Samuel Johnson called it the last refuge of the scoundrel. In many countries it is deemed the most sublime manifestation of civic virtue. To die in its name is to become a secular saint. The more republican the country, the greater the value placed upon it. It brings out the best in citizens, and the worst in their governments.
This multifaceted phenomenon is patriotism. The word has Greek roots, signifying attachment to one's fatherland. The connection to kin was originally crucial. Humans are evolutionarily wired to protect and care for those to whom they are genetically close. Tribalism is a natural extension of this. Nationalism is tribalism writ large. Patriotism is nationalism in its Sunday best.
With each step removed from the family, the affinity is less biologically determined and more dependent on acculturation. The last step, to patriotism, is institutionalized, typically in the service of government.
And government is a jealous master. Humans can simultaneously feel love for many people. But they can be patriotic toward only one government at a time. Patriotism summons courage and selflessness, but it commands obedience. If the government of your country calls on you to fight and you answer the call, you are accounted a patriot. But you are not given a genuine choice. If you refuse to answer the call, you are denounced as a coward and perhaps imprisoned as an enemy of the state.
Patriotism channels enduring values, but the required object of those values can change in an instant. Joseph Galloway was a Pennsylvania colleague of Benjamin Franklin. He was as upset as Franklin with the acts of Parliament in the 1760s and 1770s. He was considered just as patriotic as Franklin—until the moment when Franklin signed the Declaration of Independence and Galloway demurred, believing the gap between Britain and America had not become unbridgeable. Despite the fact that his views hadn’t changed, he was judged a traitor by the new government of independent Pennsylvania and was forced to flee his homeland. Naturally the rebels called themselves Patriots.
Rituals enforce the patriotic lockstep. Oaths of allegiance, national anthems and flag-festooned parades reveal the close connection between patriotism and the practice of or preparation for war. Patriotic ritual reaches a poignant apogee in the funeral ceremonies for heroes who have died in the patriotic defense of the nation.
In some ways patriotism is the simplest thing in the world to explain. It's what countries turn to when they've expanded beyond the size of tribe or even nation—the latter taken in the sense of a people with common cultural and historical roots. America is such a country, and foreigners often remark on what they see as Americans’ hyperpatriotism, or jingoism. Many Americans aren't content simply to praise their own country. They must denigrate other countries. America can't merely be good. It must be the best.
American patriotism has often employed the language of American exceptionalism. Barack Obama discovered this to his discomfiture. Asked to avow American exceptionalism, he initially hesitated, saying that many countries were exceptional, each in its own way. He was castigated as unpatriotic. To quiet the uproar he made the required obeisance.
Patriotism is a cudgel conservatives use against reformers. The basis of reform is a belief that something requires fixing. Conservatives disagree, thinking the status quo generally acceptable. They label the critique of the status quo an attack on the country and hence unpatriotic.
Reformers sometimes assert a higher patriotism. The country might be good, they say, but it could be better. They rarely get far. Theirs is an appeal to intellect. Patriotism is chiefly an appeal to emotion.
Emotion is essential to patriotism’s connection to war. Historically every country has had to devise methods to mobilize its young men to risk their lives for causes determined by their elders. Compulsion works but not as well as enthusiasm. The elders promise glory to those who hurl themselves into harm’s way in the name of the country. Time and again the young men, and lately young women, have let themselves be persuaded.
Patriotism in a good war is a noble thing. The problem is that every war is a good war in the minds of those who cause it. Hitler appealed to German patriotism in sending troops into Poland in the opening act of World War II in Europe. Germany was reclaiming territory stolen from the fatherland at the end of World War I, he said. The German soldiers saluted and marched.
Could there be such a thing as discriminating patriotism, a version resistant to hijacking by the scoundrels of the world? Maybe. But it wouldn’t come easily. The last thing the patriotism-mongers want is for individuals to make up their own minds. The model they insist on is that of Tennyson’s Light Brigade: “Theirs not to make reply / Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die.”
The patriotism-mongers generally get their way. Patriotism is about love of country, but it's also about loyalty to the ruling regime. Love your country, but do it our way. Or else.
More citizens. Fewer Patriots.