Patriotism 2.0

As a kid, patriotism was all around me. You couldn’t have too much of it. Bad things might happen if you were suspected to be deficient in it, but you weren’t supposed to question what it was. Since then, I’ve thought about it frequently, and my ideas have both changed and remained the same. This post isn’t to bash patriotism or patriotic people, though. I believe that the factors that lead to being a good human are often the same as those that lead to patriotism. This post is because my life and development have  followed a path, and led me to places, that will not allow me to hold an uncritical position on this issue. Hello. I have been in college since 1987. I have met people who consider “patriotic” to be a swear word.

My thought process in this area has largely been one of ideological reduction; an unrelenting pruning of ideas acquired sometime in childhood. I’m now much less certain than I was then of what patriotism is (or should be), but I have ideas about what it’s not (or shouldn’t be). So here are my thoughts, so far:It’s Not Competitive
Patriotism isn’t a pissing match between nations and their citizens. This makes no sense. It’s not a contest for who comes from the best country, and it can’t be based only on our country’s current “success”. Some nations clearly  have things others don’t, but many of those disadvantaged in the more obvious areas are overflowing elsewhere. Competitive patriotism reduces a massively multidimensional construct to a single variable¹. It also seems short-sighted, as national “success” is rarely a zero-sum game; if all nations have high standards of living and happy citizens, odds are they will all benefit (unless one of them is bent on improving its citizens’ welfare at the cost of those of other nations).

It’s Not About Where You Live
Patriotism can’t be about simple geography. Should we be patriotic only if we come from somewhere picturesque, large, or packed with natural resources? And what about one’s personal location in relation to one’s nation? Does taking a teaching job overseas reduce one’s patriotism? I think it’s clear that these ideas are as silly as the others.

It’s Not About Governments
Patriotism can’t be fully dependent on who runs your country, or how. I don’t think so, anyway. Republicans accused those who didn’t agree with GWB of being unpatriotic, and now Democrats are not-so-subtly insinuating that Conservatives who reject the Obama agenda are unpatriotic. Silly. Patriotism needs to be a more stable characteristic of individuals, not something that flip-flops with every administration change in a democracy. It’s somewhat beyond Presidents and Prime Ministers. I believe there were German patriots, for example, who worked against Nazi rule in the 1930s and 40s. Their actions did not make them less patriotic to Germany, but more so. They were doing what was actually best for their fellow citizens, though their government would have had them believe otherwise.

It’s a Good Thing
Despite the list so far, I feel there must be something good that can be called patriotism. I know feelings can be highly unreliable, but I can’t shake this. I think patriotism is a virtue, at least in some form.

It’s About Helping People
Patriotism must either allow for — or explicitly promote — human welfare. Any definition of patriotism that results in harm to human existence and relationships is worthless, unless that sacrifice can reasonably be expected to produce proportionally more benefit to humans elsewhere in space or time. That doesn’t mean there can’t be sacrifices for country; there most certainly must be. But they must be made because they benefit people more than they cost. And the cost-benefit equation must only have human values as outcomes, not money or status or more “patriotism.” If a nation takes and loses lives to protect the lives and happiness of others (ideally, many more than those who died), I can see arguing that this is an acceptable thing. But if those lives are sacrificed for leaders to save face, or promotion of a sense of national pride, or (worst) so that some people at home can continue to live a lifestyle far in excess of what is required for their happiness, then “patriotism” becomes a mask for extremely ugly realities.

There are More Important Things
Patriotism must never be the highest value. States exist to serve people; they have no intrinsic value of themselves. If the dissolution or abandonment of a nation would serve people better, then there is an argument for dissolving or abandoning it (similiar reasoning led to our own revolution in the 177os). Family bonds should be more important than national loyalty. Any devotion to deity should also trump love of country. Love of one’s fellow citizens should be more important, too, than an impersonal nationalism. Finally, though this is not a popular topic among American Christians, I firmly believe that love and concern for people who do not belong to your nation must be potentially more important than patriotism. The latter should never be logically reducible to the ingroup-outgroup games played by schoolchildren. If your “patriotism” requires you to hurt others or disregard their happiness just because they weren’t born in your country, then I want none of it.

It’s About the System as Well as the Nation
I’m slowly forming what I think might be a working concept of patriotism, and thus accounting for the feelings I have about my country. People are more important than nations. If nations serve the interests of people (including their own citizens, not only them), then nations are good, and loyalty to their existence and aims is good, as well. But if “patriotism” tends toward actions that can’t be justified as being in the long-term best interests of humanity, then such ideas should be modified or abandoned.

Digression: LDS Patriotism
I find it fascinating that so many of my fellow Latter-day Saints seem to be  “patriotic”² in the mindless-nationalism sense. Growing up with LDS people, I heard about the importance of guns, of protecting ourselves from foreign ideas and cultures, and the necessity of opposing the American liberal agenda. I heard cheering for wars simply because we were at war. There was, to be sure, a strong effort to resist xenophobia and bigotry, as well; the people I knew growing up were not clueless (not most of them, anyway). But I heard almost no concern about any elements of the American conservative agenda, something I have come to think should be just as problematic for Latter-day Saints³. As a young adult, LDS patriotism started to seem like hypocritical posturing. Were these people forgetting who we are? We’re Mormons.

Most importantly, we’re Christians. We worship a King whose kingdom is, in His own words, not of this earth⁴. We aspire to peace and love and turning the other cheek⁵. Second, our recent ancestors were screwed over,multiple times by both state federal government. Their land and houses were taken, they were beaten and killed, and then ordered to fight a war they wanted no part of. The Missouri militia had standing orders to shoot Mormons on sight until the 1970s. Our prophet was murdered while the government turned a blind eye. Utah exists because the early Saints were driven out of all points East. They tried to make an independent nation in the “wilderness,” but then came the Mexican-American war, and Utah (among other huge tracts of land) was annexed. The U.S. army marched against Utah twice without provocation, and early church leaders were routinely imprisoned for violating laws passed by Congress, arguably, just to put Mormons in prison.

Beyond the historical persecution by the nation we are so bent on supporting, we believe in a utopian future in which current governments, including the American Republic, may not even exist in any recognizable form. And the economics of this happy someday? Odds are that it won’t look much like current American capitalism. We not only believe this future will happen; we are dedicated to building it, piece by piece⁶.

But Mormons really are patriots, and most of the reasons are good ones. We believe that the world’s system of nations and governments is, in a general sense, endorsed by God⁷. We believe that the creation of the United States was an inspired event. We believe in “being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law,” no matter where we live.

Personally, I think national boundaries and diverse systems of government make a lot of sense in the world as it is today. I think humanity is better off with multiple nations and governments than it would be without them⁸. We live in an interim time, working for something better, but that “better” is probably not going to happen in the current generation or that of our grandkids. The world we have is the one we see around  us.

Countries can be good things, and my country has many great things to offer the world. It’s been placed — through an interesting combination of inspiration, coincidence, cruelty, hard work, and benevolence — in a position of great power (well, maybe a little less, now…), and so we have both the responsibility and the real possibility of using that power to do something good for many of the people in this world, whether they live within our borders or not. If our system of government is allowed to wander too far from what it was established to be, we will no longer have as much freedom to do good, and our citizens (and others) will miss out on benefits they might have enjoyed. The most important elements of our nation should be preserved⁹. Many other nations have equivalent value and potential, and part of our patriotism must involve supporting them, as incubators for their own human happiness, and as elements of the system that allows all nations to exist and do what they do. I live here, and here is where my primary responsibilities lie. In some sense, the happenstance of geography does matter. Think globally, act locally.

I consider myself a patriot. I would die for my country, in certain circumstances. But patriotism is not the highest value in my life. I have no problem living outside the borders of the USA, if that’s what is best for my family. I will defy my government (or I hope I will, anyway), if it should require me to do harm to my fellow humans without appropriate justification. And I may also support the autonomy and success of other nations.

1. As a sometime statistics person, I can tell you that is almost never a good thing [↩]
2. Quotation marks, in this piece, are always intentional when used [↩]
3. Both Harry Reid and Orrin Hatch are LDS… [↩]
4. Nor, presumably, of its systems of government, its nations, or — most certainly — its political parties [↩]
5. On paper, at least [↩]
6. Notably, we are clearly under orders to do this peacefully, by helping people become better people; not by any kind of violent or secessionist movement. It takes a lot of faith, actually, to believe that the current system will someday be replaced by something different and better, without any of the traditional methods making that happen [↩]
7. Which is a wonder, when you think about just how much messed-up crap is done by certain national leaders *coughMugabecough* [↩]
8. It would be, I think, much worse off with a single world government, as things currently stand [↩]
9. Including by military force if necessary, though I believe we have sometimes used that more as a rationalization than as a true justification for necessary actions [↩]