A very productive discussion!
I'm raising this specific question as a follow-up to some of the comments in this earlier post, concerning the same topic.
It would seem that at times, people (not just those who comment here, but many people, I would think) want to define patriotism as more of a feeling, at other times, they are willing to draw objective lines regarding what's covered by patriotism and what isn't, and why.
For example, trying to distill the cultural usage, Ryan says "as I can tell, it's a feeling and motivation, not an objective label", yet also admits he has a hard time reconciling some views (racism) with "patriotism". Reasonably, IMO.
I agree that patriotism is "love of country", but I only disagree with the two-subparts, "love" and "of country." Linda's answer touches on my disagreement.
I personally understand "love" to be much more than a feeling. Our culture, and the words in it, in their older uses, arose out of a Judeo-Christian value set: for the past thousand or so years, the book and ethics which made Europe different than the rest of the world would have been the bible. (Not that there weren't other influences also, but just that this was a huge one.)
In the ancient Jewish scriptures, love is not merely a feeling. For example:
"Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." (Deut 6:5)
"Love your neighbor as yourself." (Lev 19:18)
Placed in a book of laws which defined a distinctive society, love here is active, not passive. To say "love your neighbor" or "love God" and then imply that "love" means only "have a feeling" is incoherant in this context. Especially consider the command to love God with "all your strength", which again implies action. And its placement in a book of laws tells us that "love" was considered to objectively entail some actions and behaviors (not lying about your neighbor, for example) and proscribe or prohibit others.
Likewise, the first Christians (who were also Jews) continued in this theme, defining love as entailing some actions, and excluding others:
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered.... It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (1 Cor 13:4-7)
In such a context, allegations of "love" or being "loving" can be objectively disputed: If you are easily angered, or boasting about how wonderful you are, or don't protect the supposed object of your love, you're not acting in a loving manner.
So love, in my world and in European historical understanding, means acting in the highest interest of the object of love.
But doesn't that smuggle in your objective notions of good and bad, or harm and help?
Yes, you bet it does. And we can debate those in detail (which harm? which help?), but it doesn't mean should, from the very start, assume all must be morally equal, and thus end up calling all actions purported to come from good intentions "loving" or, by extension, "patriotic."
So, in short, I don't think "love" is just a feeling or alleged motivation -- and if we looked at some hard cases (abusive parents who simultaneously claimed to "love" their children) I think most of us would agree, whatever we say at other moments.
My second area of disagreement concerns the phrase "of country". Is our definition of "country" infinitely malleable also? Again (not that anyone explicitly made this claim) I don't agree.
For example, Ryan maintained, above, that segregation was a wholehearted national ideal till the 1960s". I disagree completely.
Was segregation practiced? Of course it was. And, frankly, it still is: Look at any "integrated" high school and noticed the Balkanization in the lunch room: black kids sit with black kids, white kids sit with white kids, etc. It may be regrettable, but it's a natural human behavior, present in every society on earth, in every multi-cultural environment ever known.
So I don't think we can argue that just become something was widely practiced, that makes it an ideal. Americans also used the bathroom and slept (even moreso, I'd argue), but that doesn't make those functions a "national ideal" either.
So who defines "America", that is "our country", and what it stands for? Certainly, it can mean many things to many people. So do we just say they're all right -- or do we apply some criteria?
Give that there's a difference between a "nation" and "chunk of land", what's that difference? The United States of America didn't exist before 1776. So what came into being at that time? What defined it?
Unusually, in the history of the world, what defined the "U.S.A." was a set of documents created by people who had been elected by the populace, and thus reasonably could be said to express the will of the people. So when I say "our country", I am making reference to those documents, and the ideals a "reasonable" reading of them and their history and context could find expressed there.
Thus, given that most Founders readily agreed to notions such as people being born with inalienable rights, or government being legitimized by consent of the people, we can see that those probably were ideals. Given that there was hot and conflicted views on what to do about slavery, we can guess that holding slaves probably wasn't nearly unanimously agreed to be one of those ideals, and that those who agreed with the former (inalienable rights), but were too weak to reject the later (slavery, e.g. Thomas Jefferson) knew full well which was the higher moral value.
So I think a reasonable definition of American Patriotism includes favoring the Declaration and Constitution, documents which created and defined America. Indeed, this is why we swear the president in with an oath to protect and preserve -- not the rivers and stream and mountains, nor even all citizens -- but the Constitution. The highest leader of the land has, as his main duty, fidelity to that document -- not the people, not the landmasses nor trees.
The earliest Communists and Progressives (I'm not thus saying they're the same, just that they have this in common:) viewed the US Constitution as a serious problem. The Communists well understood that its protection of property rights blocked their desire to confiscate (and purportedly redistribute) wealth.
Likewise, Woodrow Wilson (an early "progressive", and also quite a racist), in thrall to the philosophies of Hegel, did what he could to subvert its checks and balances. And later FDR (another "progressive") did the same, stacking the Supreme Court with sycophants in order to nullify its historical implications and obvious reading.
I'm sure both these men, in their own way, meant well, and both believed in "progress" (moving towards the better -- FDR said, for example, "A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward"). But you'd have to torture the english language until it screamed to say they worked consistently to preserve and protect the US Constitution.
McVeigh, in my question above, is simply a stand-in for all people who want something fundamentally different that what our nation has been. I've chosen a racist murderer because the left would object to such, and we've all (including me) drifted left. It's easier to consider a mode of thinking when we detach ourselves from it. McVeigh allows that.
Following on Ryan's second suggested angle, McVeigh is not a patriot, in my book because:
1. Segregation is not and never has been an American ideal.
2. The USA is created by the Declaration, and formed by the Constitution. You can't be at war with these documents, want a government completely at odds with such (such as the one described in The Turner Diaries), while claiming to be a patriot to the "United States of America."
3. McVeigh's actions were not helpful nor beneficial. I don't care how much he felt they might have been: I don't feel constrained to define "goodness", "love", or "beneficial" in a entirely subjective manner, as so many of my contemporaries have been tricked into doing at times.
The implications of the above aren't pretty, of course. It means that if we say Wilson did everything in his power to undermine the Constitution, he wasn't a patriot. It also means that those who work to give us a government fundamentally different than one we've seen before aren't, shall we say, especially patriotic. No matter how much they use our collective rights to agitate for it.
So no, the "Sharia for the US" candidate could not reasonably said to be patriotic. Even if he was born here and paid his taxes. (Paying taxes is patriotic!) Even if he succeeded and became President. (Being elected President is quintessentially American, isn't?) Even if his followers spoke in his favor. (Speech is classically patriotic, isn't it?) Even if they also campaigned for him. (Political campaigning is American, isn't it?) And voted for him. (Voting is Patriotic, isn't it?)
No, you silly person: He's in favor of abrogating almost every principle upon which the Constitution was founded.
And the same could be said, to a milder degree, with those who want certain forms of socialism. Are they good people? Sure. Do they mean well? Undoubtedly. Do they view themselves as "patriotic"? In their understanding (good intentions, using American rights), yes, of course.
Am I impressed, and do I think reasonable people should be? No. Would I call them "unpatriotic"? No. Why not? Because it would be a meaningless change to them; it would mean something entirely different to their ears than I meant. They see themselves as patriotic, and by their own definition, they undoubtedly are. (And I would agree that they are patriots, as they understand the term.) And of course there is a subjective aspect of patriotism, but it's not the whole, nor most important aspect.
So I say things like "you're hurting our country" or "you're working to subvert the Constitution", which would be clearer.
I don't charge such people with a lack of patriotism because the word has effectively lost all meaning today*, other than being a convenient sugar coating to help us swallow every toxin.**
(* Sadly, I'm am also saying that most people have no idea that patriotism involves objective loyalty or a preference for our lawful form of government. So La Raza, a racist group, is "patriotic" because, hey, they have affection for a large chunk of land in the Southwest, and think they should control it.)
(** If I brought up "the Patriot Act" even the left would agree with me on that statement -- though I'd expect they would probably err in their facts, and not consistently apply their various counterpoints.)
I don't know McVeigh outside of the fact that he was in the military and was involved in the Oklahoma city bombing so I don't know his motivtions from a hole in the ground, but I'd say "no" based on what you said. He seems to prefer loyalty to race over any kind of national ideal.
I could see someone who shared his twisted views calling him a "patriot for the white race" or some similar nonsense. I could see someone fighting for the Confederacy being called a "Confederate patriot." But I can't see either being called American patriots since both want the world divided along entirely different fault lines.
Posted by: Ryan W. on September 23, 2007 09:04 PM