和最近大多数晚上一样，我正在刷 X（一个社交平台）来打发时间。几秒钟后，我看到了纽约州议会议员兼国会候选人克莱尔·瓦尔迪兹（Claire Valdez）发布的一篇令人愤怒的帖子。她在帖子中提到了墨西哥人民反抗“帝国主义”的斗争，并承诺要将这种斗争精神带入国会。她的言论中隐含着对“帝国主义”的强烈蔑视，这引发了一个显而易见的问题：美国在这个过程中扮演了什么角色？她和她所在的民主社会党（DSA）的同志们究竟是想改善美国的政治体制，还是想从内部瓦解这个体制？
Like most evenings recently, I was scrolling X to fill some idle time. Within seconds, I came across a rather rage-inducing post by New York State assembly member and congressional candidate Claire Valdez. Invoking Mexico’s struggle against “empire,” she promised to carry that struggle into Congress. Her framing, focused around the thinly veiled disdain for “empire,” raises an obvious question. What role does America assume in this story? Is the American political community one that she, alongside her DSA comrades, wants to improve, or is it an adversary to be dismantled from within?
六十五年前，社会主义活动家尤金·德布斯（Eugene Debs）在独立日发表了演讲。与当代的社会主义者不同，德布斯对自己的观点毫不掩饰：他公开表达了对美国国旗的蔑视，并宣称胜利的社会主义将会彻底废除美国国旗以及所有其他资本主义统治的象征。这种观点至今仍在现代民主社会党中延续着。在社会主义者的眼中，美国的制度和国家象征都是可以抛弃的——因为它们代表着他们所憎恶的社会秩序。请不要误会：这种敌意并非是某个原本善良且爱国的思想体系最近才出现的“腐败”现象；实际上，德布斯在一个多世纪前就已经提出了这种观点和思想体系。
Six-score and five years ago, socialist activist Eugene Debs delivered an Independence Day address. Unlike the latest generation of prominent socialists, Debs left little ambiguity about his view of the American project. He frankly expresses his disdain for the stars and stripes, and declared that a triumphant socialism would haul down the flag alongside every other symbol of capitalist rule. The underlying premise survives to this day within the modern DSA. American institutions and national symbols are disposable to the socialist, because they embody a social order that the movement despises. Make no mistake: this hostility is not the recent corruption of an otherwise well-intentioned and patriotic doctrine. Debs was already supplying its language and ethos over a century ago.
用左派的话来说，将一个国家完全等同于它的不公正行为是“有问题的”：这种观点不仅否定了通过改革制度来更好地服务于人民的可能性，也彻底否定了整个国家的发展方向。宪法赋予的权利、民主制度中的制衡机制，以及那些推动改革的程序，都被视为“非法的”或“不合法的”。无论如何，这些制度本身就因为与产生它们的国家有关联而“有罪”。
Identifying a nation entirely with its injustices is, to adopt the language of the left, “problematic.” It abolishes the separation between reforming institutions to better serve the populace and the repudiation of the national project altogether. Constitutional rights and democratic checks and balances, the procedures that enable reform – all fall to sweeping verdict of illegitimacy. In any case, these institutions remain guilty by their association to the country that produced them.
DSA本身就在2021年通过的一项决议中，明确为这种世界观背书，宣称美国“从来不是、也将永远不会是推动解放的力量。”反对美国的某些具体行动，当然可以有理有据。然而，宣称美国从未促进解放、也永远不会促进解放，就排除了改进的可能，并全盘否定它所取得的一切。在社会主义者看来，美国获得救赎的可能性被完全排除。一个已经对美国的整个过去、现在和未来作出裁断的群体，美国人究竟还要改变什么，才能满足它？在这里，美国的过错被当成一种不可改变的国家特征。
The DSA themselves gave this worldview explicit credibility in a resolution adopted in 2021, declaring that the United States “has never been and will never be a force for liberation.” Opposition to particular American actions can, of course, be justified. Yet, the declaration that America can never and has never advanced liberation forecloses the possibility of improvement, and dismisses everything that it has achieved. In the eyes of the socialist, redemption is discounted entirely. What could Americans possibly change to satisfy a group that has already adjudicated its entire past, present, and future? American wrongdoing, in this instance, is an immutable national characteristic.
当然，允许人们保有民族自豪感这件事，也是因人而异的。在她美国独立日的帖子中，瓦尔德斯明确提到波多黎各、巴勒斯坦，以及为“我们应得的世界”而斗争。她甚至根本没有提到美国。然而，在庆祝墨西哥独立时，瓦尔德斯却称颂自己的墨西哥血统以及墨西哥人民的历史，将其视为尊严和政治使命的源泉。这些信息之间的对比提出了一个重要问题：她的世界观是否也允许美国人拥有类似的民族自豪感，或对自己国家的归属感？此外，为什么民族自豪感在海外是灵感的来源，在国内却会受到怀疑？
There is, of course, selective permissibility over who is allowed to maintain a sense of national pride. In her Fourth of July post, Valdez explicitly mentioned Puerto Rico, Palestine, and a fight for the “world we deserve.” America itself was not even mentioned. When celebrating Mexican independence, however, Valdez hailed her Mexican heritage and the history of the Mexican people as a source of dignity and political purpose. The contrast in these messages raises an important point: does her worldview entitle Americans to a similar sense of pride or attachment to their own nation? Furthermore, why is national pride a source of inspiration abroad, but an object of suspicion domestically?
如果右翼势力想要击败民主社会主义者（DSA），就必须不断揭露这种内在的矛盾。仅仅凭空指责这些政客“不爱国”，而却不提供任何证据，是行不通的；更有效的办法是迫使他们将自己治理美国的野心，与他们自己所宣称的“民主社会主义运动永远无法成为一股积极力量”的信念相矛盾。当民主社会主义者的候选人承诺降低食品价格或冻结租金时，我们必须要求他们对自己的运动目标作出解释。不要过多追问他们希望摧毁什么，而应该问问：在他们试图治理的这个国家中，他们认为哪些东西是值得保留的。
If the right wants to defeat the DSA, it must relentlessly expose this contradiction. To call these politicians un-American, without substantiating the claim, is a losing proposition. Forcing them to reconcile their ambitions to govern Americans with their movement’s declared belief that it will never be a force for good is the better argument. When DSA candidates promise cheaper groceries or frozen rents, we must make them answer for the broader ambitions of their movement. Ask less about what they wish to tear down. Ask instead what they believe is worth preserving about the country they seek to govern.