July 4th of this year marks the 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence and I am bracing myself for an overwhelming effusion of patriotic fervor. Given that Trump loves to wrap himself up in the flag (all while he and his family and cronies are looting the country), we can be sure that event will be even more disgustingly over the top than if someone sane was president.
As an immigrant to the US, I was struck by how so many Americans talk about patriotism and view it as an unalloyed good. Some immigrants become hyper-patriotic, perhaps to show that they really do belong here.
It is not that the concept of patriotismwas foreign to us in Sri Lanka. But it was not as pervasive. I recall that at a time of economic hardship, people were urged in the name of patriotism to grow more food and learn to live with less. As part of this movement to create patriotic feelings, movie theaters started playing the national anthem at the start. I remember feeling the pressure to stand up for it even though such gestures seemed merely performative. I now regret having done so.
I later abandoned the idea of patriotism altogether when I saw how the government used it to promote agendas that served its own interests and not those of the people at large. I now despise the entire concept of patriotism (and have written so many times in the past). I totally agree with Leo Tolstoy who wrote the following:
Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, and conscience, and a slavish enthrallment to those in power. And as such it is recommended wherever it is preached. Patriotism is slavery.”
But Americans, even those who realize how problematic it can be, still struggle to find a formulation that they can latch on to because to say that one is not patriotic seems unthinkable.
Mark Twain, H. L. Mencken, George Bernard Shaw, and Ursula K. Le Guin distrusted it. Samuel Johnson called it “the last refuge of a scoundrel,” and Leo Tolstoy likened it to slavery. Jorge Luis Borges initially felt that “there is no end to the illusions of patriotism,” noting that “Plutarch mocked those who declared that the Athenian moon is better than the Corinthian moon.” Years later, perhaps feeling adrift, Borges begged his gods to send someone or something into his life. “They did,” he wrote. “It is my country.”
George Orwell was kinder than most. Patriotism, he wrote, is “devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people.” The problem was nationalism, which he maintained was “inseparable from the desire for power.” The line between these terms, however, is porous. Attachment to a parcel of land can easily harden into isolationism, jingoism, and racism. “It is lamentable,” Voltaire observed, “that to be a good patriot one must often become the enemy of the rest of mankind.” More recently, the philosopher Richard Rorty capably defended patriotism, whereas Martha Nussbaum continues to seek its curtailment.
Much as I like Orwell, I think his description is hardly persuasive. To believe that “a particular place and a particular way of life … to be the best in the world” makes no sense since where one is born into is purely due to chance. It seems like a form of vanity to think that one’s arrival into some country suddenly makes that place the best in the world.
Patriotism also depends upon lying about one’s country’s past, imbuing it with grandeur and nobility, and its founders and former leaders with virtues that they did not possess.
Flag-waving patriots may believe otherwise, but our recoverable past isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It never was. The historian David Lowenthal reminds us that America manipulated its archives from the very beginning. When Charles Thomson, the longtime secretary of the Continental Congress, was asked to publish his notes—some thousand pages’ worth—he initially agreed, but then burned them instead. “I shall not undeceive future generations,” he reputedly explained. “I could not tell the truth without giving great offense. Let the world admire our patriots and heroes. Their supposed talents and virtues . . . will serve the cause of patriotism.”
Fortunately, patriotism is on the outs, especially with younger people. Usually wars are the vehicle by which leaders rouse up patriotic fervor but the war with Iran has failed to do that.
When my son was about to enter preschool the teacher told me the class had children from many countries and she wanted each of them to think their country was the best in the world. Oh well. Better than forcing the view that only the US was best at everything, but still weird.
I first came to the US as a nine year old, in 1988. I joined elementary school with very little knowledge of English (but at that age you learn quick!) first day in school everyone started with the pledge of allegiance to the flag, when I first saw this I was like: “WTF?!? Are they praying? What is this?” As far as I know, no other country does this… Once I started to understand what it was my first association was with the stories I’d heard of the Hitler youth in Nazi Germany.
Compared to how most countries view patriotism (cheer at your athletes at the olympics!) the US is *WAY* out there…
I’ve never had a problem with patriotism, but to me being patriotic means that you care about the people of your nation, and want to make life there as good as possible. I would go further than Orwell -- even thinking that your nation is better than others is something I would consider nationalism, not patriotism. Maybe it’s an idiosyncratic way to define these terms, but it’s what I’ve always done.
To my mind, an activist or community advocate who tries to improve people’s lives is patriotic; a politician or commentator who wraps themselves in a flag while advocating policies that make most peoples’ lives worse is deeply unpatriotic.
American patriotism is being proud to be American. In contrast, Canadian patriotism is largely being proud to NOT be American.
Samuel Johnson called it “the last refuge of a scoundrel,” …
Ambrose Bierce wrote:
George Bernard Shaw:
Ambrose Bierce had a lot to say about patriotism and flags.
Patriotism / nationalism is usually fused with religion. In memory of Dubya’s religious drivel, here is a scene from South Park:
Satan and Saddam just before USA invades Canada and Satan gets summoned.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=i6prKZkSQUc
I’ve never met a patriot anywhere in my life. I’ve met many jingosists, however.
“Patriotism” in the US, with its Pledge of Obedience, holy national mottos, and insanely numerous displays of flags, is due to the US having been at war for the vast majority of its 250 years. The AI widget on my search engine says we’ve been at war for 93% of our existence, about 228 out of 250 years (that sounds like it might be AI slop. But, it is, in fact, quite a majority of the years the US has existed.)
There was a fun thing online recently where you could put in your age and see what percentage of the years you’ve been alive that the US has been at war: for my life, it turned out to be something like 68%.
The relevance is that if you want people to agree to continuously sacrifice the lives of their sons and husbands and fathers and brothers, and now their female family members, and to never have nice things like health care because all their money goes to the war machine, you have to constantly gin them up with their “country” being some kind of holy cause, like the Crusades. Thus, the constant and extra-hard shoving of “patriotism” down Americans’ throats, much more so than in other countries.
And, that’s what I think of American patriotism: it’s propaganda to allow constant war. Maybe we could have nationwide protests on July 4th, opposing the idea that there’s anything in our “country’s” anniversary to celebrate.
Oh yeah, and “American exceptionalism”. That is a kind of insane patriot propaganda that I’ve never heard of any other country resorting to.
The idea, for those of you fortunate enough not to have heard of it, is that America is “exceptional” among nations because we literally are the best in the world at everything. We truly are the shining City on a Hill. This has been pushed pretty hard by oligarchs, and many Americans do believe it, and get offended if you point out even one thing that some other country does better.
For their, and your, information, you know what America actually is the best in the world at? 1) Number of gun deaths per capita, and 2) number of serial killers per capita (we’re way ahead on that one.)
Perhaps we should celebrate these accomplishments in our patriotic July 4th festivities this anniversary year.
Populations gotta have at least a tiny bit of patriotism, otherwise they tend to become doormats for imperialism, their countries little more than vassal states of the great powers.