Where does Patriotism fit in

Where does Patriotism fit in?

Written by Dan McDonald

 

      Judy Collins sang the song “Both sides now” in which she described clouds, life, and love in both sides from the side of what makes life worth living and what brings so much pain and sorrow. Philosophically it is as much an Ecclesiastes sort of song as Amazing Grace was a song written expressing St. Paul’s confidence in the Gospel. Judy Collins had hit recordings with each. I’ve often imagined those things in life which after looking at them from multiple sides we had to admit all that we really knew was the illusion of the thing. For me, patriotism has often been a both sides now experience.

            When I was a little child saying the pledge of allegiance at school and growing up on a farm, I especially took pride in knowing that we were the nation that manufactured more products and exported more food than any other nation on earth. I did not grow up in a religious family. In my first ten years of life, except for a wedding or a funeral I never went inside of a church. My patriotism did not include any sort of “Christian” understanding. But I learned to feel sorry for those who were not Americans. Being an American seemed to make a kid special. I experienced a patriotism that believed my nation to be blessed whether or not any God actually existed. If there was a God up above the clouds, he seemed to have especially loved America. I sometimes think that is a sort of patriotism many Americans continue to feel. Whether there is a god or not, he sort of loves America. Many fellow Christians, especially on the conservative side of the political aisle, seem to imagine the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as the closest thing to infallible documents since the writing of the Bible. After I became a Christian I also sometimes looked at patriotism in that way. I sometimes argued vehemently about how my views were true to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

 

 

            I later came to look at patriotism from another side. I began to see that our illustrious documents contained flaws within them. The Declaration of Independence spoke of all men being created equal. But it also listed as one of the reasons for declaring independence from Britain that the British crown and parliament had failed to provide for the colonists in their dealings with “the merciless savages”. The context is that the British government, following the French and Indian War was deeply in debt. They wished to avoid war with France and Spain. The regions claimed by Britain west of the Appalachians, were also claimed by Spain and wanted by France. So Britain instead of risking war tried to establish the region as a land for Native Americans and restricted colonial settlements in these lands. When the British government closed off these lands west of the Appalachians to colonial settlement it abrogated several colonial charters which claimed their land from sea to sea. Even a colony like Connecticut claimed that its narrow strip of land ran from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans. A majority of the signers of America's Declaration of Independence were involved in the real estate trade. One of the few accomplishment which was accomplished by the newly independent states under The Articles of Confederation was to establish a protocol for the selling of land by the government in the territories west of the Appalachians. The lands were to be auctioned off and were generally sold to real estate development companies. One of the objectives of the America's Revolution was to abrogate the creation of a large territory for the Native American population. The Declaration of Independence's language was modified to enable states with large slave populations to maintain slavery despite the "all men were created equal" clause. Then the Constitution provided for slavery as well as the ugly business of the importation and selling of slaves, and agreed that slaves would be counted as 3/5^th citizens for the purpose of electoral representation, although they would not have the right to vote in any of the states.  It was easy, armed with such knowledge, to move from a happy patriotism in my nation to a perspective of skepticism and cynicism that regarded my nation as an inherently hypocritical nation. It was easy to sing along with Joan Baez’s rendition of the satirical “With God on our side”.

 

 

            I’ve looked at patriotism from both sides now and am tempted to imagine that patriotism is only an illusion. But in the final analysis I believe that G. K. Chesterton helped me to understand a way of helping me to see a useful form of patriotism. The English Chesterton criticized another of his fellow author’s patriotism in the era when the sun never set upon the British Empire. Chesterton saw in another author’s love of England and Britain what seemed to be primarily the love of Britain’s greatness, prosperity, and superiority over other nations. Chesterton rejected this sort of basis for patriotism. He described patriotism in its essence as a love of home where one who was raised in a particular land and culture has a natural preference for that land and culture for no other basic reason than that this was one's home.

The patriotism which is built on a country’s greatness or superiority or exceptionalism is a dangerous patriotism. It is dangerous because it is prone to view other races and nations as inferiors. It is dangerous because it sets a people to be always on the verge of worshipping our superior ways, our infallible documents, and transferring the superiority of our documents to a supposed superiority of our own particular brand of humanity. It is dangerous because with our confidence that we live with God on our side, that when a prophet of God addresses our faults we tune him out because he fails to realize that God is already on our side.

But there is a patriotism that can be built on the idea that it is natural for us to love home. We may love to travel, but usually we desire to come home. In the spiritual life, coming home is often a metaphor illustrating humanity's yearning to reach wholeness. We yearn for home, even if our journey home is understood to be the seeking of an unseen city. We seek that unseen city in our tents and in our homes in which we live as aliens and strangers until we find that great unseen city. In the end the truest reality about patriotism is that it is about a place which in this present setting we feel at home.

 

Home-owners are almost always thinking of improvements or moving up

Jennifer Lopez’s Long Island mansion is for sale

 

Some homes are in more obvious need of improvement projects

 

            I imagine that depending on our places in American life, we either imagine the United States as if it is kind of like J. Lo’s mansion that is a dream of near perfection or we might imagine our nation as a home in desperate need of repair. I sort of imagine, in both instances, that the true patriots are those people who look around and seeing other people sharing our national home begin to ask those other persons “How do we make our home better?”