Patriotism is the political form of love. It comes from the Latin (and Greek) for father, signaling the deep bond of loyalty to clan, the primitive sense that we owe our existence to a place, a people.
As Jody points out when recalling an old post of mine that drew appreciative attention to some recent roots music, like any love, patriotism or localism or any other form of fierce love for the heath gods can be blind. Doubtless. In fact, xenophobia is probably our natural state. If we love our homes and homelands, then we usually feel a certain peremptory pride, something that easily slides into disdain for strangers.
I suppose every localism pays a price. He points out that G.K. Chesterton reflected something of the antisemitism that circulated at the time. A sorry fact, though a complicated one that we often smugly denounce from our position of imagined moral superiority.
I have my own memories. Growing up in Maryland, it was easy to cultivate Confederate loyalties. There is something hopelessly attractive about the Lost Cause, at least to a certain kind of ten-year-old. I remember devoting a great deal of time to making my own Stars and Bars with a white sheet and magic markers. I would storm around in the neighborhood with my friend as we imagined ourselves Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. (I’m sorry, but Grant and Sherman just don’t fire the imagination in the same way.)
One day a friend of my mother’s was visiting. She saw us out the back window and stormed out with a fierce look on her face. “I don’t ever want to see you with that flag again,” she said to me in a tone of voice that commanded instant obedience.
Well, you might say, that’s a good example of localism gone bad. Southern pride mixed up with slavery and Jim Crow—and my mother’s friend applying a much needed moral break on the whole toxic brew. I’m not so sure. You see, she was from New Hampshire.
I don’t want to defend the Chesterton’s antisemitism or Southern racism or any other perversion of localism. But we need to recognize that love cannot be both fierce and dispassionately critical, serenely universal. The cosmopolitan Stoic sage tends to lack a sense of commitment. A universal perspective tends toward jaundiced cynicism.
Given the choice, I’ll take the blind love and I’ll try to correct its faults. I think love endorsed and corrected goes with the grain, while a cosmopolitanism that tries to inject a sense of local loyalty tends to fail. After all, a true love of place can embrace what is just—for the sake of perfecting the beloved.
June 29th, 2009 | 5:32 pm
But can one actually choose one or the other? It seems that once one has lost one’s faith in a particular locale it can only gradually and partially return.
June 29th, 2009 | 5:46 pm
[...] R.R. Reno, frequent contributor to the conservative Catholic magazine First Things, recently blogged the following: Patriotism is the political form of [...]
June 29th, 2009 | 9:34 pm
-Blessed are the lovestruck jingos for Ceasar, for they shall be called sons of God.
-Blessed are those who go forth at their leaders’ corrupt command to deliberately murder the Other in Civil War or War Over There, for they shall be as stars in the firmament of Heaven.
-Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after ignorant tribalism, for they shall be called Sons of the Confederacy and remembered by their Father in Heaven in Eternity.
Yeah, those worthless liberals from Puritan New Hampshire. To hell with them. We have so much fun with our yahoo flags and plastic guns, us 10-year-olds, without no damn Yankee interference. Let alone no You-row-pee-an interference.
Roots music? How many ‘conservatives’ listen to real roots music? I’m sure Rush Limbaugh is a big fan of Buddy and Julie Miller, not to mention Big Mama Thornton. Them Austin City Limits types ain’t no REAL Americans.
I dunno, man — I grew up in New Jersey, in a drab exurban working-class “small town”. There was no sense of community and no natural beauty. The education I was offered was execrable by international standards. In my college years I spent a year in Switzerland — take it from me, the standard of living there DWARFS what most of us have here. And, yes, they have evangelical religion there too, if you want it. I attended a service there complete with country gospel music sung in Bern-deutsch. Catholic churches too, golly gee. Even capitalism and banking, halleluia. I don’t understand all this cheerful rustic patriotic American crap at all. (My mom is from Kansas, and I do love her. But Kansas? Are you bleeping serious?)
June 30th, 2009 | 8:41 am
“…love endorsed and corrected”. I will be using this phrase (and will attribute it to one of my most-admired writers). As far as the United States is concerned, we might try to remember the attitude of, “America, America, God mend thine every flaw”. Switzerland (along with other first loves) is not perfect either.
June 30th, 2009 | 2:02 pm
R.R. Reno, sir, I very much enjoyed the blog above. You should be contributing to the Front Porch Republic, or at the very least, adding your insight and comments.
RE: your story of the lady who threatened you re: the Stars and Bars, a similar event took place with my across-the-road-neighbor, Jim-Bob, who raised a rather large Stars and Bars in the front of his house.
A fellow, a stranger, stopped by, knocked on his door and informed Jim-Bob that he was to take ‘that’ flag down. Jim-Bob, who hunts, owns an armory of guns and reloads all ammo, grabbed a .45 he keeps near the front door and frog-marched the gentleman to his car while instructing him on the intent and purpose of the First Amendment, not to mention the concept of the sanctity of the home. I always get misty-eyed telling that story.
You’d like it here where I live. We’re still Americans and on May 10, the day of Thomas Jonathan Jackson’s death I raise a glorious, old Stars and Bars to half-mast in commemoration.
Thanks for this blog and here’s hoping Mr. Teichman stays on in Europe. I am, sir,
Your Obd. Svt,
Robert C. Cheeks
June 30th, 2009 | 3:38 pm
[...] Rusty Reno and Jody Bottum mix it up over at First Things over issues of localism, a hot topic of late on the internets, it would seem. Rusty asserts that “patriotism is the political form of love,” and concludes, with the faith of true love, that “I’ll take the blind love and I’ll try to correct its faults” (this line of argument recalls an instructive review of Walter Berns’s Making Patriots by Bill McClay some years back in Public Interest – well worth the read). [...]
July 1st, 2009 | 2:41 am
Yes, Linda. I have long held that we should all teach our children the stirring second verse of America the Beautiful, and catechize them on its deep meanings, on the fundamental interrelationship of law, liberty, and personal responsibility.
O beautiful, for pilgrim feet
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine ev’ry flaw;
Confirm thy soul in self control,
Thy liberty in law!
July 1st, 2009 | 12:34 pm
I never understood those who didn’t instinctively love “home.” But then I grew up in North Carolina, not New Jersey. :) On the other hand, our true home — Jerusalem — is not of this world.
July 2nd, 2009 | 6:48 am
[...] Caleb has already noted here, Rusty Reno and Jody Bottum have been mixing it up over at First Things over issues of localism, a hot topic of [...]
July 5th, 2009 | 5:23 am
“I was offered was execrable by international standards. In my college years I spent a year in Switzerland — take it from me, the standard of living there DWARFS what most of us have here.”
Ah, yes, the country that made moral indifference internationally fashionable and birthed the notion that plants have rights.
Please, if you’re going to denounce localism, try not to shoot yourself in the foot with even more lousy localism.
July 6th, 2009 | 7:53 pm
[...] R.R. Reno [...]
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