" (Lipsitz 255). Lipsitz calls this the "new patriotism," but politicians have long taken refuge in some image of patriotism to endear themselves to their constituency. Lipsitz rightly sees such an action as "defensive, embattled, and insecure" (Lipsitz 255). He also finds that this form of patriotism often involves more public show than real action to create a community through inclusion and democratic measures (Lipsitz 256), and indeed it is often divisive, separating the presumed patriotic group from the "others" in society, with the others often being immigrants, ethnic enclaves, foreigners, and so on.
One of the symbolic actions of the new patriotism is to revive lost causes and reshape history in a new form, and one of the primary sources of this element is the Vietnam War and the perception of American loss in that war. The ghost of Vietnam is raised every time it seems that America may become embroiled in another foreign conflict, and often the new conflict serves more as an opportunity for both sides to refight the Vietnam War than to address the issue at hand. He notes that while some may claim to want to put vietnam behind us, what they are actually doing is trying to go back to Vietnam, "to retroactively fight the war all over again, but this time to not only win the war but also undo the cultural changes it is thought to have generated" (Lipsitz 257).
As Lipsitz notes, though, blaming Vietnam for all the changes that have come about in U.S. society since is simply wrong, but these changes have unleashed certain forces which have made people feel that they have less power over their lives. For neoconservatives, a way of regaining this power is to assert a patriotic image of power. If America feels less powerful after having lost the war in Vietnam, then projecting an image of what it means to be patriotic is a way of regaining that sense of power and of doing so by giving the people something to aspire to and ...