Patriotism

My relationship with the concept has been uneven over the years.  As preteen, I had the same reflexive belief that everyone does that Our People were the Best People, and at the time that meant our nation was the best nation with the best history with the bravest soldiers and the smartest thinkers and the prettisest girls and the best tomatoes and, and  just everything. I always find it annoying that people who want America to act differently, both conservative and liberal, rail against children being taught that we are good, or almost good enough if only or whatever. We were and are taught those things, but this is mostly because it is all we can hear.  We would believe this whatever we were taught in school.  Children believe we are on the Good Team, even the Best Team Ever, and it is usually only the schools and textbooks even in the early grades that cast the slightest doubt on that at all, that we did some things wrong in the past (But we're better now!  We've learned!).

Blaming the teaching of patriotism is just virtue signalling, because we would have believed such things anyway and would hear nothing other.  My sons from Romania, born before the Revolution - and even ten years after - believed that Romanians were the best in many things, even though they were a small and oppressed nation. Their teachers believed that Romanian education was superior to American.  I did not contradict them, but I sat in a couple of classes, and we observed later that our son in sixth grade did not know his tables of three. He picked up enough math under our tutelage (mostly my wife's) that summer to survive seventh grade, and eventually finished HS at slightly below-average level.

Yet I digress, as I often do. But you take the point, that we all have a natural tendency to think our own people's ways the best.

Somewhere around seventh grade, whether by seeking coolness, or natural contrariness, deciding that aggressively seeking other viewpoints, or the virtue signalling of trying to be more Christian than the average bear, I became something of an anti-patriot, considering it a low form of morality and myself easily above that.  My eighth-grade teacher wisely assigned me The Man Without a Country, which was heavy handed and not great literature, but made its point clearly. Then I listened to Pete Seeger claiming that he and his Folk Song Army were the real patriots, quoting his supposed relative Alan Seeger who wrote "I Have an Rendezvous With Death," which Pete co-opted for his own purposes.* Ah, that's the ticket!  I'm the real patriot here, you bastards. It has been used very effectively by many, including, most irritatingly to my eyes, Barack Obama lauding America for what it could be and its (unfortunately failed) aspirations, which were an entirely an echo of the Democratic National Committee. I have a brother who thinks this way still. 

Still, I did see that there were those who were reflexively supportive of American behavior and deeply committed to America First. I would argue with them online, suggesting that if just maybe, in a hundred years or so**, America was not really American anymore, couldn't you see where your patriotism should no longer be granted...? So Pat Buchanan was deeply supportive of economic protectionism because "who cares if it hurts the economy overall, these are fellow Americans," and "immigration hurts low-skilled blacks, who we have a greater obligation to" but was also deeply opposed to American foreign wars and consider America an increasing force for evil in the world, focused on empire, not nationhood.  Was he a patriot?  The question started to become increasingly interesting. 

So what if a major political figure wants America to dominate, but the sort of domination they want strikes us as ambiguous, or even not in accord with what we consider to be core American principles? Patriot or No? Who, in fact, of our current major figures does not fit that picture? Once in power, they so quickly confuse their own interests with American interests. To oppose them is to be unAmerican, so they therefore have the right to do unAmerican things to preserve their power.

I wrote a rather acerbic review of the book True Patriot many years ago. I liked rereading it, and I miss Terri. It expresses this in more detail, with more gripping writing. Sigh. I wonder if I have merely reverted to my grammar school self.  I root for Americans at the Olympics (dammit!), I think our country more beautiful, despite its many ugly places.  Our foods are tastier, our women are prettier, our core character, when the chips are down, is just better. Right? Two of my sons went into our armed services, and I thought them noble. Yet one of those has lived in Norway for thirteen years, and one could fairly say he is both the least and most patriotic of the five. If you draw him out, he is irritated at both the governments and the national character of Romanians, Norwegians, and Americans. 

What does it even mean now?  Release the hounds, as Tigerhawk over a decade ago.

* This was a communist training tactic, to use songs, poems, and images that people already loved and change them to The Cause.  "We Will Overcome" was a hymn based on Galatians 6:9 that became s union song, then a civil rights one, "We Shall Overcome."

**A hundred years. Heh. Well, that was quick, wa'n't it?