Wrestling with Patriotism

Patriotism - (noun) Love of country and willingness to sacrifice for it; devotion to the welfare of one's country; devotion to a community as opposed to devotion to one's individual interests.

Nationalism - (noun) Having pride in one's country; a collective state of mind or consciousness in which people believe their primary duty and loyalty is to the nation-state.

"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." - George Orwell.

It's been fascinating to listen to the various concepts of patriotism put forth in this election. It has helped me clarify for myself my own feelings and thoughts on the subject.

I'm a Christian. Philippians 3:20 - "Our citizenship is in heaven." (ASV). As the son of an U.S. Army officer, as someone who spent three years in high school ROTC, I've struggled with what that verse means to me. I balance it with Romans 13:1 - "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities."

I love my country. I'd sacrifice for its welfare. And when I say that I love my country, I have something to compare it to. I've lived in Germany, Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore. I've visited a few dozen countries. America, even at its worst, is a pretty nice place. I like it.

Patriotism is often confused with another -ism we don't mention much in America: nationalism. Nationalism is at least partly an ethnic concept. People submerge their identity into some larger community ideal. Patriotism doesn't require that kind of death of self.

It's been a while, but I've read The Light and the Glory. I remember thinking it was a crock. I can't tell you exactly why now. Because it's been a while. But I don't see America as God's newly chosen instrument or people. It's a nice place and I love it. I leave it there.

Not all of my friends have always been Americans. I've had friends who were Singaporeans and South Africans, Filipinos and Australians, New Zealanders and South Koreans, Samoans and Brazilians. I didn't figure it was their fault. I never thought they were somehow inferior to me. That would go beyond even my usual arrogance.

Patriotism is not a military concept. It doesn't go away when there are no wars to fight. Your credentials as a patriot are not somehow damaged by inability (or even refusal) to serve in the military. Patriotism is more basic. It is love of country - plain and simple.

I've lived and worked in places nationalism was common. I recognize it. It makes me uncomfortable. I'm a patriot. But I'm not a nationalist. And you don't have to be one to love America...

Conservatives Accuse Google of Being Unpatriotic on Columbus Day

Among the stupidest crap I've heard in recent months in the accusation (reported by CBS) that Google is unpatriotic because of the events it choose to draw attention to (or not draw attention to) by altering its logo.

The LA Times is among the sources that have picked up the story. A conservative web site is criticizing Google for acknowledging the 50th anniversary of sputnik in its logo design last week. The website complains that Google has never altered its logo for Veterans Day or Memorial Day. The sputnik was, well, communist. Google changes its logo regularly and has commemorated such dates, according to CBS, as "World Water Day, Persian New Year, painter Edvard Munch's birthday and China's Dragon Boat festival."

The idea that this discussion started around Columbus Day seems especially ironic to me. I'm not sure what's patriotic about Columbus Day. Columbus was an Italian working for Spain. He discovered Cuba, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and the U.S. Virgin Islands. My school system doesn't give kids the day off (which means I work), but my bank closes (so I can't cash my paycheck that day) and the mail doesn't run. To me the holiday is an inconvenience. Perhaps his trips would have been more meaningful if Leif Ericson hadn't discovered mainland North America over 500 years before Columbus. But I digress...

A couple of thought occur to me. One is that Google's logo is a type of pop art. The Conservatives who are complaining about it want to judge pop art based primarily on political correctness. That attitude and approach is part of what has led to the decline of pluralism in America. We don't tolerate people who think of act differently very well any more.

The other thought that occurs to me is that making Memorial Day and Veterans Day a measure of patriotism is a symptom of the narrow view of patriotism Conservatives take. Patriotism is about guns and war and beating the enemy to Conservatives. I'm not anti-military by any stretch; but I think patriotism is about more than war and uniforms. I agree with John Edwards: it's time to be patriotic about something other than the war...

Pythagoras, Ben Franklin, and American Independence

I like philosophy. In my room I have a comfortable chair with a dim lamp, and in the wee hours of this morning I sat there reading A History of Western Philosophy, by Bertand Russell. The chapter dealt with Pythagoras, so I was surprised to come upon a section that discussed the U.S. Declaration of Independence!

The second paragraph of America's Declaration of Independence reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

In Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, author Walter Isaacson tells the story of how the term self-evident came to be in the Declaration of Independence...

On June 21, after he had finished a draft and incorporated some changes from Adams, Jefferson had a copy delivered to Franklin, with a cover note far more polite than editors generally receive today. "Will Doctor Franklin be so good as to peruse it," he wrote, "and suggest such alterations as his more enlarged view of the subject will dictate?"

Franklin made only a few small changes, but one of them was resounding. Using heavy backslashes, he crossed out the last three words of Jefferson’s phrase, "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable" and changed it to read: "We hold these truths to be self-evident."

The concept of "self-evident" truths came less from Jefferson’s favored philosopher, Locke, than from the scientific determinism of Isaac Newton and the analytic empiricism of Franklin’s close friend David Hume. Hume had distinguished between "synthetic" truths that describe matters of fact (such as "London is bigger than Philadelphia" ) and "analytic" truths that are self-evident by virtue of reason and definition. ( "The angles of a triangle equal 180 degrees" or "All bachelors are unmarried." ) When he chose the word "sacred," Jefferson had suggested intentionally or unintentionally that the principle in question—the equality of men and their endowment by their creator with inalienable rights—was an assertion of religion. By changing it to "self-evident," Franklin made it an assertion of rationality. (emphasis added)

Where did Franklin's wording come from? Sheila O'Malley thinks the change makes the document angrier in tone. Another author suggests something similar - that Jefferson's words weren't strong enough. After all, people can deny anything – and frequently do. Maybe that was part of Franklin's goal. Rabbi Marc Gellman seems to think the change was intended to make America more secular - and perhaps too scientific (in his view).

The term "self-evident" is a philosophical one that has greatly impacted mathematics, as well. And while Franklin may have taken it from Hume and/or Newton, the truth is that the idea dates all the way back to the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (who actually lived in Italy, by the way). Most of the self-evident truths that Pythagoras and his students espoused were mathematical (or geometric, if you want to separate out geometry as a field unto itself). And math and philosophy became intertwined from Pythagoras onward in history because the great truths of math could be contemplated in the privacy of your basement - without reference to observation of the world. Bertrand Russell, a mathematician (among many other things), calls the tangling of ways between math and philosophy "unfortunate" in his history...

In epistemology (the theory of knowledge, of how we know things), a self-evident proposition is one that is known to be true by understanding its meaning without proof. Rene Descartes (I think, therefore I am) introduced (or re-introduced) the importance of things that were self-evident. John Locke, Jefferson's favorite philosopher, worked to expand the list of things that were self-evident and explain how they pushed us toward conclusions about reality. But the idea of self-evident truths seems to have been first put forth by Pythagoras, expanded greatly by Euclid in his 13 volume math and geometry text book, Elements, and in Bertrand view, brought firmly and finally into philosophy by Plato.

As the fathers of America worked on the Declaration of Independence it was, after all, the Age of Enlightenment. So when Jefferson "slipped up" and fell back on religion by using the word "sacred" to explain why we should be free, Franklin corrected him. Franklin himself made at least 48 alterations to Jefferson's draft, but this one probably impacted the world the most. If Jefferson's "sacred" had been left in, the Arabs of Iraq and the Hindus of India could have looked at Democracy (at least in light of our Declaration of Independence) and said, "Ha, Christians! What do they know?" As a result of Franklin's change, the idea became rational (and secular) instead of being based on revelation from God.

Jefferson produced a second draft incorporating the changes, and it was presented to the Continental Congress on June 28, 1776. The vote for independence took place on July 2, 1776. A final draft of the document was approved on July 4. On both votes the delegation from New York abstained. On July 6, the Pennsylvania Evening Post published the Declaration of Independence for its readers. The new document was read in public in Philadelphia on the night of July 8 at bonfires around the city. The official signing on the parchment copy wasn't until August 2, 1776.