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Written by Earl Hiatt / Community Columnist
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Friday, 12 September 2008 |
Rethinking patriotism in the U.S.
Editor’s note: Part one of two. Part two will run in this space next month.
 Earl Hiatt / His Voice
“I’m not ashamed of my nationality, but I have no idea why I should love this country more than any other.”
Does the above sentence have a different connotation when I tell you that it was written by an Englishman referring to England? Why would anyone feel patriotism for England? I would suggest that it is the responsibility of a patriot to protect his country from its own government.
Patriotism is the conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it — “My nation (fill in the blank) is smarter, more righteous, more deserving and generally better than any other country, simply because this is where I live.”
We call our founding fathers patriots, but if they had lost the war for independence, they would have been hanged as traitors. The Japanese pilots that bombed Pearl Harbor were patriotic. The German people who supported Hitler were patriotic. Our ancestors were patriotic as they slaughtered each other during the Civil War, and later we patriotically killed those “red heathens” who had the unmitigated gall to be living on “our” land.
The very essence of the state demands that there be some privileged class vitally interested in maintaining that existence. And it is precisely the group interests of that class that we refer to as patriotism. The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. They seek dictatorship; all the rest is an illusion.
Most of what we call patriotism is really nationalism, which is a set of beliefs taught to each generation in which the Motherland or Fatherland is an object of veneration and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands.
The U.S. is the most patriotic, as well as the most religious, country of the so-called developed world. The entire American patriotism thing may be best understood as the biggest mass hysteria in history, whereby the people adore its own power as troopers of the world’s only superpower, a substitute for the lack of power in the rest of their lives.
Patriotism, like religion, meets people’s need for something greater to which their individual lives can be anchored.
Actions are held to be good or bad not on their merits but according to who does them. The patriot (my country, right or wrong, my country) not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. As an example, our president recently severely condemned Russia for attacking Georgia, an independent nation. Does anybody remember that we are still in a war started the same way by our great and hypocritical leader?
It is as if our long trail of blood is forever invisible, intellectually and morally. Once again, war has proven good for absolutely nothing.
What seems odd about the 2008 presidential campaign is the underlying mantra of both major candidates that somehow the noblest (most patriotic) thing individual Americans can do is to limit their personal interest for some greater good as defined by the federal government.
This year’s Republican nominee, John McCain, denounces “self-indulgence” and insists that Americans serve “a national purpose that is greater than our individual interests.”
“A greater cause,” “community service” — these phrases sound warm and comforting. But their purpose is to disparage and denigrate our own lives and to belittle our own pursuit of happiness.
They are better suited to a more collectivist country than for a country founded on individual freedom.
- Patterson resident Earl Hiatt is a semi-retired agri-businessman whose major interests are nutrition, economics and religion. His columns appear occasionally on the Irrigator Voice page. His e-mail is
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