Among the most visible American patriots are those who proudly display the flag on the Fourth of July, stand for the National Anthem with hands fervently covering their hearts and pride shining from their eyes, recite the Pledge of Allegiance with zeal, contend the “Support the Troops” bumper sticker is non-political, and often pay little attention to or even acknowledge governmental actions that may not pass the scrutiny of objective observers concerned with ethics and morals. [2] A great many patriots believe the U.S. is Exceptional, a city on a hill envied by the world, the greatest country on Earth. “America, love it or leave it” and “My country, right or wrong” are two popular nationalistic themes I remember well from the turbulent 1960s that characterize the type of blind loyalty to country and the military demanded by conservatives who believe that they and only they are worthy of the title, patriot.
That definition leaves me out, since, although born of parents who were both American citizens and raised in the Mid-West and thus thoroughly American by birthright and culture, I’m a lifelong believer in the inability of nations to consistently act morally or in any manner except ruthless self-interest, which means Machiavelli has been our mentor, not Jesus, who finishes dead last in that race.
Throwing out pious birth-of-a-nation myths and the utopian aspirations that proliferate in our foundational documents, if a country pursues self-interest as its primary mission, how can anyone who tries to base her life on moral principles be patriotic? Because actions based on self-interest can and do result in a country like the U.S. being unapologetically founded on white supremacy and white privilege, enslaving and systematically dehumanizing blacks, and coercing Native Americans to “sell” their lands to a federal government monopsony that arbitrarily set the purchase price and then unilaterally and happily abrogated practically every single treaty it signed to ensure the land dedicated to Native Americans was reduced to the bare minimum.
Of course, at our peril we fail to consider the state-sponsored terrorism of Jim Crow with its de jure and de facto forced ghettoization and marginalization of black Americans, its systemic denial of the property and voting rights of blacks by all levels of government, and its separate and patently unequal systems. We can’t ignore our imprisoning Japanese-American citizens in concentration camps during WWII, the illegal forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Hispanic-American citizens to Mexico, the extraordinary rendition and torture of “enemies” at CIA black sites, political assassinations, forced regime change (here you should be thinking Iran), supporting right-wing dictatorships (far too many to enumerate here), the los desaparecidos system U.S. support allowed to flourish in Argentina and Chile, or today’s U.S. political system that runs on legalized corruption thanks to the right-wing ideologues in the U.S. Supreme Court (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission), etc.
Since I cannot give my unqualified support, defense, or love to a country that has committed the acts listed above, as well as others far too numerous to list in this paper, I’m not a flag-waving, chest-thumping patriot. Of course, I have never denied the essential truth that in many respects the founders of the United States did something breathtakingly original and praiseworthy. But neither can I close my eyes to the ugly reality of what happened well before and immediately after the ink was dry on the Constitution. In my eyes, a country is not a compilation of magnificent aspirations contained in its founding documents but the sum of its real world actions. In that equation, the U.S. falls short of being worthy of adulation or unqualified support.
However, that last condition seemingly opens the door for redefining patriotism as “qualified” love, support, and defense of a country. So, what does qualified mean in that context? For some, it means understanding your country’s history, its actions good, bad, and ugly. It means honest acknowledgement of where your country went off the track in terms of acts that either violated the letter or the spirit of morality and what it did that was laudable. It means never closing your eyes to our collective failures to live up to the awe-inspiring aspirations we all regard as sacred:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Thus, the “qualified” patriot loves her country but has a moral code that prevents her from supporting ruthless, immoral acts committed by her government, whether those acts occurred in the past or the present. In other words, qualified patriots love and defend their country but hold it accountable to moral standards. Although I accept the sincerity of those who self-identify as qualified or moderate patriots, I question the very premise of their existence. History, I contend, has few if any examples of countries that consistently act morally or contrary to their self-interests. Rather, history documents countries acting in ruthless and aggressive selfishness, with no regard for moral considerations, Christianity be damned. Examples from American history include the annexation of Hawaii in 1898, allowing the U.S. to seize control of all public property that had formally belonged to the Government of the Hawaiian Islands without benefit of legality, effectively declaring that the U.S., founded on the principle that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, could annex Hawaii without thought of obtaining the consent of the governed. In 1898, Might Makes Right became the new policy of the American Imperial State.
Beginning in 1980, the U.S. supported the brutal right-wing El Salvadoran government by training their military officers, allowing senior American officers to serve as the heads of Salvadoran military commands, and funding Salvadoran purchase of arms and materiel in a “dirty war” run by government-supported death squads that raped Catholic nuns, school girls, and village women and murdered Catholic priests in churches and on university campuses, including the March 24, 1980, assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero while celebrating Mass. After Romero’s assassination, members of the Salvadoran National Guard gang raped and murdered four American nuns and a laywoman. Despite those horrific atrocities, which were well-publicized in the U.S., the Carter and Reagan Administrations increased military aid to the Salvadoran armed forces that included millions for war materiel. A U.N.-sponsored truth commission later held the U.S.-backed right-wing regime responsible for massive atrocities in a civil war that continued for twelve years after American military support and advisors came on scene.
From 1984 through 1986, in the Iran-Contra scandal the Executive Branch of our government funded the right-wing faction of the civil war in Nicaragua with arms sales to Iran in willful violation of U.S. law and, thanks to a gutless Congress, got away with it. More modern examples of the manner in which the American government regularly operates includes the CIA’s torture of captives at overseas black sites and President Obama’s refusal to prosecute the perpetrators as well as the thousands of non-combatant civilian deaths that were caused by drone strikes across the Middle East ordered by the U.S. military with Obama’s blessing.
The first of two specific examples of the type of patriotism I wholeheartedly reject is from a speech the conservative Wall Street Journal columnist, Peggy Noonan, gave on the topic of patriotism on December 9, 1998, at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.:
American patriotism was the repetition, reaffirmation, and celebration of our founding ideas, and it gave rise to a brilliant tradition of celebration, and of celebration's symbols: the flag—that beautiful flag; the parades and bands and bunting; Betsy Ross, Uncle Sam, the tradition of patriotic speeches, the reading aloud of the Declaration of Independence; the sparklers like the candles on a birthday cake. [3]
The patriotism of Noonan and a great many conservatives focuses on democratic ideals, celebrations, symbols, rituals, and traditions that are totally separated from real world actions or their consequences. That type of idealistic, bloodless patriotism is almost always intertwined with a deep, quasi-religious commitment to American Exceptionalism. Believing the U.S. is better than all other nations is a recipe for uncritical and even aggressive support of national power/dominance as well as contempt for and intolerance of other countries and, ultimately, is a recipe for armed conflict. That point of view allows conservatives and like-minded others to ignore the harsh realities of life as lived in America and of the often ugly facts of American history while they exult in the glory of an imaginary, aspirational country.
The second example is from a David Brooks column in the New York Times titled “We Take Care of Our Own” (July 15, 2016). In that column, Brooks noted that America, unlike most other countries, was founded as a universalist nation. His conclusions included:
The way out of this debate is not to go nationalist or globalist. It’s to return to American nationalism—espoused by people like Walt Whitman—which combines an inclusive definition of who is Our Own with a fervent commitment to assimilate and Take Care of them.
Whoa! Two problems arise immediately from that column: first, the notion of the U.S. as an universalist nation; and second, his use of the label, inclusive. Let’s refer to American history for elucidation. The United States was founded as a slave country, meaning blacks were chattel, not human, and thus had no legal rights whatsoever. And from 1789 to the mid-1950s, U.S. law held that only whites could be citizens, not blacks (until after the Civil War), not Native Americans, not Asians, and not Hispanics. Like Noonan, Brooks is claiming the IDEA of America trumps the REALITY of America, a view I reject as false in every respect as well as dangerous because it creates a deceptive narrative that this country is far better than history and lived experiences demonstrate.
The nature of countries and their patriotic supporters is to place governmental actions above morality and truth or to claim morality and truth are what the government says they are, especially when the issue of “national security” is raised. Those who disagree with that position are typically derided and ridiculed as “Boy Scouts” unable to make “hard” decisions. Those dissenters have not only been marginalized but frequently have also been arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned for stating their opinions, so much for our vaunted freedom of speech. Thus, it is my opinion that national government by its very nature is, at minimum, amoral as are the overwhelming majority of politicians who serve that government.
Perhaps the most chilling, cynical, but truth-telling quote about the nature of government and patriotism was uttered in 1946 by the infamous Nazi, Herman Göring, at the Nuremberg trials:
Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”
No better example of how the U.S. acted in concert with Göring’s observation was the way President George W. Bush and his Administration flat out lied to Congress, the United Nations, and the country to get us involved in the 2003 Iraq War.
Of course, governments, like politicians, do not always act in ways that are amoral or immoral. Countries, like humans, are flawed and make mistakes but also do things that occasionally are beneficial internally and with respect to other nations. But, occasionally appropriate behavior does not make government an agent of morality or one entitled to adulation. After all, would you love, support, and defend your adult offspring if he were a proved killer of innocent civilians; a proved torturer; a proved violator of the laws of his own country as well as international laws; an enthusiastic financial and military supporter of people who have kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered their political opponents; a supposedly former white supremacist and racist; and an aggressive militarist who advocates pre-emptive, first-strike attacks against his enemies, etc., etc., even if he occasionally takes his kids to the movies and buys them cheeseburgers and French fries at the local squat-n-gobble? I truly hope not.
Some who self-identify as patriots are sure to claim that it is unrealistic to demand perfection from any country, perfection in the sense of always acting morally/ethically. After all, few of us choose a spouse or friends and demand or expect perfection. That analogy is inappropriate as the actions of countries are characterized by a different geographic scale and temporal scope than are the actions of individuals. Bad acts committed by countries have scalar and historical consequences far beyond those of individuals. As an example, consider the U.S. invasion of Iraq that was ordered by President George W. Bush without benefit of legal or moral justification and that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of unarmed Iraqi civilians, including women and children. Also consider the far-reaching, long-term effects of the Naturalization Law of 1790 and later amendments that limited American citizenship to whites and later specifically excluded Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, East Indians, Native Americans, and others from citizenship until the mid-1950s.
However, at least some “true” patriots argue that America is good and deserving of our love and support because it does act, occasionally, in ways that may be interpreted as benevolent, altruistic, and selfless. But how do those patriots justify the many occasions when the U.S. acts in ways that cannot be supported as ethical or moral? That turns out to be easy; they simply deny those acts are unethical or immoral and, in their very act of denial, downplay or ignore their significance or they are indifferent to those charges. The following examples are illustrative. Our Founding Fathers were opposed to slavery. The federal government has never engaged in white supremacy. Torture is good because it leads to effective results. Non-combatant civilian deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen were few in number and amounted to unintended, collateral damage. A strong, aggressive military with first-strike capabilities is necessary for our national security. Etc., etc. That strategy doesn’t work for me and never will.
Here’s what Mark Twain had to say on this topic after having been labeled a traitor for criticizing the U.S. invasion of the Philippines (the First Philippine Republic):
The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: “The King can do no wrong.” We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: “Our country, right or wrong!” We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had—the individual’s right to oppose both flag and country when he believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it, all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism. [4]
Historically, the American government has justified many of its “bad” acts in the name of accomplishing “good” in the long term, especially if that “good” was accrued by the U.S. The Vietnam War is one sordid example (the Domino Theory). Another example: we celebrate in books and film and popular culture the conquering of our country’s indigenous population so the federal government could open previously tribal land to land-hungry white settlers. That celebration of white supremacy includes such popular monuments as the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota and the Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis as well as the Atlanta Braves, Chicago Blackhawks, Washington Redskins, Cleveland Indians, and an untold number of college sport teams that have usurped Native American identities as their own. Americans collectively close their eyes to the real world results of that coercion and demonstrate an almost total indifference to the lasting poverty and devastation inflicted by the federal government and its citizens on Native Americans. But patriots persist in celebrating that egregious land swindle as Manifest Destiny, Westward Expansion, and truth, justice, and the American Way.
Throughout history, the U.S. and other nations have committed atrocities on scales ranging from local to global and seldom if ever expressed regret or remorse or even acknowledged their specific bad acts. The flawed nature of humans, and that of their countries, is not likely to change. The prospect of nations and their citizens deliberately participating in atrocities against other nations and even against their own citizens has a probability of 100 percent.
Therefore, what compels me to love, support, and defend a nation whose history is grounded in immoral and unethical acts and that will certainly, given human nature, act immorally and unethically in the future? Not one thing. My position is simple and can be boiled down to one short statement: patriotism is abhorrent and morally unjustifiable.
Notes:
1. See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/patriotism/#MorStaPat; Section 1.1: What is patriotism?
2. Note: in this essay I try not to navigate the slippery slope of moral or cultural relativism.
3. Source: https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/commentary/what-patriotism
4. From: Albert Bigelow Paine, ed. 1924. Mark Twain's Notebook. New York: Harper & Brothers.
http://uwch-4.humanities.washington.edu/Texts/twain/Monarchical%20and%20Republican%20Patriotism.htm
