Khizr Khan on What Patriotism Requires

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Speaker 2 In the weeks leading up to Veterans Day, the question of patriotism has resurfaced again and again in American life, from NFL games to the White House briefing room.

Speaker 2 We've seen dueling claims over what it means to be patriotic, to dissent, to sacrifice, to serve. What does patriotism require? And who do we consider a patriot? This is Radio Atlantic.

Speaker 2 I'm Matt Thompson, executive editor of The Atlantic. The news has been filled in recent weeks with a host of questions about patriotism and sacrifice.

Speaker 2 This week, we wanted to talk about what it means to be patriotic, what it means to serve one's country, and how the two relate.

Speaker 2 In a moment, we'll be joined by my esteemed co-hosts, Jeff and Alex, but first, I wanted to introduce our colleague Krishnadev Kalimore, staff writer for The Atlantic. Hey, Krishnadev.

Speaker 3 Hi, Matt.

Speaker 2 Along with Segal Samuel, The Atlantic's Global Religion Editor, you recently had a conversation with one of America's most famous gold star fathers, Kayser Khan, whose stirring speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention brought him to national attention.

Speaker 4 Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery?

Speaker 4 Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending United States of America, you will see

Speaker 4 all faiths, genders, and ethnicities.

Speaker 4 You have sacrificed nothing

Speaker 4 and no one.

Speaker 3 His middle son, Humayun, was a U.S. Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004.

Speaker 3 While Keither Khan's speech at the Democratic Convention made him perhaps the most famous gold-star parent in the country, his perspective on patriotism and democracy comes in many ways by way of his upbringing in Pakistan, where he lived under martial law twice.

Speaker 3 He was born and raised there. Khan's just written a book.
It's called An American Family. And he's talked about his early life in Pakistan, what prompted him to come to the U.S.,

Speaker 3 and of course, his love for the U.S. Constitution and that speech at the DNC for which he's known.

Speaker 2 Excellent. Well, we are, as I said, going to discuss a little bit of the themes of that interview with Jeff and Alex in a minute.

Speaker 2 But first, let's hear a little bit of your conversation with Geezer Khan.

Speaker 3 It's a sentence that really struck me in the book where you wrote, I'm an American patriot, not because I was born here, but because I was not.

Speaker 3 It had a huge impact on me because I feel very strongly about that particular idea.

Speaker 3 Can you talk a little bit about this? What specifically do you, in your words, cherish about American freedoms?

Speaker 2 Well, I cite

Speaker 2 my

Speaker 2 taking the oath of citizenship.

Speaker 2 Coming from the background that I came from, and I'm not talking about economics of it or comforts and

Speaker 2 other things, other material things, I'm talking about the human dignities.

Speaker 2 As I mentioned, that I have lived under two martial laws. I have seen

Speaker 2 when

Speaker 2 a critical article was written about the general in Pakistan, the president, with all the medals and all the uniform and

Speaker 2 ribbons on his uniform, and

Speaker 2 the newspapers

Speaker 2 were locked.

Speaker 2 We heard the presses were burned. That was to teach the press a lesson that you will not write critical of the journal.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the only

Speaker 2 condition was that print something favorable, praise the journal, because he's the leader, and you will be allowed to print. So a few days after,

Speaker 2 no newspaper, then there would be a newspaper and the picture of the journal with all his medals and the praises, how good he is, how benevolent he is to the nation,

Speaker 2 the press would be allowed to print. So I came from that background,

Speaker 2 seared in my conscience and in my memory, then

Speaker 2 came to take the oath of citizenship.

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 went in the courtroom and stood with other newly being minted citizens,

Speaker 2 took the oath

Speaker 2 and read every word with full cognizance.

Speaker 2 And then that certificate of citizenship was given and I looked at it and I walked out how changed I was.

Speaker 2 That now the dignities enshrined that I only could dream about,

Speaker 2 those are all mine now. I have the freedom of speech.
I have the freedom of assembly, the protest, that I could only do at the risk of my life, but that is not the case anymore.

Speaker 2 So it is with that cognizance that I say that

Speaker 2 most immigrants go through that experience

Speaker 2 from having very little to

Speaker 2 all of this, that is, all these dignities and rights and privileges that are enshrined in our documents become your fundamental guarantee, your citizenship.

Speaker 2 Because we struggle to be Americans,

Speaker 2 those who are born here are blessed and privileged to have this, but it is a reminder that

Speaker 2 these rights are very fragile, especially under current circumstances. Our democratic values are under attack.
Last century saw expansion of democracy.

Speaker 2 I have sat in with many of those who came to study the rule of law of the United States. How could we eradicate corruption from our system?

Speaker 2 I don't mean to say that we have the perfect system. No, no, no, we have the best system,

Speaker 2 rule of law,

Speaker 2 our

Speaker 2 dignities,

Speaker 2 our First Amendment, our 14th Amendment. These are salient features of American life.

Speaker 2 People came to read, people came to learn about these things.

Speaker 2 So those who don't wish us well

Speaker 2 decided to make sure that they would malign these values, our democracy, our democratic system.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 here we are. So it is absolutely necessary for us to be cognizant of

Speaker 2 our rule of law, of our dignities enshrined in our constitution and constitutional documents. It's that story that we tell in the book.

Speaker 3 I want to follow up something you just said. You talked about how the feeling of being a newly minted immigrant, how a lot of these ideas are now, and I'm paraphrasing, under threat or under attack.

Speaker 3 In many ways, your love affair with the U.S. began in Dubai when you met your first Americans,

Speaker 3 Alan and Lisa, and you write very fondly of the Americans you met there,

Speaker 3 mostly from these small towns in Oklahoma and Texas, and then moving to Houston, where you were welcomed by perfect strangers who were very generous to you.

Speaker 3 Do you think that

Speaker 3 story, that your experience and the experience of many immigrants who came here in the 70s and 80s is still true for immigrants who come to the U.S.?

Speaker 2 Things are much more difficult for immigrants than they were when we first arrived. I fully recognize and I understand

Speaker 2 the delicate position of the vulnerability of the immigrants is being exploited for political expediency purpose. But fundamentally,

Speaker 2 this is

Speaker 2 because of its founding principles,

Speaker 2 how those principles have affected the psyche of this nation, it is still one of the best place to be on planet Earth.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 tilt in my heart or in my soul will always be there. We are a product of our experiences.
Our experience, my family's experience, had been amazingly positive about this country.

Speaker 2 And same thing, Captain Himayun Khan wrote when he was at University of Virginia an article to gain admission to a dormitory called Hereford College.

Speaker 2 The title of his essay was Democracy Requires Vigilance and Sacrifice.

Speaker 2 And how true that is today, that democracy is requiring, meaning our values, the values of this country are requiring vigilance and sacrifice. And so here we are.

Speaker 2 So the tilt that you read in the book or in my conversation, I fully understand.

Speaker 2 But we are, as I said, product of our experiences and that tilt is because of my experience in this nation.

Speaker 3 A lot of your book is set in Pakistan, where you were born and where you studied.

Speaker 3 You write about its transformation from a modern Muslim country created by Muhammad Ali Jinnah to one run by a series of dictators, some of whom impose stricter Islamic values.

Speaker 3 Why do you think that happened?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 that's not only just Pakistan, but

Speaker 2 lots of

Speaker 2 newly independent countries or nations have gone through that experience.

Speaker 2 Probably

Speaker 2 I'm not

Speaker 2 an expert on world politics,

Speaker 2 but

Speaker 2 what I understand is that whenever

Speaker 2 people are recently freed before they fully recognize the blessings of the freedom and independence, which is

Speaker 2 participation in the political process, before they recognize that there are

Speaker 2 more

Speaker 2 resourceful, shrewd

Speaker 2 politicians and authoritarians sitting there to take advantage of that moment and to further their own agenda instead of the agenda of the people. So lots of nations have gone through that

Speaker 2 after independence,

Speaker 2 dictators, martial laws. And so it's a process of

Speaker 2 moving forward evolution, political evolution in the life of people.

Speaker 3 If I can just do a follow-up on that,

Speaker 3 something

Speaker 3 you talk about in your book as well, how do you think the U.S. compares with a lot of these post-colonial countries in many ways with regards to institutions versus rule of law?

Speaker 3 and in our part of the world, in the subcontinent, as I I'm from India originally,

Speaker 3 where the power of the individual seems to loom over

Speaker 3 a nation?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's

Speaker 2 India has done much better than Pakistan has done, politically speaking,

Speaker 2 unfortunately. But

Speaker 2 it's

Speaker 2 as I mentioned, it's an evolution and process of

Speaker 2 realizing that

Speaker 2 in democracy, in

Speaker 2 participatory democracy where general public participates

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 where the mankind is headed, where

Speaker 2 rule of law, where basic rights and basic dignities are guaranteed in

Speaker 2 like America in founding documents or in our system of government. We are all moving in that direction.
Some nations are way ahead, some are following throughout the world.

Speaker 2 But mankind, humanity is realizing that some

Speaker 2 dignities and basic rights must be guaranteed by any form of government.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it is that

Speaker 2 we aspire, and that is why,

Speaker 2 and I narrate that

Speaker 2 my

Speaker 2 becoming an American in 1972, falling in love with our founding documents, is that we all aspire as human beings to have certain liberties, certain freedoms, certain rights, certain dignities in our life.

Speaker 6 I'm curious, you know, you mentioned progress, this notion of progress, and the sense that America is sort of, you know, you said, why did America get there so early? Do you feel that

Speaker 6 humanity as a whole is progressing and America has somehow sort of got it right?

Speaker 2 Is it sort of ahead of other parts of the world in that progress narrative?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 the incidence of history is such that America then

Speaker 2 we just celebrated 230 years of the Constitution coming together. And that is

Speaker 2 a model for the rest of the

Speaker 2 world and

Speaker 2 mankind to see how people can govern themselves. And

Speaker 2 you just need to have vision and

Speaker 2 courage with that.

Speaker 2 There are certain things that I share with my very patriotic American friends that talk about liberty, democracy, liberty, especially those who came to,

Speaker 2 I come from Charlottesville, Virginia, yes, same Charlottesville, came to harass us and in the name of liberty and freedom. And to them I say this,

Speaker 2 think about what liberty is,

Speaker 2 liberty without equality, because they came in the name of white supremacy to Charlottesville under the banner of liberty. Liberty without equality is just mere a word.

Speaker 2 In liberty, all participants are equal, politically equal, socially equal, economically equal, and we are working towards that.

Speaker 2 So our liberty is not complete because we are still struggling towards those equalities. But I remind them that

Speaker 2 rethink what liberty, what freedom, what democracy is.

Speaker 2 Nationalism type of sentiments have brought

Speaker 2 lots of trouble to mankind. And

Speaker 2 I think it begins to separate us to an extent where we begin to exclude each other. I am not in favor of any nationalism.

Speaker 2 There are

Speaker 2 necessary identities where we are born, where we live, what name we have.

Speaker 2 Those things are fine, but when the nationalism is used to exclude others, to segregate and then to take it to another level, meaning that this nation or this nationalism is better than the others, when we begin to do that,

Speaker 2 that just negates my understanding of

Speaker 2 nationalism or patriotism, or

Speaker 2 when it begins to segregate us with that level, then it is something that I disagree with.

Speaker 3 I have a slightly unrelated question.

Speaker 3 Obviously, your son, Captain Humayun Khan,

Speaker 3 was killed in Iraq in

Speaker 3 2004.

Speaker 3 And you write about how you were opposed to the Iraq war and the conversations you had with them about them, not because you're a pacifist, but because you know the history of the Middle East and the conflict between Sunnis and Shia and fear that the war would unleash that rivalry.

Speaker 3 Ultimately, of course, that's what happened.

Speaker 3 What do you think we should keep in mind as the U.S. becomes more involved in countries in the Middle East and beyond?

Speaker 3 Yeah, it requires

Speaker 2 thorough understanding.

Speaker 2 This country has resources, and there are

Speaker 2 knowledgeable people among us that can advise us better

Speaker 2 that certain parts of the world require restraint. Certain parts of the world and certain controversies require a restrained role, and

Speaker 2 deterrence serves much better than being flamboyant.

Speaker 3 You obviously came to prominence after the DNC Democratic Presidential Convention speech, and many people probably

Speaker 3 assume that you are a Democrat, but in the book, you write very fondly about President Reagan and his idea of the Shining City on the Hill. Do you see yourself as belonging to any one party?

Speaker 2 No, no.

Speaker 2 I have voted both ways, Republican and Democrats, and I continue to admire

Speaker 2 President Reagan's

Speaker 2 farewell speech where he calls America as

Speaker 2 shining city.

Speaker 2 But what touches my heart when he said that city has wall

Speaker 2 that wall has doors

Speaker 2 open to those who come with heart and courage he's talking about us immigrants coming here the spirit of immigration is so powerful

Speaker 2 people say that that

Speaker 2 this is country of immigrants. Not at all.

Speaker 2 This is country of spirit of immigrants, spirit of immigration, which is to make your life better and make life of your generation better, your community better. So it is that that

Speaker 2 I belong to. I belong to

Speaker 2 anyone that

Speaker 2 is for the good of this country. So I have voted Republican, I have voted Democrat.

Speaker 6 You mentioned this sentiment that democracy requires constant vigilance.

Speaker 6 What other forms of vigilance would you hope your fellow Americans would sort of adopt over the next few years?

Speaker 2 On 7th of November, take the time, go stand in line, regardless of weather, regardless of how cold it is. There is sacredness in that moment when

Speaker 2 an

Speaker 2 individual citizen stands up and says, I am going to go and vote today, regardless of for whom you vote, that choice is always there, Republican, Democrats, Independent. Participate, because

Speaker 2 with participation, you are strengthening the democracy and the democratic values. Without participation, democracy becomes vulnerable.

Speaker 2 Realize that you're participating to strengthen your rule of law. basic values, basic fundamental values that the rest of the mankind wishes to have.
You have it.

Speaker 2 It is your obligation to defend these values. So there is a sacredness, in my opinion,

Speaker 2 in participation in our democratic system.

Speaker 3 Thank you, Mr. Khan.
Appreciate you being here.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it was a pleasure meeting you and hearing your views. Thank you.

Speaker 2 Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 That was a fascinating conversation. What did you draw from it? What are some of your takeaways, Krishnadev?

Speaker 3 Well, one of the overarching themes in Khan's book, and even in the conversation, was this idea that he appreciated the U.S. because he came here as an immigrant.

Speaker 3 And it's a theme that runs through the book. And I actually...
Only when I finished reading it did I realize that this particular sentence that really stuck with me was on the inside cover blurb.

Speaker 3 And the sentence says, I'm an American patriot, not because I was born here, but because I was not. It's something a lot of people who, including me who came to the U.S.

Speaker 3 from elsewhere, appreciate because you're coming to a place where things that Americans take for granted, they simply don't exist in the places we come from.

Speaker 3 For instance, the right to free speech or to bear arms or to protest, but even simpler things like the order that we have in the US, for instance, a passage that Khan writes about his first visit to the DMV in Houston.

Speaker 3 This, of course, is a massive rite of passage

Speaker 3 in the U.S. and everyone complains about it, the bureaucracy and how awful it is.
But for Khan, Khan,

Speaker 3 it's a fantastic experience because it shows him that rules apply equally to everybody.

Speaker 3 And when you come from that part of the world where there are very distinct rules for folks who are elite and powerful and for the rest of us, it's a very eye-opening experience.

Speaker 3 Similarly, he talks about street addresses, which obviously we all take for granted.

Speaker 3 We at the Watergate are at 600 New Hampshire Avenue. It can only mean one thing in the US.

Speaker 3 Whereas when you come from a place where addresses are much more informal, you know, under a tree, make a left at the shop. This is how informally addresses are given, directions are given in places.

Speaker 3 And Khan talks about that in his book. And it might sound funny, but when you come from a place without order, things like a street address or a DMV experience is nothing short of a miracle.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's super interesting.

Speaker 2 And we wanted to start the conversation with Khan because he's got a very particular understanding and experience around patriotism, patriotism to America, what patriotism demands or requires of a citizen, and the sacrifice that might be inherent in patriotism.

Speaker 2 Next, we're going to hear from a few veterans of the American Armed Services, and we're going to bring our colleagues Jeffrey Goldberg and Alex Wagner into the conversation. Stay tuned.

Speaker 6 Some tech leaders question whether we're in an AI bubble, but others say the best of what AI has to offer is yet to come.

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Speaker 2 And we're back. And now we are joined by my esteemed co-hosts, Alex Wagner.
Hello, Alex.

Speaker 6 Oh, hello, Matt.

Speaker 2 And Jeffrey Goldberg. Hello, Jeff.

Speaker 5 Why are you guys always so fake happy?

Speaker 6 We're thrilled to be together.

Speaker 2 And Jeff and I are in the same room, which is. We're never happy.

Speaker 5 This is great.

Speaker 2 Why are you always so fake sad?

Speaker 5 I'm not, you know, actually, I'm an up-with-people kind of person.

Speaker 5 I am, but I just, it's a faux sophistication. I have to sort of seem like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders.

Speaker 2 And of course, Krishna.

Speaker 5 It's part of the job.

Speaker 2 Krishnadev is still with us over here.

Speaker 2 Hello. Oh, hi, Krishnadev.
Hi. Hi.

Speaker 5 Welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 3 So, welcome.

Speaker 2 We just heard Krishnadev's interview along with our colleague Segal Samuel with Keezer Khan. And I reached out before this conversation to a few veterans,

Speaker 2 folks who had themselves served in various American engagements overseas. And I want to play you a couple of the things that they said to kick us off for this part of the conversation.

Speaker 2 I asked them about their feelings about nationalism, patriotism, and the military. Here's one clip from Army veteran Ella Misha.

Speaker 8 As a U.S. Army veteran, patriotism for me was very simple.
It was to serve and protect and defend the United States of America as a soldier.

Speaker 8 And for me, my time in the military is always something that I'm going to be very proud of because what I witnessed in the military was

Speaker 8 people of different races and backgrounds and ethnicities working together for a single unified mission.

Speaker 8 This is something that I've yet to witness, this level of co-working and cooperation in the civilian sector.

Speaker 2 And I'll play you one more. Here's John, who served for more than two decades in the Marine Corps.

Speaker 9 A veteran, I spent over twenty years in the Marine Corps with time in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Speaker 9 And recently I've a lot of people have been talking about why I did that and and whether I was over there to protect people's rights to stand for the national anthem or not, stand for the national anthem.

Speaker 9 And we're an EO. And I think

Speaker 9 I can honestly say that over the twenty years plus, I never woke up in the morning and thought, hey, I'm going to go out and protect the uh rights of my fellow American citizens today, you know, the right of the free press or the right to assemble to uh

Speaker 9 keep m firearms or the the right of speech. And the reason, I think, is because I don't think that those rights have been threatened from without for a considerable um amount of time.

Speaker 9 You know, barring um a man in the highcastle sort of scenario, you know, World War II, you know, seventy-five years ago, maybe.

Speaker 9 Um I'm from North Carolina and uh see bumper stickers every day that say, you know, if you can read this, thank a teacher, which I completely agree with.

Speaker 9 Thank the world teachers, we should pay it more. But the second part says, if you can read it in English, thank a veteran.
You know,

Speaker 9 no need to thank me for that. I don't think I had a whole lot to do with that.

Speaker 5 I like that point. It's an interesting point.
We always do that. We're protecting our rights at home, but I like that.

Speaker 6 It doesn't feel like they're under assault.

Speaker 5 I think that's fascinating.

Speaker 5 I disagree with his analysis, but it's a subtle analysis. The point I would make is, and you know, where Alex and I are sitting in Manhattan

Speaker 5 a week of a terror attack, apparently a lone wolf, but somebody who thinks he's in ISIS.

Speaker 5 And, you know, the simple truth of the matter is if our society, if we have more and more terrorism in this country that emanates from the Middle East in some form or fashion, that's when we start to trim our own rights.

Speaker 5 And we start having a debate in this country about the limits of free speech and the limits of free assembly and all this sort of thing.

Speaker 5 So there is this argument to be made that by fighting this overseas, you're not fighting it at home. It doesn't work so cleanly, obviously, all the time.
But if you can deal with terrorism

Speaker 5 at its physical sources, then you don't have to deal with it here.

Speaker 5 And the key difference between terrorism deaths and bathtub deaths is that bathtub deaths, people always say, well, more people die in bathtubs each year than

Speaker 5 die at the hands of terrorists. That might be true, but bathtubs aren't conspiring to

Speaker 5 kill larger numbers of people than they kill.

Speaker 5 The threat of terrorism in America is such that Americans react to terrorism by wondering whether they have too much freedom and whether our constitutional protections are worth shedding for the sake of security.

Speaker 5 And so there is this argument to be made that fighting over there in Iraq and Afghanistan, dealing with terrorism where it emanates from, keeps you from having to deal with it here. Anyway,

Speaker 6 yeah, bathtubs don't prompt debate about recalibrating constitutional rights. Right.

Speaker 5 Bathtub accidents are tragic, but they're steady. Yeah.
Bathtub deaths don't pose a threat to civil liberties, nor do traffic accidents or DWIs.

Speaker 5 They're all bad, but terrorism, the threat to terrorism is not merely to American bodies. It's to American openness and American constitutional freedom.

Speaker 6 Right, because it shakes the American. public in a much deeper emotional way, and it sort of causes us to ask sort of fundamental mindsets.

Speaker 2 Most people want security first.

Speaker 5 Security is a necessary precondition to having discussions about liberties and rights.

Speaker 2 It's interesting to hear you make that point, Jeff, particularly right after we heard Keyser Khan talk about equality as a precondition for liberty.

Speaker 2 Of course, security and liberty is the classic trade-off, and I'm going to refrain from butchering Ben Franklin here.

Speaker 2 But the way he framed that point, equality as being a foundation for liberty, struck me as deeply perceptive.

Speaker 2 And Krishnadev, we wanted to hear from Kezer Khan in part because he knows incredibly well what it is possible to lose, one's liberty, one's son.

Speaker 2 From what you heard in that interview with him, what was it that you think he finds it most important to protect? What was his son, Captain Hamayan Khan? What did his son die protecting?

Speaker 3 You know, Keither Khan is an interesting guy because one of the things he said was that he... the idea that he appreciated the U.S.
because he is an immigrant.

Speaker 3 He said in his book, and I make this point too, that he's an American patriot, not because he was born here, but because he wasn't.

Speaker 3 And I think that's something you get from appreciating the United States when you come from places where things that Americans take for granted simply don't exist.

Speaker 3 For instance, the right to free speech or to bear arms or even to protest, but even simpler things, which Keither Khan writes about in his book, like the order we have in the U.S.

Speaker 3 For instance, and he talks about this is, I know that folks complain about going to the DMV, but he writes about his first experiences at a DMV in Houston and how everyone, despite their national, religious, or ethnic backgrounds, had to follow the same rules at the DMV.

Speaker 3 This is a pretty powerful idea for someone who comes from a place where there are explicitly different set of rules for the powerful and everyone else.

Speaker 3 Or if you take something more mundane, like a street address, Khan writes about how when you give directions to your home in Pakistan,

Speaker 3 it may go something like, take a ride at the big tree and then look for the house with the balcony. and that's not my house.
My house is down the road.

Speaker 3 It sounds absurd, but when you come from a place without order, a street address is nothing short of a miracle. And this may seem kind of a bizarre to equate it with U.S.

Speaker 3 operations overseas, but these are things that people here take for granted. And they're actually quite important things that most other places just simply lack.

Speaker 6 I can absolutely sympathize, Krishnadev, with Keeser Khan's assessment that immigrants in some ways display

Speaker 6 a strain of American patriotism that natural-born citizens sometimes do not, or an appreciation for this country.

Speaker 6 My mom was born in Burma and I think, and lived actually in Europe for 20 years recently, and

Speaker 6 is the most fervent quote-unquote patriot you'll ever see, more so than I think

Speaker 6 her daughter, if you're just talking about the rhetoric around America.

Speaker 6 And I think it's really born of the sense that this country country has been a place of incredible opportunity for her, but a really unswerving belief in the inherent goodness of

Speaker 6 America and the concept.

Speaker 6 At the same time, you know, she's been hugely critical and very dismayed of the current administration.

Speaker 6 So it prompts that question, Matt, what is the difference between nationalism and patriotism, right?

Speaker 6 Because she would consider herself a patriot, but I think some of the stuff she said about the president, people would say, you're not a patriot at all.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Well, she's obviously not a blood and soil.
I mean,

Speaker 5 she's a nationalist, right? Well, that's the whole idea. That's why the blood and soil people are so,

Speaker 5 I mean, profoundly wrong. It's like, we're, we're a creedal nation.
We're not a blood or soil nation.

Speaker 5 You, you, you, either, you, you, you, when you buy the idea, the American idea, the American creed, that's what makes you an American. That's the beautiful thing.

Speaker 5 And that's what a lot of people are trying to reverse.

Speaker 2 There's this other dimension in the conversation with Kant and from what we heard from from the veterans, which is that right now, conflict in the American sphere, military conflict specifically, can feel abstract.

Speaker 2 One of the most significant attacks on American soil in recent years is in fact a cyber attack on the American election.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 given that, given the abstraction of conflict, I mean, you know, we heard from teachers, we did this call out to veterans, and one of the things that we heard, for example, was from teachers who made the point that

Speaker 2 students nowadays do not see, unlike the Vietnam War, say, students aren't seeing the images of conflict, the toll of conflict on their televisions every night in their living rooms. And

Speaker 2 Jim Fallows made this point in a piece for our magazine just a few years ago called The Tragedy of the American Military, that

Speaker 2 the way we think of American, of military conflict,

Speaker 2 is as this distant idea abstracted from

Speaker 2 the actual costs that it imposes. Aaron Ross Powell, right.

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 this is the fundamental problem today is that we got what we wanted, which was an all-volunteer force, right?

Speaker 5 Nobody's compelled to go to the military, which means that

Speaker 5 it becomes a caste in a way. It becomes a subsection of a population.

Speaker 5 And that's the reason we don't see war as much as we should, because 99%, I mean, John Kelly, the chief of staff, the White House Chief of Staff, has some illegitimate complaints

Speaker 5 in the last round of Trump drama, but he had some legitimate observations to be made. 1% of the country, well, 1% of the country is doing the fighting for the other 99%.

Speaker 5 And that allows presidents, by the way, the volunteer force is a good thing in many ways, but it's a bad thing in others. It allows presidents

Speaker 5 to go to war without really the consent of

Speaker 5 the people because the people are not at risk.

Speaker 6 We've been talking about this idea about institutions that are meant to serve the American public writ large, but increasingly serve only a section of it.

Speaker 6 We talked about it in the context of public schools, and I think

Speaker 6 Jeff made news in my own personal world when he said, you know, private school is

Speaker 6 morally questionable if you're talking about this compact that we've established.

Speaker 6 um and i feel like the military

Speaker 6 yeah in my world

Speaker 6 mine too i'm with you alex in my mind and i feel like it's the same question here with the military which is you know it's supposed to be all for one one for all but increasingly you have castes of children who go to public schools because they

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 don't have the resources to go elsewhere. And you have the haves and the have-nots, the division there.
And the same is true in large part in the military, right?

Speaker 5 And it's generational. I mean, look at John Kelly.
His sons, one of whom was tragically killed, his sons are the ones who take up the burden.

Speaker 5 And so it gets passed down and it becomes more and more isolated from the rest of them.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and I think it's also Kelly is making a sort of moral and ethical decision, and his sons were too. I'm going to serve my country.
And I think that

Speaker 6 though they didn't necessarily need to, same is true for people of means who decide, I'm going to send my child here because I think it's morally, ethically, and perhaps in some degree, educationally, the better option.

Speaker 6 But it's a host of externalities externalities that drive people to re-engage in public institutions, which is not sort of the way it's supposed to be.

Speaker 2 Do you think that

Speaker 2 John Kelly and other military leaders have too much power at this moment in the Trump administration? This has been a point that David Frum has made here on Radio Atlantic previously.

Speaker 2 Far and away, the most important bureaucracy in the United States government is the military.

Speaker 2 And one of the questions I worry about a lot is, to what extent is the president of the United States now in the chain of command?

Speaker 2 How seriously do the military take his orders?

Speaker 2 How autonomously are the military acting independent of his orders?

Speaker 2 And although I personally, and I suspect many people would be vastly cheered if James Mattis were president of the United States right now rather than Donald Trump, he's not.

Speaker 6 I think that there are a lot of people who would sort of look at,

Speaker 6 I mean, especially this week when we have the indictments unsealed and see the,

Speaker 6 shall we say, checkered resumes or non-existent resumes that this administration was pulling from in terms of its hiring Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos.

Speaker 5 I love it when you say Papadopoulos, by the way.

Speaker 6 Yeah. I just call him Papa.

Speaker 2 Papadop. Papa Dopp.
Papadop. Papadop.
Papadop.

Speaker 6 There's a certain number of Americans that are happy to have him pull military personnel for the administration because they are qualified to hold public office, at least insofar as they've been educated and pursued a sort of rigorous career path, if you will.

Speaker 5 Well, A, the military is still the one institution that seems to poll well with the average American, in part because these are

Speaker 5 go-getting, barrel-chested freedom fighter-looking people in handsome uniforms who seem to be able to achieve things that other institutions.

Speaker 6 Well, and have chosen to sat, I mean, let's be fair, they have also chosen to serve their country in a way that most Americans do not envision.

Speaker 5 Right, right. So there's simultaneously great admiration for the choice, and very few people are making that choice.

Speaker 5 I mean, the interesting permutation in the moment is that you have a situation in the American government in which we have a group of generals who are protecting the United States from its president.

Speaker 5 That sounds not very American in a kind of way. I mean, I'm putting it in the most corrosively cynical way possible, but that's the way a lot of people feel about the current situation.

Speaker 5 In ordinary times, you wouldn't want Jim Mattis, recently retired from the Marines as a general, to be the civilian in charge of the Pentagon, because he's actually not really a civilian in mentality.

Speaker 5 He spent most of his adult life in uniform. But on the other hand, he seems like a sane, rational, smart, intelligent,

Speaker 2 responsible person.

Speaker 5 And so

Speaker 5 we are leaning in a completely different context.

Speaker 5 We're over-leaning on the military once again because we understand that these are among the best people and obviously the people who are deciding to make sacrifices in a time in American history when Americans are not being asked to make sacrifices.

Speaker 5 But it's not, things are not in balance. That's just everything feels out of balance.

Speaker 2 I mean, I do also wonder, though, and this was something that kind of came across in some of what we heard from veterans as well,

Speaker 2 that is that very public support for the military, does that kind of flow directly from the military being something of an abstraction of not being familiar with it?

Speaker 2 There were several veterans that said, you know, the military is like the more you look at it, and Jim Fowler's made this point for us too, the closer you are to it, the more you look at it, the more you realize it, you understand it as an institution with its own institutional, a large, complex, bureaucratic institution with the same challenges, complexities, and problems that any such institution has and giving it near universal deference and neglect.

Speaker 5 Yeah, there is too much deference. That's an overreaction to the Vietnam period when there was contempt and often contempt expressed directly at enlisted soldiers, not even at the generals.

Speaker 5 And people, American society, recoiled from that in a way. And now we've gone probably a little bit too far.

Speaker 6 Well, and we have a professional class of soldiers. It's sort of the out of sight, out of mind.
I think our version of Maya Culpa is to afford the military a very long runway.

Speaker 2 You mean we feel bad. We feel bad.

Speaker 5 They're doing this dirty.

Speaker 6 They're literally sacrificing, they're putting their lives on the line. So who are we?

Speaker 2 Krishna Dev, you spend most of your time writing about the the world or the world outside of America.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 what do you think is most distinct

Speaker 2 about

Speaker 2 America's relationship with its military, particularly at this moment from

Speaker 3 anyone else? I think in many ways

Speaker 3 because most of the Western world has

Speaker 3 has a professional military, I would actually argue that the relationship is very similar to how other countries view their military, and that I think it is very respectful and very deferential.

Speaker 3 And as Alex pointed out, you know, maybe there's some guilt in it in that we don't serve, but there's this large group of people who actually do serve and put their lives at risk.

Speaker 3 And with that comes a deference, quite rightly, and it's seen as an honest organization in

Speaker 3 a country where much of the establishment is now polling quite poorly, whether it's Congress or the media or the courts, but the army, the military does

Speaker 3 quite well. This is true, I think, in most other places,

Speaker 3 ones which are actively involved in conflicts overseas, and even ones that are not. It's just that

Speaker 3 you have a professional class of soldiers,

Speaker 3 and I think people

Speaker 3 are quite

Speaker 3 respectful toward them.

Speaker 2 And I want to ask one last question to you, Jeff.

Speaker 2 You've done some service, some national service,

Speaker 2 Not in the U.S., but in Israel.

Speaker 5 No, no, I was in the Israeli army 30 years ago.

Speaker 5 And well, the experience there is so different. And this is why I am theoretically, at least, in favor of a universal draft or universal conscription, or at least universal service

Speaker 5 in America. I mean, I don't want to force a male or a female who doesn't want to carry a gun for his or her country to carry a gun.
But I think that you come out of high school.

Speaker 5 I think you should serve your country for a year or two,

Speaker 5 whatever it is, fighting forest fires, digging ditches, teaching in schools, volunteering in hospitals.

Speaker 5 The experience in Israel is that, and this is changed, from what I understand, it's changed over three decades as the army has become more professionalized and a little bit more remote.

Speaker 5 But still, most people get drafted into the army and they mix with people they just would never have mixed with otherwise.

Speaker 5 So you have kids from really upper crusty high schools mixing with people from very poor development towns. In the Israeli context, it's, you know,

Speaker 5 Jews of Eastern European extraction mixing with Moroccan and Egyptian and Iranian and Iraqi Jews. And, you know, those populations don't sometimes mix too easily.
And so it has a unifying

Speaker 5 effect on a national culture. And I think that's one of, I mean, you know, we've been thinking at the Atlantic for a long time, obviously, about Iplurbus Unum.
You know,

Speaker 5 what is the thing that binds us as opposed to the, you know, there's such an emphasis on the many now and not the one in American culture. And

Speaker 5 I wouldn't necessarily argue that this is the reason to do national service, to sort of force people together. National service should be used to make the country

Speaker 5 actually practically better place. But a side benefit is that

Speaker 5 you will have to be with people unlike you. And once you get to meet somebody in 3D, not just across Facebook Facebook or social media, it becomes a little bit more difficult to hate them

Speaker 5 when they're real and in front of you.

Speaker 6 That's why it's so great to record this podcast with you in the same room, Jeff.

Speaker 5 Yeah, because we're just, we can't hate each other anymore.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we can't hate each other anymore.

Speaker 5 As we've always, yeah, it's always been rough for both of us.

Speaker 6 But that is, that is, that is exactly the spirit of that one veteran that we heard from earlier. She talked about co-working and cooperation in the military.

Speaker 6 And that experience changes your worldview.

Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely. With that, let us turn to our closing segment.
Keepers.

Speaker 2 Jeff, Alex, Krishnadev, what have you heard, read, watched, experienced, listened to, you name it recently that you do not want to forget. Krishnadev, why don't we start with you?

Speaker 3 I read this piece in the

Speaker 3 New York Times Sunday Review a couple of weeks ago by a writer called Asad Hussain.

Speaker 3 I believe he's Somali, who lives in Kenya, and it it detailed a road trip he took in Somalia in territory that's controlled controlled by al-Shabaab.

Speaker 3 It was a really fantastic piece, and it was very powerfully written, but

Speaker 3 it also speaks, I think, a great deal to how difficult a task it is to,

Speaker 3 even if militaries are successful in defeating terrorist organizations, how difficult it is to implement the rule of law because al-Shabaab seems to have done that in the land it controls, according to this article.

Speaker 3 It was a very good piece.

Speaker 2 So, I'm going to go next. John Green,

Speaker 2 noted author,

Speaker 2 YouTube personality, mench person.

Speaker 2 He has been on a book tour for his book, Turtles All the Way Down, very well-reviewed book, which has been praised in part for making visceral vivid and understandable the experience of having obsessive compulsive disorder, of having OCD, which John himself does.

Speaker 2 And the other day, so he's on this book tour, and he took a moment. He does this video pairing with his brother Hank,

Speaker 2 Who where they just send each other videos on YouTube They say good morning Hank.

Speaker 2 Good morning John and they kind of exchange video letters to one another and we all get to watch and his thank you to his brother at the end of this episode taped from his book tour was just delightful.

Speaker 10 I want to play it really briefly and while I do really love to tour and talk with people about the book it's also a bit overwhelming.

Speaker 10 So Hank, I hope you'll forgive this moment of sincerity, but watching you perform at your old high school last night, I kept thinking about how incredibly kind you've been to me the last few weeks.

Speaker 10 Like you're taking a month away from your family and your many jobs to be on tour with me. You turned your freaking Twitter profile into actual turtles all the way down.

Speaker 10 And you've just been there for me so consistently in a way that frankly goes back to when you were a student at that high school. I am really lucky and really grateful.
Thank you.

Speaker 2 It was a reminder to me of the simple importance of gratitude. He talks about it being overwhelming and being, you know, kind of flooded with all these folks.

Speaker 2 And on the one hand, you know, he's very grateful for the amount of attention and respect that his book has drawn and the fact that people are willing to come see him and sit through book reading and ask him to sign his book and be fans and all that.

Speaker 2 But he pauses just to thank his brother for being a great person.

Speaker 2 And it made me think about all the people in my life who I should

Speaker 2 I should not forget to thank all the people who make every single day a pleasure. It's such an elemental,

Speaker 2 basic thing. But it's easy, particularly in a chaotic and tumultuous moment, to forget.

Speaker 2 Thanks.

Speaker 2 Alex, how about you?

Speaker 6 Well, as long as we're talking about America, patriotism, and nationalism, I'm going to talk about America's greatest sport, which is baseball. Right.
This is the week of the fall class.

Speaker 2 Football's going down, right?

Speaker 6 Listen, I'm not going to to go out there and get the hate mail, but my sport is baseball. It is

Speaker 6 foundational to the marriage that I'm in. And I will say that this week.

Speaker 5 Your husband was one of the thousand best baseball players in Chicago when he was in high school, wasn't he?

Speaker 6 In his neighborhood.

Speaker 6 I don't know. I won't impugn Samuel.

Speaker 2 He was a real.

Speaker 5 He's a ball player.

Speaker 6 But I'm reminded in these moments of division when we talk about how far apart we are, what an incredibly wonderful, beautiful, Don Dolilo-esque thing happens to this country when the fall classic is on the air.

Speaker 6 And the Dodgers

Speaker 6 and the Astros were incredibly well matched. Statistically, the two best matched teams ever to play in the World Series.
And those seven games could not have come at a better week.

Speaker 6 Thank you, baseball.

Speaker 2 Amen to that. I I happened to be at a bar after a wedding

Speaker 2 with the most delightful 80-year-old veteran of theater

Speaker 2 who was reminiscing Angela, who spent much time reminiscing about being, for example, an understudy to Florence Henderson.

Speaker 2 We happened to be at this bar when the World Series was playing after the wedding was over. And I was so pleasantly delighted to find Angela just geeking out to the World Series.

Speaker 2 Dodgers versus Astros was on, and she was like,

Speaker 2 if the Dodgers win, I'm burning the whole thing down. It's so great.

Speaker 6 No spoiler alerts here. No spoiler alerts.

Speaker 2 No spoiler alerts. Jeff, where do you want to keep?

Speaker 5 Ken Burns's and Lynn Novick's documentary on the Vietnam War. I just want to bring this back to our conversation.
There's a moment in there in which

Speaker 5 some film of Jane Fonda and her visit to North Vietnam, where she's actually with the North Vietnamese army and she's calling for the trial and possible execution of American POWs.

Speaker 5 We all know about Jane Fonda and her little adventure in North Vietnam,

Speaker 5 but I never saw such,

Speaker 5 I never saw that film. And I asked Ken Burns about it.
I said, I don't remember ever seeing that. And he said, that's because we've just unearthed this particular bit of film.

Speaker 5 And it's really striking how vitriolic she is toward American POWs. And it reminds me that the country is actually in a better place now than we were in Vietnam.
This is a constant preach.

Speaker 5 This is a thank you very much. You know, when you yell preach, then it sets me off on another thing.

Speaker 5 We are in a much different place now than we were in Vietnam, in a better place, where at least through all of our divisions, we don't take out our anger at American soldiers in the way that anger was taken out at American soldiers during the Vietnam period.

Speaker 5 And, you know, there's a lot of talk now about

Speaker 5 is the country as divided as it was during Vietnam? Is the country divided as it was before the Civil War?

Speaker 5 I would say in one notable aspect, and based on watching this Ken Burns documentary, that we are in a much better place than we were during the height of the Vietnam War.

Speaker 5 We have a broad-based, still bipartisan respect for the people who serve and the people who choose to possibly sacrifice their lives in the defense of their country.

Speaker 5 And that didn't exist in the same way during the Vietnam period.

Speaker 6 You know what did exist from the Civil War to the Vietnam War to today?

Speaker 5 I know what you're going to say. What, Alex?

Speaker 2 60 years. Happy birthday, Atlantic.
Happy Atlantic.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 5 Happy birthday, Atlantic.

Speaker 3 Happy birthday. The big 160.

Speaker 6 Looking better than ever. Right.

Speaker 2 It doesn't look a day over 154.

Speaker 2 It is so true.

Speaker 5 It is so true. It's our birthday.

Speaker 2 Long may she wave. Here's to the next 160.
Yeah,

Speaker 5 I wish we had a John Batiste song to play us out. It's a very patriotic tune that we can use to celebrate that.

Speaker 2 I may be able to grant that wish, John Beach.

Speaker 5 I think we can do it.

Speaker 2 As always, it has been a pleasure. Krishnadev, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 3 You're welcome.

Speaker 2 Jeff and Alex, catch you again soon.

Speaker 6 Catch you soon.

Speaker 2 That'll do it for this week's Radio Atlantic. Thanks again to Keezer Khan, to our colleague Krishnadev Kalimur and Segal Sam Yule, and to my esteemed co-hosts Jeff and Alex.

Speaker 2 This episode was produced and edited by Kevin Townsend with production support from Kim Lau.

Speaker 2 Thanks to Paul Ruist and Argo Studios for engineering support, and as always, to the one and only John Batiste, creator of our theme. We've got a special treat this week after these credits conclude.

Speaker 2 The trailer to our newest podcast, The Atlantic Interview, which debuts November 8th. As always, please look for us at facebook.com slash radioatlantic and theatlantic.com slash radio.

Speaker 2 And if you like what you're hearing, please don't forget to rate and review us in Apple Podcasts and subscribe in your preferred podcast app.

Speaker 2 You'll find detailed show notes linked from the episode description. And now, stay tuned for a special preview of our newest show.

Speaker 3 Hi, I'm Adrienne Greene, managing editor of The Atlantic.

Speaker 6 We were started in 1857 when some of the greatest minds in American arts and letters convened to form a magazine centered around the American idea.

Speaker 6 The magazine has given voice to some of the nation's most significant ideas and debates.

Speaker 6 And now, 160 years after its founding, we bring you The Atlantic Interview, a podcast featuring our editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.

Speaker 5 Who is sitting right here in the studio with you? I just want to note that for the record.

Speaker 6 And since you're here, tell us what this is all about.

Speaker 5 The podcast is called The Atlantic Interview. So this is The Atlantic interviewing people.

Speaker 6 Jeff, The Atlantic is a magazine. How is it going to interview people?

Speaker 5 Well, Well, I'm going to interview them on behalf of The Atlantic. I mean, it's fairly self-explanatory.

Speaker 5 Our goal is to spend a lot of time with one person, one person who's interesting or famous or important or interesting, famous, and important.

Speaker 5 Really, the most interesting people I could find out there. We have Chimamanda Dichie, the great Nigerian-American novelist.

Speaker 6 I used to think Americans wouldn't bow to Power in the way they have done.

Speaker 5 We got Jake Tapper, who's a famous Twitter personality who also hosts most of the day on CNN.

Speaker 2 I just revealed something that I've never revealed to anybody before

Speaker 5 that I find everybody in the world annoying. I think that comes through.

Speaker 3 I mean, at least with me.

Speaker 5 Got the mayor of Los Angeles talking about tacos, and I'm really not even kidding.

Speaker 11 Yucca's tacos, they have the best cochinita pivil, which is this marinated pork dish from like a Yucatan. It's in Los Felos.
You kind of stand in a parking lot across from a grocery store.

Speaker 11 Best taco town.

Speaker 5 Did you audience test that answer?

Speaker 11 Yeah, we shopped out for about 17 weeks.

Speaker 5 We're going to try to leave it loose and just sort of see if we can have just a teeny bit of fun.

Speaker 1 Let's hope so.

Speaker 2 The Atlantic.

Speaker 5 Whoa, that was cold.

Speaker 5 That was very cold, dude.

Speaker 6 The Atlantic interview, Jeffrey Goldberg, no scratch.

Speaker 6 The first interview with Chimamanda Adicie and a very special guest.

Speaker 5 Do you want to know who the special guest is?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I can't really tell you, but it rhymes with Shmana Hisi Schmotz.

Speaker 3 Well, Shmanahese Schmotz.

Speaker 6 It's your favorite podcast app on November 8th.

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