My analysis hinges on the idea of family and the ways in which it is cynically used. The power of the idea lies in the unqualified loyalty and intimate connections it typically invokes, as well as the extreme sacrifices many of us would make for those we count as close family – for example, our fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers. Something typically thought of as a wrongdoing – such as killing another human being – might be afforded a measure of moral immunity if it is in defense of close family. The moral complication I will consider arises when the idea of family is deployed in the service of interests that are not strictly familial such as business, power, and nationalism. For example, in his 1967 address to the National Legislative Conference in San Antonio, Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson argued for American involvement in the Vietnam conflict using explicitly familial terms: “I would rather stand in Vietnam, in our time, and by meeting this danger now, face up to it, and thereby reduce the danger for our children and for our grandchildren” ( Johnson). President Johnson’s rhetoric clearly conflates the national interest with familial interest: a defense the nation is akin to, a defense of those we hold most dear – the most vulnerable of our family members. By 1967, “popular uneasiness certainly began to set in” (Lunch 22) and so Johnson’s address (which he gave in September) appealed to the idea of family in an effort to reinvoke the spirit of near-consensus by which Americans supported U.S. involvement in WWII. Johnson’s appeal to “our children and our grandchildren” as justification of foreign policy indicates the rhetorical power of the “family” and the “constructed-ness” of national belonging, Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities helps us understand this. For him, “nationalism” – the sense of belonging that people have to their nation – is a cultural artifact. That is to say that it is “created” and “imagined” in a particular style that can “be understood by aligning it, not with the self-consciously held political ideologies, but with the large cultural systems that preceded it, [and] out of which it came into being” (Anderson 12). According to Andre Munro, Anderson understands nationalism as having “replaced traditional kinship ties as the foundation of the state” (Munro). Johnson therefore uses his platform to “construct” American nationalism in the image of the family. In his language, defense of the family justifies American foreign policy, a rhetorical strategy that obviates a host of questionable motives. Few are likely to claim that they would willingly kill for someone in defense of a complete stranger somewhere across the country. There would be too many moral questions. The language of family, which is implicit in the collective possessive pronoun (“our children”), recasts all Americans as kin. Against the backdrop of nationalist rhetoric that used “family” to justify American involvement, The Godfather portrayal of the Corleone’s “Family Business” takes on new significance. In my interpretation, The Godfather con64
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