government, 1963-1967, Cornell University; Yale University, 1956-1959; Louisiana State University, 1953-1956

- Member, Judicial Fellows Commission, 1986-1988

- Member, National Council on the Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1982-1988

- Consultant, Task Force on Judicial Selection, Twentieth Century Fund, 1988

- Member, Board of Directors, Institute for Educational Affairs, 1980-1988

- Member, Joint Committee Project ’87, Joint undertaking of the American Historical Association and American Political Science Association to commemorate the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, 1987

- Consultant, United States Department of State, 1983-1987

- Lecturer, Phi Beta Kappa Society Lecture Series, 1985-1986

- Member, Council of Scholars, Library of Congress, 1981-1985

- Alternate U.S. Representative, United Nations Commission on Human Rights, 1983

- Guggenheim Fellow, 1978-1979

- Advisory Board Member, National Institute of Law Enforcement, 1974-1976

- Fulbright Fellow; Rockefeller Fellow 1965-1966

- Lecturer, Salzburg Seminar in American Studies, 1959

- Carnegie Teaching Fellow, 1952-1953

- U.S. Navy, 1941-1945