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What they call patriotism down there in Washington stinks to high heaven of brainlessness, racism, greed, fear and hatred of the common people. Internationalism, brotherhood, a left-liberal approach to life—all these can only enhance the well-being of any and all countries. Vivian Gornick Author; reporter The word "patriotism"—which I associate to blind love of country—does not echo in me.
But feminism made me an American. I grew up in New York, the child of working-class immigrants, devoted to a Marxist vision of international socialism. In our house the injustices of class far outweighed the virtues of the democracy. True, we were lucky to be making our struggle here, on this section of the map rather than on many others we might have found ourselves on, but America as an emotional reality did not go deep.
When we marched in May Day parades and hecklers told us to go back where we came from, we replied in perfect confidence, "This is our country. Honest dissidents speaking out of a true love of country was not what we were about. In late adolescence I grew away from the family passion. Socialism no longer explained my life to me. I joined the culture of urban intellectual Jews. New York became my country. When I went abroad I saw that brash expectancy, directness of speech and a strong sense of social fluidity all marked me as an American, but the recognition was not centering; rather it disoriented, made me feel odd, lonely.
In the early s I became converted to the feminist analysis, and slowly a surprising thing began to happen. Instead of taking my place on the feminist spectrum somewhere near the Marxists, I found my politics growing out of an America that had taken root inside me without my knowledge or consent. Looking now with opened eyes at indigenous sexism, I found myself thinking, "This is my country. It seemed to me, then, that every fifty years or so another section of the body politic rises up here to demand its share of the democracy, and in the act of demanding demonstrates both the systematic exclusion and its native sense of right.
I felt myself at the end of a long line of American populists. I felt the struggles between capital and the individual as I had not since childhood—how long its history, and how alive it is in this country. The thing that makes me feel American. The man came outside to offer us a drink of water, and when he left I asked, Why does that man speak differently from us? I fought in Europe so they could have freedom.
It is our land; we cultivated it and helped to build it. But it is not our government. Indeed, fighting for a better government is the patriotic thing to do. America at its best guarantees opportunity,, and so fighting to expand the horizons of oppressed people is an act of patriotism. The founding writers of the Constitution envisioned a nation in which people of African descent were three-fifths human, in which their own mothers and daughters and sisters had no right to vote, in which Native Americans had no right to live. Thomas Jefferson expressed the American dilemma when he wrote: For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him.
This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?
We have gained the right to vote. Women and African-Americans have changed the course and character of the nation. Yet those who have fought for the highest and best principles of our country, the true patriots, have been vilified and crucified. The true patriots invariably disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed, and are persecuted in their lifetimes even as their accomplishments are applauded after their deaths. Today, politicians are proud to pronounce that we have abolished slavery. But in its time, slavery was the political center, and abolitionists were punished for their moral strength.
Today, politicians hold up the gains of women. Those who fight for civil rights, open housing, environmental laws, peace and international cooperation, and veterans of domestic wars—the true patriots—receive no parades. We must never relinquish our sense of justice for a false sense of national pride. Patriotism is support for the highest ideals of the nation, not for whoever happens to be in the White House. As citizens we must continue to fight for justice and equality so that we might make a better nation and a better world.
We must give credence to our invitation: So we get together on the afternoon of the Fourth—it has never rained on our parade—to do all-American things drink beer, eat hot dogs and to recall, without rhetorical excess, that this country has a great radical tradition. A couple of years ago, when flag burning was the idiotic issue of the moment, a friend brought his own flag to burn. Some thought it was a fine way to mark the Fourth; others demurred. That ambivalence is symbolic of my own mixed feelings about the attitude or set of attitudes we call patriotism.
And to invoke the absolute of patriotism as a rationale for killing and dying—as it is perpetually and horribly invoked—makes the least sense of all. I come down to saying that I think it is possible to love my country without loving its wars. I also tell them I will match my love of country with that of any of those hearties in the Administration who are sending Americans to war without having to serve in one themselves.
Natalie Merchant Lead singer, 10, Maniacs Patriotism asks that we embrace a unified America, yet no simple vision of America can accommodate its diversity. Few of us are able to call ourselves native; most of us trace our family lineages to nations great distances from these shores.
With passing generations we are "assimilated," yet our former cultures are never fully relinquished. The heritage we retain and the characteristics of the one we adopt intermingle; we are defining and becoming American. The acceptance of a common historical view may be considered the cornerstone of nationalism, yet when I consider the most broadly accepted view of history I realize that my America is quite different.
In my America Columbus was not a benevolent explorer who happened upon an earthly paradise that yielded itself bloodlessly to his will. In my America the native peoples of this continent were not hostile savages, unprovoked to violence against the benign European colonialists.
Floyd Abrams
It will therefore be judged morally unobjectionable by all except some adherents of a strict type of cosmopolitanism. However, both Baron and Nathanson fail to distinguish clearly between showing that their preferred type of patriotism is morally unobjectionable and showing that it is morally required or virtuous, and sometimes seem to be assuming that by showing the former, they are also showing the latter.
Yet there is a gap between the two claims, and the latter, stronger case for moderate patriotism still needs to be made. What is the case for the claim that moderate patriotism is morally mandatory — that we have a duty of special concern for the well-being of our country and compatriots, similar to special duties to family or friends? Gratitude is probably the most popular among the grounds adduced for patriotic duty. We owe our country our life, our education, our language, and, in the most fortunate cases, our liberty. Both Socrates and Viroli are exaggerating the benefits bestowed on us by our country; surely any gratitude owed for being born or brought up is owed to parents, rather than patria.
But there are important benefits we have received from our country; the argument is that we are bound to show gratitude for them, and that the appropriate way to do so is to show special concern for the well-being of the country and compatriots. One worry here is that considerations of gratitude normally arise in interpersonal relations. We also speak of gratitude to large and impersonal entities — our school, profession, or even our country — but that seems to be an abbreviated way of referring to gratitude to particular persons who have acted on behalf of these entities.
A debt of gratitude is not incurred by any benefit received. If a benefit is conferred inadvertently, or advisedly but for the wrong reason e. And we cannot talk with confidence about the reasons a large and complex group or institution has for its actions. Perhaps we can think of compatriots as an aggregate of individuals. Do we owe them a debt of gratitude for the benefits of life among them? Again, it depends on the reason for their law-abiding behavior and social cooperation generally.
But there is no single reason common to all or even most of them. Some do their part without giving much thought to the reasons for doing so; others believe that doing so is, in the long run, the most prudent policy; still others act out of altruistic motives. Only the last group — surely a tiny minority — would be a proper object of our gratitude. Moreover, gratitude is appropriate only for a benefit conferred freely, as a gift, and not as a quid pro quo.
But most of the benefits we receive from our country are of the latter sort: The benefits one has received from her country might be considered relevant to the duty of patriotism in a different way: It is rather a common enterprise that produces and distributes a wide range of benefits. These benefits are made possible by cooperation of those who live in the country, participate in the enterprise, owe and render allegiance to the polity.
The rules that regulate the cooperation and determine the distribution of burdens and benefits enjoin, among other things, special concern for the well-being of compatriots which is not due to outsiders. As Richard Dagger puts it:. This argument conflates the issue of patriotism with that of political obligation , and the notion of a patriot with that of a citizen.
Unlike informal cooperation among tenants in a building, for instance, cooperation on the scale of a country is regulated by a set of laws. Whether we have a moral duty to obey the laws of our country is one of the central issues in modern political philosophy, discussed under the heading of political obligation. One major account of political obligation is that of fairness. If successful, that account shows that we do have a moral duty to abide by the laws of our country, to act as citizens, and that this duty is one of fairness.
But whereas a patriot is also a citizen, a citizen is not necessarily a patriot. Patriotism involves special concern for the patria and compatriots, a concern that goes beyond what the laws obligate one to do, beyond what one does as a citizen; that is, beyond what one ought, in fairness , to do. Failing to show that concern, however, cannot be unfair — except on the question-begging assumption that, in addition to state law, cooperation on this scale is also based on, and regulated by, a moral rule enjoining special concern for the well-being of the country and compatriots.
Some philosophers seek to ground patriotic duty in its good consequences see the entry on consequentialism. The duty of special concern for the well-being of our country and compatriots, just like other duties, universal and special, is justified by the good consequences of its adoption. Special duties mediate our fundamental, universal duties and make possible their most effective discharge. They establish a division of moral labor, necessary because our capacity of doing good is limited by our resources and circumstances.
Each of us can normally be of greater assistance to those who are in some way close to us than to those who are not. Patriots will find this account of their love of and loyalty to their country alien to what they feel patriotism is all about. Patriotic duty owes its moral force to the moral force of those universal duties. They merely happen to be the beneficiaries of the most effective way of putting into practice our concern for human beings in general.
The special relationship between the patriot and the patria and compatriots — the relationship of love and identification — has been dissolved. There is also a view of patriotic duty that, in contrast to the consequentialist account, does not dissolve, but rather highlight this relationship.
Patriotism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
That is the view of patriotism as an associative duty see the entry on special obligations , section 4. It is based on an understanding of special relationships as intrinsically valuable and involving duties of special concern for the well-being of those we are related to. Such duties are not means of creating or maintaining those relationships, but rather their part and parcel, and can only be understood, and justified, as such, just as those relationships can only be understood as involving the special duties pertaining to them while involving much else besides.
For instance, one who denies that she has an obligation of special concern for the well-being of her friend shows that she no longer perceives and treats the person concerned as a friend, that as far as she is concerned the friendship is gone. One who denies that people in general have a duty of special concern for the well-being of their friends shows that she does not understand what friendship is.
Andrew Mason has offered an argument for the duty of special concern for the well-being of compatriots based on the value embodied in our relationship to compatriots, that of common citizenship. Citizenship in this sense is an intrinsically valuable relationship, and grounds certain special duties fellow citizens have to one another. Now citizenship obviously has considerable instrumental value; but how is it valuable in itself?
The first of these two special duties can be put aside, as it is not specific to patriotism, but rather pertains to citizenship. It is the second that is at issue. If we indeed have a duty of special concern towards compatriots, and if that is an associative duty, that is because our association with them is intrinsically valuable and bound up with this duty.
The claim about the intrinsic value of our association might be thought a moot point.
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But even if it were conceded, one might still resist the claim concerning the alleged duty. If someone were to deny that she has a duty of special concern for the well-being of her country and compatriots, beyond what the laws of her country mandate and beyond the concern she has for humans and humanity, would she thereby cease to be a citizen in the sense involving equal standing? If she were to deny that citizens generally have such an obligation, would that betray lack of understanding of what citizenship in the relevant sense is? If she came across two strangers in a life-threatening situation and could only save one, would she have a prima facie moral duty to save the one who was a compatriot?
All the main arguments for the claim that patriotism is a duty, then, are exposed to serious objections. Unless a new, more convincing case for patriotism can be made, we have no good reason to think that patriotism is a moral duty. If not a duty, is patriotism morally valuable? Someone showing concern for the well-being of others well beyond the degree of concern for others required of all of us is considered a morally better person than the rest of us other things equal , an example of supererogatory virtue.
One standard example of such virtue is the type of concern for those in an extreme plight shown by the late Mother Theresa, or by Doctors Without Borders. But they are exemplars of moral virtue for the same reason that makes a more modest degree of concern for others a moral duty falling on all of us. The same moral value, sympathy for and assistance to people in need, grounds a certain degree of concern for others as a general moral duty and explains why a significantly higher degree of such concern is a moral ideal.
This explanation, however, does not apply in the case of patriotism. Patriotism is not but another extension of the duty of concern for others; it is a special concern for my country because it is my country, for my compatriots because they are my compatriots. If it could, other types of partialism, such as tribalism, racism, or sexism, would by the same token prove morally valuable too. If patriotism is neither a moral duty nor a supererogatory virtue, then all its moral pretensions have been deflated.
It has no positive moral significance. There is nothing to be said for it, morally speaking.
Patriotism
We all have various preferences for places and people, tend to identify with many groups, large and small, to think of them as in some sense ours, and to show a degree of special concern for their members. But however important in other respects these preferences, identifications, and concerns might be, they lack positive moral import.
They are morally permissible as long as they are kept within certain limits, but morally indifferent in themselves. The same is true of patriotism Primoratz All four types of patriotism reviewed so far seek to defend and promote what might be termed the worldly, i. They differ with regard to the lengths to which these interests will be promoted: Instead, he would seek to make sure that the country lives up to moral requirements and promotes moral values, both at home and internationally. He would work for a just and humane society at home, and seek to ensure that the country acts justly beyond its borders, and shows common human solidarity towards those in need, however distant and unfamiliar.
A patriot of this, distinctively ethical type, would want to see justice done, rights respected, human solidarity at work at any time and in any place. But her patriotism would be at work in a concern that her country be guided by these moral principles and values which is more sustained and more deeply felt than her concern that these principles and values should be put into practice generally.
She would consider her own moral identity as bound up with that of her country, and the moral record of the patria as hers too. But her patriotism would be expressed, above all, in a critical approach to her country and compatriots: As a rule, when someone is wronged, someone else benefits from that. When a country maintains an unjust or inhumane practice, or enacts and enforces an unjust or inhumane law or policy, at least some, and sometimes many of its citizens reap benefits from it.
The responsibility for the injustice or lack of basic human solidarity lies with those who make the decisions and those who implement them. It also lies with those who give support to such decisions and their implementation. But some responsibility in this connection may also devolve on those who have no part in the making of the decisions or in their implementation, nor even provide support, but accept the benefits such a practice, law or policy generates.
They don't fuel racist or religious or ethnic divisions. They aren't homophobic or sexist or racist. To the contrary, true patriots seek to confirm and strengthen and celebrate the "we" in "we the people of the United States. Do you have information you want to share with HuffPost? Tap here to turn on desktop notifications to get the news sent straight to you.
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