Today, the idea of counting patriotism as a virtue makes a lot of people antsy and uncomfortable. But that wasn’t always the case. Aspiring to the love of God and country was the norm for most of human history. And until rather recently, every culture celebrated its great patriots in art, literature, music and film. The classic movies produced during World War II — and then about it — are enduring examples of how we expressed our patriotism before patriotism itself got a bad rap.
But something changed in the United States when the children of the “Greatest Generation” reached adolescence. With body-bag counts from Vietnam reported daily on the 6 o’clock news and the Watergate hearings overriding regular daytime programming on television, almost everyone under 30 struggled to find any reason to be proud. For kids in elementary school like me, the ambivalence permeated everything.
Our fathers and grandfathers fought evil in Europe and the Far East and defeated it at great personal cost. But the society at large was intent on proving that we didn’t owe them anything. The fourth commandment — “honor your father and your mother” — no longer applied. Consequently, I didn’t witness much patriotism until Ronald Reagan was elected president. And when I finally did, it frightened me.
In those years, we were told (in both direct and oh-so-subtle ways) that America’s best days could only be found in history books, but that what was written in those books was misleading.
Our nation was troubled from the start, rife with broken promises at home and prone to arrogant bullying abroad. Strong countercultural forces peddled the narrative that America had little to be proud of and a lot to be ashamed of.
Loving one’s neighbor
People who didn’t see things that way were marginalized. At best, they were considered old and less sophisticated than the critics who were always armed with yet another reason to hold their own country in contempt. At worst, they were thought of as delusional and potentially dangerous nationalists. In retrospect, very few people were anything of the sort.
Nationalism had been identified as the underlying cause of World War II. The Nazis were motivated by a kind of patriotism, after all. So, it was important to view all patriotism with skepticism, even suspicion. National identity accompanied by patriotic pride would inevitably erupt in war. Consequently, my generation was encouraged to see ourselves as “citizens of the world.” Globalizing ourselves, it was thought, was the way to cultivate peace.
The unanticipated result, however, was widespread apathy and indifference. Instead of learning to see everyone as our neighbor, we ended up becoming even more detached from those who actually were.
To be sure, loving one’s neighbor is challenging. But as it turns out, loving people we don’t know and with whom we will never share a common life is impossible. We can love and care for only the people close to us, those we encounter. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors, that is, those God has placed near us, those with whom we share life as co-heirs of history.
But we are also commanded to honor our fathers and mothers, those who came before us not just biologically, but chronologically. In justice, we owe a debt of gratitude to our forebears and countrymen — even to the flawed and feckless ones who make us cringe.
Deserving of ‘attention and respect’
Whatever evils they did or good they failed to achieve, we have inherited from them not only a place to call home, but language, culture, civic institutions and the infrastructure of community life. Acknowledging that with gratitude expresses itself in the loyalty and affection of patriotism.
Patriotism celebrates the personal bonds of human communities and makes them visible. As paragraph No. 2212 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us: “The neighbor is not a ‘unit’ in the human collective; he is a ‘someone’ who by his known origins deserves particular attention and respect.”
When we willingly serve those with whom we share a common life and a common good, all our relationships are reordered and directed toward charity. The love of neighbor expressed as authentic patriotism can bring this transformation to a societal scale.
Human beings flourish when we love those in proximity to us without hating those who are not. And that is possible because true patriotism is not rooted in the sins of pride, hatred or greed, but in the virtues of justice and love.
