To Love or Hate the United States? Dominic Erdozain on the Problem of American Patriotism

Keen On — Dominic Erdozain: To Love a Country: The Problem of Patriotism in America
Recorded May 2026 (book release ~June 2, 2026) — cleaned transcript

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It is Friday, 05/29/2026. We're crawling towards America's birthday in, on July 4, almost a month, two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. The last couple of days, we've been doing shows about whether or not Americans should be proud of their country. On Wednesday, we talked to Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at, Harvard Law School. She's edited a new collection of essays from Harvard law professors entitled America Unfinished. And most, most of the law professors at Harvard seem a little ambivalent at best about whether should one should be proud of being American, whether one patriotic. And yesterday, we did a show with Joe Cunningham, a South Carolina politician whose new book, life of the party, suggested if the Democrats are gonna get back into power nationally and locally, they have to be a little bit more overt and ambiguous in their appreciation for America and American patriotism. I'm not sure if my guest today would agree. Dominic Erdozain has a new book out. It's out next week. It's called To Love a Country, the Problem of Patriotism in America. Dominic, who's originally from, Northwest, England, just outside Preston, now teaches at Emory University in Atlanta, is actually talking to us from South Carolina. Dominic, congratulations on the new book. The problem, of patriotism in America is the subtitle of the book, To Love a Country. Is the problem of patriotism in America any different from the problem of patriotism in any other country of the world?

00:02:26 Dominic Erdozain: That's a good question for a Brit. I think that a lot of the kind of national pride and the kind of overweening, self regard that we might associate with American exceptionalism was inherited from us. I think that, you know, you look at the English Puritans and the idea of the city on the hill and the chosen nation, which sort of feeds directly into the American national identity. You know, it's it's European. I think that's what part of the conceit of the book is to say that nationalisms do end up looking quite similar in the end. We all think we're the best, and, it's quite derivative. So part of my argument for a new patriotism is to be a little less dependent on those European ideas. But, yes, I think, it's a problem that all nations face, but I agree with those historians who say that America never really had its chastening moment even though it had things like the Vietnam War. There never really was that moment where national identity was really so stopped in its tracks to develop a sense of humility that maybe old Europe or, Britain might have, have developed in the last sort of forty, fifty years, I think.

00:03:34 Andrew Keen: Although one could also argue that the more the more humble the nation, perhaps the prouder they are. One can think of France, for example.

00:03:42 Dominic Erdozain: Yes. I think that's the case, but I think that it releases different kinds of patriotism. Yes. So I would agree with that. And I think one of the point made points made by, you know, Lindsey O'Rourke in her recent book on American interventionism, or at least it's a comment that's been made in discussion of that book, is that nationalism can absorb any amount of failure that you know, it's always someone else's problem. It's always someone else's responsibility so that there's a degree to which a certain kind of nationalism is immune to the empirical world and its, and its harsh verdicts.

00:04:19 Andrew Keen: So this book, To Love a Country, suggests, I mean, what are you telling Americans as they get ready to celebrate their two hundred and fiftieth anniversary? Should they be ashamed? Should they be, should they be, at the altar of forgiveness? What's your attitude towards the upcoming anniversary?

00:04:41 Dominic Erdozain: I think there's something you said earlier about one of your guests about the unfinished nature of the revolution or you know, one of my favorite people in the book is someone called Randolph Bourne, who is a radical journalist in the first World War. And he has this lovely phrase. He says, we must perpetrate the paradox that our American cultural tradition lies in the future. So he's one of these people who says that nationalism and nativism are very European, and they're backward looking. And we cannot recover a true America that is or a true patriotism that's faithful to the diversity of modern life and the bustling pluralism of the city. We can't really, be faithful to that by looking backwards. So we have to look forward. We have to sort of, develop a patriotism of the future. And I think for me, you know, the motive for writing the book was to think, okay. If we've got the same sorts of problems of militarism, the same sorts of default positions on the world stage from the Democrats as we have had with the Republicans. We have to think more broadly, and I don't want anyone to be sort of ashamed of their tradition, but I feel like we need new founders. I mean, that was what excited me in writing the book and finding it's not just Martin Luther King Jr., you know, as an Atlantic. You look to him as someone with the answer to so many of the core questions. I suddenly found this whole cast of people I didn't really know about, like Jane Addams. I mentioned Randolph Bourne. Obviously, Frederick Douglass has now become more into the national consciousness, but there's a whole cast of people. William Lloyd Garrison is one. And so for me, it was about finding an American identity or someone I can anchor my own existence to some extent while living here.

00:06:20 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I wanna come to some of those examples. But tell me a little bit about yourself. As I said, you grew up in Northwest England. Some people might be listening or watching to this and thinking, what a cheek. This British guy comes to America, presumably well paid historian at Emory University, lives in Atlanta, has the luxury of a nice home in, in Charleston too. What right does he have to tell us about the problem of patriotism in America? When did you come to this country?

00:06:52 Dominic Erdozain: 2012. I mean, it the word cheek is exactly one that I think of when I sit down and write. And I think that, you know, part of what inspires me with someone like King, who I mentioned, is that he says, okay. I need to go to India to learn about nonviolence. Or someone like Jane Addams who says, look. Never mind lecturing these immigrants. Our question should not be, you know, what can we teach the bewildered, immigrant, but, you know, what could we learn from them? And I felt that, you know, I most of what is wrong with nationalism and the sort of critique the sort of nationalism I talk about in the book, as I mentioned, comes from this sort of Puritan sense of entitlement and being the chosen nature. So I think I would take it fairly firmly on the chin that most of the things I would criticize America for, you could you could level at the British and, you know, Gandhi is a key figure for me in my sort of last chapter. And he helped me see my own country, my own tradition for what it is. And let's say going to South Africa and learning about how the British invented these concentration camps and some of the things that the British did under this sort of benign rubric of, of being decent fellows. So, yes, I mean, I think that there's no I hope there's no kind of mansplaining here. There's gonna be a bit of that, but, I think that travel does eventually open your mind, and I think that the outsider has got something to say even if it is a little bit there is a bit of a cheek in the way you say it.

00:08:21 Andrew Keen: What do you mean mansplaining? Well, I don't know what that word means.

00:08:25 Dominic Erdozain: Mansplaining is just the sort of the condescension of the of the way a man can explain something to a woman in a way that sort of has a sense of entitlement. Sometimes as a Brit, you feel like you're doing a sort of nationalist version of that, of sort of assuming you know, this is Samuel Johnson quote about, you know, travel invariably narrows the mind because when you travel, you initially cling to what you know, and there's a sense in which you judge things from some sort of assumed, stance of superiority.

00:08:53 Andrew Keen: You've mentioned, Dominic, the Puritan tradition already a couple of times. Of course, that was very influential in New England. But you yourself live in Atlanta. You're familiar with the South. You talking to me from South Carolina. There's an alternative tradition, maybe not morally equal, maybe even morally more questionable, but a southern tradition, which has nothing to do with Puritanism. How would you place that? Are you suggesting that the problems of patriotism in America are solely associated with puritanism and this idea of a city of the hill and America leading the world in its morality?

00:09:35 Dominic Erdozain: Yeah. I think that's, the Puritan idea is a fairly local origin, but it spreads in the first and second great awakenings. It spreads across, what was then not even remotely a nation in the first great awakening in the seventeen forties and fifties. So you get what some scholars like Anthony Berends [name uncertain in audio] call the New Englandization of America. So you get these southern Anglicans who wouldn't have dreamt of espousing Puritan theology in the more technical sense of the word, but they adopt a kind of Puritan view of national identity, which they don't actually develop yet. But that this sense of, this imbibing a sense of chosenness. And then in the second great awakening, it's kind of popularized, more. But I think when I talk about the problem of patriotism, it's not it's really the way in which these ways of thinking can obscure deeper problems. So it's not that people in the South are actually Puritans in their core way of thinking. They may be slave owners. They may be racist in other ways. They may just be economically, unjust. But it's the way in which patriotism provides a cover for that. It provides protection from severe, scrutiny. So you don't actually have to subscribe to these particular theologies or ideas in order to shield under the sort of the canopy of, of national righteousness.

00:11:00 Andrew Keen: So in this book, Dominic, you're providing an alternative cast of founders. You've mentioned MLK, Jane Addams, a number of others. What why do we need to get rid of, I mean, in a few weeks, we're gonna be celebrating this two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. We're gonna be celebrating another Adams, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, of course. Why should we get rid of all the founders?

00:11:31 Dominic Erdozain: I definitely don't think we should get rid of them, and I am a deep admirer of the founders on some on many levels, their the depth of their intellect. And, you know, John Adams is a favorite of mine and, you know, and he's probably the first to perceive the danger of believing there's a kind of special providence for America and that we are sort of cut from different cloth. You know, Jefferson is a brilliant man. I mean, MLK says that he's the closest thing to kind of Plato's idea of the philosopher king, but he's a deeply flawed man. I mean, someone like King is very good at looking back and being eclectic in his way in his analysis and saying we could admire this, but we reject that. I think it's respecting them, admiring them, but not worshiping them. I think there's a sense in which one kind of patriotism just closes down the debate or so and so said this. I mean, there's a kind of originalism that is there in historical writing sometimes where, you know, there's just a quotation that proves something. And I think that someone like William Lloyd Garrison is very wary of that, sort of the burning incense to the founders and just really the conservatism it creates. And he would say it keeps we remain children where we cannot think beyond this core group of people. So I would just see it more as a broadening out of the of the cast of characters and the repertoire of voices rather than canceling people, in a specific sense.

00:12:59 Andrew Keen: You've mentioned William Lloyd Garrison a couple of times, MLK a number of times, and maybe we'll talk a little bit more in detail, though. He, of course, was also a very flawed man for better or worse. Is for you then I mean, given you're based in Atlanta, so you're very familiar with the MLK legacy and the history of the war, civil war, and slavery. Is a lot of the problems of patriotism in America associated with slavery, the history of slavery and the history of race, which

00:13:31 Dominic Erdozain: Yeah.

00:13:31 Andrew Keen: People describe as the original sin, although, of course, the issue of native North Americans perhaps is the pre original sin.

00:13:40 Dominic Erdozain: Yeah. Yeah. I think it both. Because, you know, in my chapter on race, you know, I had quite a big discussion of native American critiques of exceptionalism. And William Apess in particular, Pequot, Indian, who is also a Methodist preacher, gives this great eulogy on King Philip. And he uses the story of King Philip's war in the late, seventeenth century to just show he says, you know, you call us savages, but who are the real savages here? Who are the people chopping off heads and putting them on gate posts outside, towns? And he uses that history to critique the way in which, notions like I mean, manifest destiny hadn't been coined yet, but the notion of destiny and national calling had obliterated his people. So, yes, that was a powerful argument by Native Americans. He says that this history is a living he describes it as like burning elements, destroying his people, and justifying things like Indian removal. But the argument is made by more people in terms of slavery. And I think the way to express it is that, you know, you have this declaration of independence, this glorious assertion of human equality. Then a few years later, you have a constitution that has, you know, fugitive slave, clause in it, that has a three fifths clause that someone like Garrison would say tramples on the declaration of independence. Where patriotism comes in is that it cements. It's like the mortar on the flawed structure, and it says you can't change it because we've got the greatest constitution. You can't break it up. You can't touch it. And so he attacks patriotism as something that's preventing, the creative alignment of the constitution with, the declaration of independence with the nation's founding ideal.

00:15:29 Andrew Keen: You mentioned Douglas as well. Du Bois, I'm sure you write about in the book. And we've talked about this sometimes on the show before, and I've talked to a number of African American guests and friends, associates, and indeed family. My wife's, an African American. Do you think in an odd way, it's only black Americans who have, so to speak, a right to patriotism in America? That they're the ones who get it. They were the ones indeed under slavery who even appreciated the constitution more than most.

00:16:02 Dominic Erdozain: Yeah. I think that's a point made by King in the letter from Birmingham Jail. So that, yeah, we were here. You know, we have, you know, we were here before, these, these documents were even drafted. And it's a point made by Cornel West after, George Floyd's death, a few years ago. He said that, look, you should thank us because we are the people who stop these terrible injustices turning into absolute destruction of the nation and that there's a kind of grace and a dignity there. So, yeah, I would agree with that. But I think, to me, even more than the moral argument is just the clarity. I just when someone like Frederick Douglass says that, you know, you talk about being the greatest and being the guardians of freedom, but it's only when I travel to another country that I'm safe and that I can, speak my mind without fear of ins of either being insulted or even attacked or reenslaved. And then he's just got this humorous way of putting it. You know, he and I called named one of my chapters after this phrase. He says, who were your daddies? You know, he's mocking the idea that there's this covenant, with made by the founding fathers and that it's sacred and it can't be changed. He just says, who were your daddies? He's joking, and he gets roars of laughter. And I feel like there's that clarity that comes from people like Douglas and King that is sort of unmatched in any other in any other sort of, community.

00:17:27 Andrew Keen: James Baldwin, of course, picks this up. I know you're and I'm sure you're familiar with her work. You may even be familiar with her. Carol Anderson at Emory, University covers this. But, of course, this argument, Dominic, will annoy a number of people as you know. I mean, do you have a green card? You've got a passport? You might you might get struggling out for this book, aren't you? A bit worried about that?

00:17:48 Dominic Erdozain: I'm a citizen. I you know, my last book is called you know, it contains the sort of the first person, you know, our democracy and our nation. And that's Yeah.

00:17:57 Andrew Keen: The last book which did rather well, back, a couple of years ago. One nation under guns how gun culture distorts our history and threatens our democracy, our being America, of course.

00:18:09 Dominic Erdozain: Yeah. I think you've got to. And I think, you know, John Locke says something about, you know, if you're not a citizen, it's almost like you're just a lodger in someone else's house. I remember my daughter was in, first grade years ago when the question was about American folk heroes and, you know, what has Johnny Appleseed done for our country? And she and she says, he gave us our apples just without thinking about it. And, you know, this has sort of become a bit of a running joke, but I think if you're gonna you know, you can't just be the bystander and the and the carping critic. I think you have to be all in. And I think the more I've studied of our own history, the British history, the more I willingly identify, as America.

00:18:49 Andrew Keen: So what would you say? I'm guessing that this book is not gonna do very well amongst the MAGA crowd, but what would you say to a thoughtful Trump supporter if there's such a thing, a MAGA person, that this is absurd, that you're playing on guilt, that they've got nothing to do with slavery, and that no country's perfect. You know all the arguments about Yeah. Responding to the problems of patriotism. And that just as you list all the crimes of America, one could equally list many of the things that America has done, both consciously and otherwise, to make the world a better place.

00:19:25 Dominic Erdozain: Yeah. I certainly hold on to that. I think the a compelling voice for me is John Adams when he talks about and he has this great exchange with Jefferson. Jefferson said, look at the Europeans. They're tearing each other apart again over nothing, and they're carving up these smaller nations. What's the problem with them? And Adams is kind of, well, they're patriots. And they're patriots, and they think that the world is made for them. And that, what suits the same as it was in Rome, and Tacitus wrote about it. And, you know, these enlightened nations like Britain and France are no better. Education doesn't make you any better. So someone like Adams is a great critic of the idea of, you know, the theological, the theocratic underpinnings, the idea that God really wants us to succeed and will cover our sins in a sense. And I think what I would say to the MAGA people, and I know people who have very much identify, with the right, and then a lot of them are committed Christians, say, well, it's not terribly Christian to see yourselves as the chosen vessels of history and to arrogate yourself certain rights and entitlements, that, that don't apply to others. And I think that's you know, I'd also say it to people on not on the left, but in the center, people who you know, one of the inspirations for the book was just seeing how automatically Joe Biden reverted to exceptionalist arguments in terms of justifying US support for Israel and, the militarism in Ukraine. And when he was questioned about the likelihood of success, he just scoffed at the idea that there could be failure because we're the greatest we this is The United States Of America. We're the greatest nation in the history of the world. So I would, by no means, mean to apply this purely to the right. I think it's it's a much bigger problem, and I'd I would want other people to people on both sides in a sense to discover that wisdom of people like John Adams or as I end the book with John F. Kennedy and his magnificent sort of internationalism that he sort of evolved into in the last year of his life.

00:21:32 Andrew Keen: And, of course, Jack Kennedy's brother, Bobby Kennedy, went to South Africa in '19, I think, 1965 or 1966, gave a speech to a wide audience and suggested them, what if god is black? And that was an idea that went down in a rather controversial way. You can imagine in apartheid South Africa. What, what maybe let me reverse the Bobby Kennedy quote for you, Dominic. What if God was American and was spending his time with a baseball cap on eating hamburgers all day?

00:22:08 Dominic Erdozain: Yeah. I mean, I don't think anyone can make any metaphysical claims about who or what God is.

00:22:14 Andrew Keen: Is it possible that God's American, that the original Puritans were right?

00:22:20 Dominic Erdozain: I mean, I think when you read them and they're talking about, you know, how these native Americans would be punished for insulting the Englishman's god, you realize kind of how parochial that idea is. I think from within the canon of kind of Christian history and the evolution of Western theology, you can see that this is a fairly radical compression. You know, Christianity is supposed to be universal religion and the whole idea of all life being sacred and, you know, God letting the sun shine on the righteous and the unrighteous, all these kind of ideas. And then what happens with that sort of Puritan tradition is that it's just claimed and compressed and narrowed into sort of predestination, a narrow view. I think one could critique it on that level. I mean, I'm I'm a historian, and so I can argue that this is a bit of a left field or a particular tradition that has come to speak for Christianity. So, yeah, I mean, I would definitely appeal to the wider history of that

00:23:18 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I mean, as I said, if God is American, you're in trouble, not just in this life, but in the next one.

00:23:24 Dominic Erdozain: Yeah.

00:23:25 Andrew Keen: So you'll have to be ready for that. Dominic, one of the things that you cover in the book or you talk about in the book is American militarism, which, of course, is very much in the headlines these days. But up until the first World War, indeed after the first World War, really up until the second World War, America wasn't really militaristic. It certainly wasn't an imperial country like European countries. It's standing army. I often quote this because it's so astonishing. Its standing army was the size of Portugal or Sweden. So would it be fair to say that when it comes I mean, I take some of your points, of course, on, military, on race and injustice. But when it comes to militarism and patriotism in America, up until the middle or the first third, at least, of the twentieth century, America wasn't a militaristic country. So Yeah. One can have almost a if you wanna be an American patriot, you can look back to the founders and

00:24:27 Dominic Erdozain: Yes. Totally.

00:24:28 Andrew Keen: Jefferson and some of the other founders who were very, very skeptical of militarism and that European tradition.

00:24:36 Dominic Erdozain: Yeah. I mean, that was the whole idea behind, the militia and the veneration of the militia for the founders. And, of course, it was a romantic idea because militias are not actually effective against professional soldiers, but it was an idea that nonmilitary founders like, Jefferson clung to. And, of course, that's why you have the second amendment because you want to protect militias and not have this great centralized standing army. Even Washington who believes in the necessity of a professional army, he also acknowledges that professional armies propose a massive threat to liberty, especially Republican liberty. So you get, you know, the idea is that an army will go seeking wars. You know, once you've got you've got a big professional army, it will start to mold the whole, political process, and you'll have the scope for charismatic leaders just to sort of to ignore the democratic processes. So, yes, there's a strong tradition of that. I mean, Jefferson says that, you know, America will show the world that there are better ways to resolve disputes than by appeals to arms. You get people like John Quincy Adams talking about the abolition of war for all time. And, of course, the big shift is the civil war, and you have people lamenting at the end of that war that we've become not merely a military, but a warlike nation. But as you say, that doesn't in itself entail the rise of a large standing army. It's not until well into the twentieth century, and, of course, World War two itself that you get this garrison state. So, yes, I mean, that's where I feel with someone like Jane Addams. She's so powerful. She says that, you know, nothing against the civil war generation, but I hope that we've created the last of our presidents from the men who distinguished themselves in that conflict. You know? Can't we come to see that the people who somebody cleans the city is greater than the person who lays it to waste. So Addams is happy to be a patriot, but she says that we should be proud of our status as a peace nation as against the kind of the war charged Europe. And William James makes a very similar point, in the moral equivalent of war. He says that we just need to demilitarize, our national identity and or at least perhaps revert to something more Jeffersonian.

00:26:48 Andrew Keen: Are you in danger then of peddling a kind of isolationism? I mean, it's all very well. Addams, of course, was a great critic of the first war of American involvement in the first World War. But there are times where a nation, for better or worse, has to fight. Yeah?

00:27:03 Dominic Erdozain: I don't think it's isolationism. I mean, I think someone like Addams who is a fervent internationalist, Crystal Eastman's another one who I write about in the first World War. They would say you've got more I mean, Woodrow Wilson's argument was that we can have some influence on the outcome of this war by having a stake in it and being a part a part of it. Someone like Jane Addams would say, no. No. No. It's much better not to have blood on your hands. It's much better not to have delivered that crushing blow that has humiliated someone and destroyed them. And this is this is Jefferson's point about anti militarism. It's that humans are the creatures that have memory. So injuries at war are not easily forgotten. And living in the South, I could tell you there are people who still speak with genuine personal bitterness about Abraham Lincoln or, will be personally offended if you say something mean about Robert E. Lee. But we have got this sense of memory. And if you want to try to negotiate and to not arbitrate, if you want to be a peacemaker, it's better not to have been immersed in the in the fight and thrown your weight behind one of the one of the participants.

00:28:11 Andrew Keen: Yeah. You dodged the question there, though. Sorry. Dominic on the sec I mean, one can always be critical of the American involvement of the first World War, but not the second, surely.

00:28:22 Dominic Erdozain: I can't,

00:28:23 Andrew Keen: And not only that, to have, I mean, much of American patriotism for better or worse in late twentieth century or twenty first century is based on America's involvement, not just in the second World War, but in the post second World War, in the Marshall Plan, in their willingness to invest resources and time in rebuilding democracies around the world in Japan and Germany. Are those things that you wouldn't acknowledge?

00:28:49 Dominic Erdozain: I would acknowledge, but I think that we do get a very one-sided aspect of that because people will often say, you know, the holocaust happened, and how can you say that it's, you know, that the pacifist measures would have been more effective? You know, what would Jane Addams have done in that situation? But someone like, Nicholson Baker in his book, Human Smoke would make the point that most of the people trying to solve that problem, advocating for repatriation of Jews from Germany were pacifists. And you have people like Rufus Jones, traveling to Germany, and actually meeting with Göring and others and proposing practical solutions. So I always think it's Nicholson Baker would say that the holocaust itself was very much a product of the war. The acceleration of the final solution was something was a kind of something that drew out of the war. I don't think you know? And also, I don't, you know, counterfactuals are impossible because you cannot say what would have happened. But what you can say is that when nonviolent interventions were pursued and pursued rigorously in somewhere like, Le Chambon, in France, the village where André Trocmé, sheltered up to 5,000 Jews and managed to evade the SS, through organized, nonviolence. You know, you have these sort of microcosms of Gandhian resistance. And, of course, the same in Denmark in the early part of the war. So Yeah. I mean, you're

00:30:18 Andrew Keen: you're you're you're not really addressing my question. I asked you about the second World War, not the holocaust. Well I mean, the Americans didn't get involved. I mean, my questions were much more specific. The Americans didn't get involved in the second World War because of the holocaust. No. Pearl Harbor was [audio garbled — reconstructed]. And I mentioned the rebuilding of democracy in Germany or Japan. That's got nothing to do with the holocaust.

00:30:43 Dominic Erdozain: The argument about peaceful resistance is nearly always comes back to the holocaust. So, I mean, that's more Right. Because that is seen justly understood to be the probably the greatest atrocity of modern times and an argument that's thrown back against people who advocate, nonmilitary solutions. My point was just that there were very effective nonmilitary solutions in those contexts.

00:31:11 Andrew Keen: Are you suggesting then that some sort of Gandian nonviolent response to the Holocaust would have saved millions of Jews?

00:31:20 Dominic Erdozain: I think it could have done. I mean, you look at someone like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who is very much idealized by the modern Christian right as this, you know, martyr who, attempted to assassinate, Hitler and obviously failed, he approached Gandhi in 1934. A letter's been recently discovered in the last ten years, I believe, and said that we need to save Western Europe from destruction, and we need to learn your methods. And, Ramachandra Guha in his biography of Gandhi brings us, you know, speculation to the surface and says, what would have happened if he had gone to India and learned these tech techniques and if it applied broadly across Germany? I think the problem is, you know, it took Gandhi nineteen years in South Africa to develop his methods and many years to, work out his methods of noncooperation in India. So it does take time. It's not something you can learn instantly. But I think to come back to your question about World War two, it's eulogized as the good war, but don't forget that it ends with the dropping of atomic bombs on a pretty much defeated Japan and the starting seamlessly of an arms race, which has placed the world in greater danger than it's ever been placed before in human history. So I really would push back against the idea of the good war and the constructive nature of America's involvement in that one.

00:32:44 Andrew Keen: You've mentioned Jane Addams a number of times. She's a central figure in your narrative and in your argument. She was, of course, an advocate for world peace. I mean, she was associated, and her ideas were picked up by Eleanor Roosevelt. Is American, shall we say, American sponsored internationalism, the United Nations, and many of the other initiatives that people like Adams and Roosevelt pioneered. Is that an alternative to American patriotism, internationalism? I mean, you've you've you've Yeah. Gandhi is obviously very influential in your thinking too. Is internationalism ultimately if one is to love America, can one love it as the pioneer of internationalism, as the country that, that pioneered the United Nations and many other of the global institutions of the post war age?

00:33:41 Dominic Erdozain: Yes. Exactly. I mean, I would say that was that's exactly what Adams herself would say is that her peace activism came out of her work with immigrant groups, and she vigorously pushes back against the idea that it's just a one way process that we have to indoctrinate and sort of absorb, foreigners into our way of life and the melting pot idea. She was very much in a we draw, nutrients and sustenance from all these different cultures, and her internationalism grows out of her the cosmopolitan humanitarianism, as she puts it, of her community, her settlement, and her whole house. And that then informs her internationalism. So and she does she talks about and it's a bit paradoxical. She says we're drawn to the rather awkward phrase, sort of cosmic patriotism. But it's a patriotism that is proud of America's role as this meeting point and this place of exchange.

00:34:37 Andrew Keen: You were critical of Biden. I'm no great fan of Biden. You said that he embraced American exceptionalism too. But as I said, when Joe Cunningham was on the show, the South Carolina politician, one of the few Democrats ever to be elected to office in South Carolina recently, he, I think, argues that America, both well, particularly white, but white, white Democrats need to embrace patriotism. And one of the reasons why the Democrats keep on losing elections and even in MAGA America, still not really trusted by most Americans is because they tend to be ambivalent, about patriotism. They're not full throated. They're not gonna be the kind of people who will be most celebrating, on July 4 this year. I know you would disagree with that, but how would you respond to the political critique that it's a vote loser? I mean, Jane Addams may have been a, an impressive woman morally, culturally, but she wasn't really much of a vote getter, was she?

00:35:48 Dominic Erdozain: Yeah. I mean, no. She wasn't, but I think that she would say that the first World War is the loss and destruction of civilization. It's the loss of a generation. And I think that, you know, I can't speak to the strategic dimensions of it in the same way as I can't speak to the what ifs of the second World War or the what ifs of Gaza or Ukraine. But for me, one of the key motivating factors, having written a book on guns and thought, okay. There's a rational liberal sort of say in America that can be reacquainted with its constitutional traditions, and I believe there is. And that was what inspired me to write the book on guns. When I saw in October 2023 how dogmatically and unreflectively the Biden administration supported a reign of destruction, in Gaza and, again, I can't talk about alternatives, but all I can talk about is the suffering. I realized that the you cannot blame the right. You cannot just say, well, this Trump phenomenon is this terrible digression, and then we'll just get back to normal. And there were so many books being written at the time appealing to Lincoln, appealing to the soul of America and our better angels. And if our better angels means more militarism, then, we need to look for new angels.

00:37:06 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And, of course, the book America Unfinished is a quote from, Lincoln's second inaugural. You mentioned Gaza and Ukraine. Some people might say, well, they're entirely different situations. I mean, I take your point on Gaza, but what about Ukraine? Should would it be patriotic, or would it make you more patriotic if America was to defend Ukraine from Putin, or should it stand?

00:37:37 Dominic Erdozain: I think it's it's the they're very different situations just as throughout the Cold War, you have multiple different contexts, but they're they're all absorbed into a simple binary. My critique of this kind of Manichean light against darkness way of thinking is that it tends to just lump people together and to interpret all con all conflicts under the same rubric of good and evil and not to look at the specifics. So my concern is for a mentality that is so simplistic in its view of the world that militarism becomes the natural solution, that evil is evil and you deal with evil with force. And that's what really shocked me. I don't know what exactly I was expecting that with the Biden administration. But

00:38:28 Andrew Keen: Yeah. But you keep on coming back. Anyway, Biden is ideal as an excuse. He's a straw man. Nobody's defending him, not even his wife these days. Right. I mean, what should Americans do with Ukraine? It's a country that was invaded by a stronger neighbor, without any legal international legal justification. What should America do?

00:38:52 Dominic Erdozain: I can't give a solution to that situation. It's it's

00:38:55 Andrew Keen: But you can give one to Gaza. So you can't have it both ways, can you?

00:38:58 Dominic Erdozain: I would say in both situations, the primacy of dialogue and diplomacy and the you know, I finished the book with, the discussion of John F. Kennedy's strategy of peace speech in, the American University in June 1963, and then he follows it up with a speech at the United Nations in September, sort of two months before he's assassinated. And he has this light bulb moment where he realizes that he's put in more danger by his own military and his own CIA, than by you know, that the impetus for war is coming from within his country, not necessarily from the Soviets. And he realizes that he just needs to talk to the enemy and to think differently, and he gives a speech in which he's he concedes nothing to communism as an ideology, but is immensely generous about the Russian people, and about Khrushchev himself as a leader. And I felt that was a model of reinvention on the job and the resetting of a kind of cold war paradigm. So that's the kind of thing I'd like to see is just getting around a table and resolving problems through dialogue.

00:40:06 Andrew Keen: Although, of course, JFK also launched the Bay of Pigs and, the Vietnam War. So,

00:40:12 Dominic Erdozain: Well, my point is that he learned from that. And I think that by the year he died, he was talking about the Vietnam War is not our fight, and he wouldn't have launched it in the way it became a war. I think that he certainly was ready to pull back. But the Bay Of Pigs was one of his chasing moments. He realized that he couldn't trust the CIA. So I think that's a great example of someone who really grew up as a cold warrior and then rowed back from it, in office.

00:40:40 Andrew Keen: Well, it's a very controversial but very, intriguing argument. The book is out, next week. To Love a Country, the Problem of Patriotism in America by, Dominic, Erdozain, a historian at Emory University. Dominic, what are you gonna be doing on July 4? I think you may have to be hiding under your bed, but the mob's gonna be coming for you.

00:41:01 Dominic Erdozain: I think Americans are quite open, and I think that they like I think they appreciate the fact that we engage with their history. And I think that, yeah, I don't think they'll be hiding anywhere.

00:41:11 Andrew Keen: Well, finally, put on your Patriot cap very briefly. Is there anything that Americans should be proud of their country for? What in particular? What are you proud as a as a new American? Hot dogs?

00:41:26 Dominic Erdozain: I think that The light

00:41:28 Andrew Keen: bulb hot dogs, the Internet, the light bulb, AI, baseball. What particularly gets you about? What are you proud of America for inventing or pioneering?

00:41:40 Dominic Erdozain: For inventing, I like the energy, and I like the zest. I like the warmth of the people that there's a kind of you know, I play tennis. And the sort of people you meet when you play tennis in this country are invariably more friendly, and they wanna ask what Premier League's team you support. And, I think there's just a fundamental warmth and a lack of cynicism, that you notice when you go back home that people are more jaded. So I just think there's still a useful culture, and that warmth and that zest is still very palpable.

00:42:16 Andrew Keen: I hope you're not a Preston North End fan, are you?

00:42:19 Dominic Erdozain: A good neighbor of mine used to play for them, in the days of Tom Finney, but, Liverpool is my, is my club.

00:42:27 Andrew Keen: Well, happy holidays, Dominic. Happy two hundred and fiftieth. If I hope you survive. And if you do, you have to come back on the show. Thank you.

00:42:35 Dominic Erdozain: I'd love to. Thank you very much for having me.