God and Country

First off, I'm really getting tired of hearing about "patriotism". There's nothing wrong with simple patriotism; your dictionary will tell you that it's just "love of country and willingness to sacrifice for it". Nothing wrong with that, right?

George Orwell said it best in 1945:

By "nationalism" I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled "good" or "bad." But secondly -- and this is much more important -- I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By "patriotism" I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.

Most of the "patriotic" fervor I hear today sounds more like nationalism.

I was interested to find this at John Mellencamp's Blog:

"When people are for the country right or wrong, America right or wrong, it's a lot like Germany. Nationalism is a bad thing. And when you have a mob mentality over a country, over a swastika, over the Fuhrer, over the Iraq war, the outcome is not going to be good."

While Googling for "Nationalism vs. Patriotism", I came across this from BlogCritics Magazine:

To claim moral superiority or believe that one way of life is superior to another is to pay disservice to the notion of diversity. How can one genuinely respect another's beliefs if you feel inherently better then they are just because of an accident of birth? It's one thing to take pride in who you are and what you believe in. It's another altogether to think that yours is the only way.

For too many Americans today, the cry of "patriotism" unfortunately seems to stand for that kind of insular superiority.

For most of my life, had anyone asked if I were patriotic, I surely would have answered "Yes". I'd like to answer "yes" today, but given how "patriot" seem to have redefined its meaning, I'm not anxious to claim that tag. I'm definitely NOT a patriot, at least not in the ugly nationalistic sense that seems to pervade "patriotism" today.

I'm also heartily sick of hearing about the "good, God fearing people of.." wherever John McCain is speaking today. Of course there's an unspoken assumption in there: these people aren't fearing just any old "god", no, this is a fairly specific Judeo-Christian god that they are supposedly trembling before. I don't believe in supernatural beings of any kind, so it's plain that I have no fear of any gods, whether of the bird ressurected from the fire kind or the less flamboyant type McCain envisions. I would also suspect that very few of the crowds addressed really are "God fearing" - today's Christianity tends more to milk and cookies than fire and brimstone, at least for those who have drunk the Koolaid (the rest of us are going to Hell where we belong).

But it's the implicaton that I object to: that someone who fears divine retribution is a better sort than someone who thinks that's all a bunch of nonsense. In other words, moral behavior can only be enforced by fear. The person with no fear of divine punishment can't be trusted - well, unless there are lots of cops around to watch suspiciously as we spend our days not going to church.

It's complete rubbish, of course, and worse, I doubt the man even believes that. He just says it, because, like patriotism, the crowd eats it up. Probably a lot of them wouldn't buy the underlying assumption either, and most probably really wouldn't want to be seen as nationalists if they took a minute to think about it. But they don't. So they stamp their feet and whistle and cheer and the show goes on.

In a recent Larry King interview, John McCain said that he does not believe Barack Obama is a socialist. Yet that's another word he and Sarah love to throw to the crowd. Once again, I'm sure most of that crowd understands that if Obama is a "socialist", so is McCain and probably 99% or more of our politicians, but it doesn't matter: they stamp their feet and whistle and cheer anyway.

Maybe that's what I'm really sick of. The mindless foot stomping, wild clapping, hooting bally-hoo over things they really don't think are true.

Maybe I'd just like Americans to grow up and act like adults.