The virtue of patriotism

Michie said:

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​

Continued below.

The virtue of patriotism

Patriotism was once seen as a virtue grounded in love, but cultural shifts have cast it in a negative light, obscuring its purpose.

www.oursundayvisitor.com

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I think that I'd disagree somewhat. I am a baby boomer, a child of the Greatest Generation.

My Dad was a Sargent during WWII and Korea. All my friends had Father's, uncles, etc. that were veterans. I listened to them talk about their service then, as compared to later conflicts.

It seemed that America was changing as our position in global events were changing. Prior wars were about defending our country from those that had attacked us. But, from Korea on, it was about protecting our interests abroad and wars weren't won anymore. Thousands of their children dying for what?

It's easy to be patriotic when protecting family from attack but hard when seeing your children dying for nothing.

I would say that with more free information, people can easily learn how people live in other countries other than their own. They can see that other countries have also interesting life, ideas, culture, freedoms, advantages and disadvantages and that there are good and bad people everywhere.

Also, mobility is quite high, today. Nobody has to die on the same land he was born on.

In such information age and global society, patriotism towards specific local political borders will be, logically, diminishing. People have more options, more choices than before.

Michie said:

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​

Continued below.

The virtue of patriotism

Patriotism was once seen as a virtue grounded in love, but cultural shifts have cast it in a negative light, obscuring its purpose.

www.oursundayvisitor.com

Click to expand...

Okay...

Patriotism is defined as love and devotion to one's own country. Taken at face value, it's unconditional and that makes me uneasy. If, however, there is a reason, then that's something different. For most or all of it's existence, US patriotism was based on the ideals of this country, beginning with the principle of representation and expanding to include liberties. This was seen in the sentiment of the first states jealously guarding their own liberties lest they exchange the heel of Britain for another. That proved almost the undoing of the US, with the outcome the US Constitution, a remarkable document that tried to balance the need for a strong enough central government for the country to function against the risk of the states losing all liberty. What we ended up with is an ideal. The US literally saw itself as a shining light on the hill, a beacon of liberty and self-determination. In many ways it still does,

The key thing is that this ideal was seen as something to work toward. The US has never been perfect. Yet that doesn't mean the ideals are worth discarding. Critics point to slavery, to lack of suffrage for women; to racism, as though such wasn't known then. But knowing how the US treated blacks didn't stop blacks from enlisting in the Civil War, or World War 1, or World War II, not because they thought the US was perfect, but because they recognized that while the US didn't live up to its ideals, those ideals existed and were a goal to work toward.

That's not how it was portrayed beginning in at least the 1960s and likely before. WWII propaganda, and for all I know WWI propaganda, hammered the US didn't meet it's own ideals, the unspoken association being that if the US failed to meet those ideals, then those ideals were a lie. That was the angle I remember from the 1960s. It was the angle in the early 1970s. It's the angle taken now. "Oh, the founders were slave owners, so what they supported must be bad." If the US had gone too far in trying to make its heroes into alabaster saints, trying to make them all into devils is hardly better. It's interesting that the argument is that since the ideal wasn't meet, then the ideal itself is flawed. It's like arguing that a building with some broken windows has to be torn down to the foundations and built anew.

You have to wonder just what sort of structure they have in mind. From the way liberties that threaten dissent are panned, it's not one I'd want to live in.

That's the thing. There was criticism of the US from the get-go, but there was also the question "compared to what?" If we look at the times, what was going on elsewhere wasn't exactly moonlight and roses. This was once known. This has also been downplayed, at least as far back as the 1970s and possibly before.

So it was that in a textbook from before 1976, the Soviet Union was treated in such glowing terms that our teacher also taught what happened to dissenters in the USSR. If none of you have read Tortured for Christ, it's well worth the read. But how many school children were taught that without a teacher telling them that wasn't the full story. It was like that snow job that Stalin gave a US delegation prior to WWII, and he managed to fool all but one, who noticed things that perhaps Stalin didn't want them to see.

If you are told relentlessly that your own country has nothing to be proud of; no great achievements; no great men or women; and that it's very ideals are flawed, then you're not going to have much incentive in supporting it. If, however, you recognized your country is flawed but it's ideals are a sound goal to work toward, then it's those ideals and their potential that are worth loving and preserving. That's the way it used to be, and that's what's missing now.

trophy33 said:

I would say that with more free information, people can easily learn how people live in other countries other than their own. They can see that other countries have also interesting life, ideas, culture, freedoms, advantages and disadvantages and that there are good and bad people everywhere.

Also, mobility is quite high, today. Nobody has to die on the same land he was born on.

In such information age and global society, patriotism towards specific local political borders will be, logically, diminishing. People have more options, more choices than before.

Click to expand...

Free information isn't necessarily accurate, and even when it is, there is no way to know for sure without living in a place. I have heard from more than one naturalized US citizen that pointed out differences they still weren't quite used to, a reminder that they came to a different culture. There's no reason to assume US citizens who move abroad wouldn't experience the same thing.