Friday - April 16, 2004
Patriotism
My friend Rebecca on her blog, Voxlibre
(this doesn't seem to be a permanent link, also go to here, and look at
April 15, 2004, "Birthright"), discusses whether patriotism is a stupid emotion
because no one chooses the country they're born in. Rebecca rightly ridicules
this foolishness, but I think she is missing the most obvious fault in this
statement's logic.The most obvious
thing missed in her refutation is what is sadly so commonly missed by much of
our modern society: a moral judgment. And both those words are taken to
insinuate opposite negative associations, with the result that most people in
our culture refrain from making one -- especially on such fundamental
concepts.
The thing is that morality has gotten such a bad
rap and many people instantly equate morality with religious beliefs. Of course
morality has little to do with religion except by limited coincidence, but many
people have a knee jerk response to anything that implies religion. I am no
advocate of religion, the problem is that religion has successfully claimed the
province of morality despite all the evidence that the two have little to do
with each other.
The other word,
judgment, also causes a knee jerk response but from the opposite direction.
Here our christian cultural heritage comes out against making judgment. Jesus
is frequently quoted as saying "Judge not, lest ye be judged." Of course this
quote is almost always misunderstood. I won't go into the context of the actual
quote because I'm only concerned with the popular understanding of the quote
here. Popularly, this quote is used to challenge people to not judge others.
Typically the curse implied in this quote is invoked by those doing something
that fails to withstand scrutiny or judgment. People should instead demand that
their actions be judged and that their behavior be recognized for what it is,
good moral behavior. Of course if they aren't good people, this will work
against them, hence the frequent misapplication of the biblical quote.
So making a moral judgment goes
against the grain of many non religious people and of many religious people. No
wonder people choke on that idea.
We're
missing the moral judgment, but how does that apply to patriotism? The
fallacious argument is that since one doesn't typically choose where one is born
and live, that being patriotic is arbitrary and meaningless. The assumption is
that the patriotic individual is excused from making any moral judgment about
the target of his patriotism. But why would that be the case? There is no
nation today that is morally perfect, but there are certainly some nations that
are better than others. Making the distinction between good nations and bad
nations would require one to make a moral judgment, and the knee jerk reaction
by most people is to refrain from requiring that natural
behavior.
But it is easy and natural to
note the difference between a good nation, such as Australia or the Netherlands,
and bad nations such as North Korea, or Saudi Arabia. If you live in a bad
nation, being patriotic is clearly immoral. You might love the location, the
people, or the historical heritage, but being patriotic and supporting an evil
regime is immoral and it is a faulty syllogism to say that since being patriotic
for these nations is immoral, then being patriotic is a sign of stupidity even
for good nations.
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