Saving Communities
Bringing prosperity through freedom, equality, local autonomy and respect for the commons

Louis F. Post
The Ethics of Democracy
Part 7, Patriotism

Chapter 1
What is Patriotism?

01

To say that patriotism is love of country begs the question, for love of country must itself be explained. It cannot mean love of a country's soil, of its trees and hills and rocks and rills. If that were its meaning a large proportion of the inhabitants of every nation would be without love of country, for most of them have none to love. Not a rood of old mother earth belongs to them, nor can they use any of it without paying toll to some more fortunate patriot. Love of country, to be truly such, must be nothing less than love of one's neighbors within a nation's boundaries.

02

But love of neighbors means more than a sentimental affection for what one may call his own - as his wife, his family, his friends, his house, his horse, his cattle. Love of one's neighbors within the boundaries of his nation - love, that is, of one's countrymen - if it be love of them in very truth, must consist of devotion to those ideals and institutions of the country which guarantee equal rights to all of its inhabitants.

03

If that be patriotism, however, then is there a larger patriotism, a patriotism which embraces the world and is the political expression of the golden rule. In the purview of this larger patriotism it is treason to make war save for the preservation of natural rights. It is treason as well as criminal aggression to pursue a policy of forcible annexation. For he who truly loves his neighbors within his own country, who loves them to the extent of cherishing their rights equally with his own, cannot draw the line at his own country. He must abhor any invasion by his countrymen of the country of others, which he would repel if his own were the country invaded.

04

This larger patriotism is the antithesis of that spirit of imperialism which, appealing to spurious patriotism, condemns all opposition as treason. Imperialism would subjugate "inferior" peoples on the pretense of elevating them; the larger patriotism would encourage all peoples to elevate themselves. Imperialism is the national pharisee, who thanks God that he is better than other men. The larger patriotism is the national apostle, spreading by practice as well as precept the civilizing principle of Him who rebuked the Pharisee, and taught men that principle of love which is justice and that rule of righteousness which directs each to do to others as he would have others do to him.

05

The sentiment which expresses itself in the maxim, "My country, right or wrong," is spurious patriotism. It is nothing but selflove somewhat diluted. Note the logical gradations: "My country, right or wrong; my State, right or wrong; my county, right or wrong; my town or city, right or wrong; my ward, right or wrong; my voting precinct, right or wrong; my family, right or wrong; myself, right or wrong. Me!"

06

This sentiment has been for nearly a century a favorite with the ambitious who mask their selfish purposes behind the pretenses of patriotism. It originated quite innocently with an American naval commander, Commodore Decatur. Upon returning from his historic expedition to the Mediterranean, he was everywhere the recipient of public honors; and among the banquets tendered him was one at Norfolk, the home city of his wife, which came off in April, 1816. When, in accordance with the custom of the time, he was called upon for a toast on that occasion, Decatur responded with this sentiment: "Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong."

07

Considering its source, the sentiment was a good one. For Decatur spoke as a naval officer pledged to obey; not as a citizen invested with a right and charged with a duty to decide. It was as if he had exclaimed: "I hope my country in her foreign quarrels will always be in the right; but be she right or be she wrong, I as an officer of her navy have no choice but to execute her commands."

08

If a serious-minded constable were to say: "I hope I may never be required to execute an unjust warrant; but just or unjust I shall execute it," he would express with reference to one grade of public service precisely what Decatur expressed, and doubtless intended to express, with reference to another. Decatur could not have meant that as a citizen he would vote either to make or to prosecute a war that he knew to be unrighteous. Such a sentiment would have implied that he had the instincts of a buccaneer; and this is negatived by the other words of his toast, in which he prayed that in her intercourse with foreign nations his country might always be in the right. Clearly he could have meant no more than that as a military servant of his country he would obey the lawfully expressed commands of her people.

09

But the occasion of Decatur's utterance was what would now be recognized as a jingo banquet. Wine flowed and glory glistered. Here was one of the toasts: "The Mediterranean! The sea not more of Greek and Roman than of American glory." This was another: "The Crescent! Our stars have dimmed its lustre." And here was a third: "National Glory! A gem above all price, and worthy of every hazard to sustain its splendor."

10

It would not be remarkable if in those circumstances and to that glory-intoxicated party of banqueters, Decatur's conception of his duty as a naval officer seemed like a revelation of one of the duties of American citizenship. Such at any rate must have been their understanding of it, for they gave that coloring to his words. And so, for nearly a century, Decatur's fair fame has been tarnished by this low notion, attributed to him, of an American citizen's duty. Ever since his famous toast, no matter how mean or wicked the stand the agents of their country have taken, voters have been adjured in the name of patriotism and even of religion, not only by party politicians but also by so-called preachers of righteousness, to vote for their country's side of every controversy, be it right or wrong.

11

The voter who follows this advice turns away from the highest duty that an American citizen can be called upon to discharge - the duty of keeping his country, as far as his influence and vote may go, in the path of righteousness. For in America, in theory at least, the voters are king. Officials are only their servants.

12

What should we think of an absolute king, who after his ministers had without his authority adopted an unrighteous policy, should confirm that policy - knowing it to be unrighteous and opposing it in his heart because it was unrighteous, but confirming it upon the plea that he must sustain his country, right or wrong? What should we think of the king's chaplain if he advised the king to confirm that policy, arguing that the king must stand by his country, right or wrong? Yet American citizens, American voters, are advised to imitate the absolute king we have imagined, whenever they are urged to use their influence and vote in support of their country's policy, right or wrong.

13

It is one thing to advise a constable to execute a warrant, just or unjust; he is an agent whose business it is to obey agents that are placed above him. As constable he has no other responsibility. So it is one thing to advise a military or naval officer to fight when his superiors order him to, be the cause right or wrong; he, like the constable, is an agent whose business it is to obey agents above him. As military or naval officer he has no other responsibility. But it is a very different thing to advise citizens to vote for their country's cause, be that cause right or wrong. The responsibility of the voter cannot be so lightly evaded. There is no one to shift it to. Voters are charged with the duty of seeing to it that their country's cause is never wrong. And for this purpose they, and not their agents or officers, are the court of final appeal.

14

Even at its best, loyalty to country, as distinguished from loyalty to right, is a despicable sentiment. It is often ludicrously so. An instance may be found in a letter from Madagascar, once published in the London Spectator. The letter-writer was all unconscious of any satire upon loyalty. He had nothing in mind but the ignorance of the French soldier he quoted. This soldier, a corporal to whom loyalty was evidently the first law of love, had told the letter-writer quite innocently that he "thought it disloyal and altogether wrong in Christ, when he had been born a Jew, to turn Christian."

15

But what is called loyalty to country means something even lower than the words imply. Boiled down to its dregs, this loyalist doctrine, "Our country, right or wrong" - not as Decatur meant it, but as it is commonly understood - is not loyalty to country at all; it is loyalty to office holders.

16

Now it is not to be denied that there is virtue in a certain loyalty to office holders. But this virtuous loyalty is analogous to that which is due to clients from lawyers. When you have decided that you have just cause for litigation, you must loyally trust your lawyer to manage the technical details. But you cannot escape moral responsibility for making unjust claims and bracing them up with perjured testimony, on any such plea as that a client must be loyal to his lawyer right or wrong. The legal technicalities of your case are one thing; as to them you must trust your lawyer, be he right or wrong. The essential justice of your cause is another thing; as to that you must instruct your lawyer, and instruct him right.

17

So with the relation of voters to office-holders. As to methods, voters should be loyal to all office holders who are not reasonably suspected of infidelity to their trust. But as to ultimate objects, especially if they involve issues of right and wrong, it is not only the right but the duty of voters to command. The loyalty to an office-holder which supports his policy right or wrong, so far from being patriotism is moral treason.

18

This is the species of loyalty, however, with which the world is most familiar. It is from it that the impious doctrine of "divine right" draws all its strength. In our own country, at the very beginning, the tories - or "loyalists," as they called themselves - were loyal only to the king. It was their constant cry that the king must be supported, right or wrong. Three-fourths of a century later, the same sort of loyalty manifested itself in connection with the Mexican war, and James Russell Lowell caught it up and laughed at it in these well-remembered verses:

19

The side of our country must ollers be took,
An' Presidunt Polk, you know, he is our country.
An' the angel thet writes all our sins in a book
Puts the debit to him, an' to us the per-contry;
An' John P.
Robinson he
Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T.

20

In later times we have heard with the old persistency the same old plea to the voters of the nation to be loyal to the country, right or wrong. And when we have probed the matter - nor has much probing been necessary - we have found that we were being urged to be loyal not to the country, right or wrong, but to some of President Polk's successors, right or wrong.

21

Spurious patriotism is most dangerous, however, when the object of its adoration is the country's flag. There are patriotic pagans as there are religious pagans. The religious pagan banishes God from his religion and substitutes ugly idols. The patriotic pagan banishes principle from his patriotism and substitutes brilliant bunting.

22

This tendency to represent principles by symbols began with the race, and will doubtless persist while the race lasts. It is not only natural, it is also useful. Realities which might otherwise be to mortal knowledge mere abstractions, are thereby made visible and tangible.

23

Symbolism, however, is not the truest mode of giving material form to abstract principles. That is supplied by nature herself. All that we see or feel in nature - sunshine, air, water, trees, animals; all that art applied to nature produces for the further or better gratification of our desires - clothing, houses, food, machinery, books, pictures, statuary; all that we do in satisfaction of natural impulses - eating, working, playing, sleeping, bathing - are material expressions of principles; of principles that we may call moral, mental, abstract or spiritual, as suits us best. What we call them is of little moment. The vital thing is that they themselves are eternal verities.

24

They are verities, too, that project themselves into the realm of matter in the material forms to which we have referred. Without them, these forms could no more exist than could reflections in the mirror without objects to be reflected. No mere accidental analogies are these forms. They express or manifest different phases of eternal truth, much as fruit expresses or manifests the vital forces of the tree that bears it. And as the invisible and intangible forces of the tree become manifest and distinguishable to us in its fruit, so does invisible and intangible truth become manifest, distinguishable, apprehensible, in the phenomena of material nature which it projects. It is because these phenomena are expressions of principles, because they correspond naturally and necessarily with the respective truths they interpret, that they offer the truest mode of making abstract principles visible and tangible.

25

Nevertheless, artificial and arbitrary symbolism does serve a great purpose in likewise giving material expression to abstract principles. The spiritual significance of natural phenomena is not obvious to all. There is a logical philosophy there which requires maturity of mind as well as openness of heart for its appreciation; and when that is lacking, arbitrary symbolism may become a substitute for natural phenomena as an interpreter of what lies beyond. Arbitrary symbolism may, therefore, and in fact it does, serve the useful purpose of stimulating many minds to a recognition of the reality of abstract truth. It is thus in some sort a primer of spiritual knowledge.

26

The fraternity of Free Masons offers examples of the inculcation of moral principles by means of arbitrary symbolism. Between immortality and the sprig of acacia, between uprightness of human conduct and the mason's plumb, between morality and the mason's square, between the principle of human equality and the mason's level, there is no natural relation. The one does not produce the other. This is arbitrary symbolism and nothing else. Yet by means of such symbols, principles that might otherwise seem to be without form and void, are taught, perceived and felt.

27

Similarly with religious worship, though in a broader spiritual field. To inculcate principles, arbitrary symbols are adopted. Images, called idols, have been set up to represent deity, the Unknown being thereby brought as it were within the range of human vision and the possibilities of human touch. Thus God becomes real to the simplest apprehension. In like manner forms and ceremonies are established that vital principles may become similarly visible and tangible. Worshipers kneel in token of spiritual humility. They hold a cross aloft to symbolize spiritual redemption. They join in the sacrament of the Lord's supper - that symbol of participation in spiritual good things, which is typified naturally by natural eating and drinking. They adopt the symbol of baptism in token of that cleansing of the spirit by divine truth which is naturally represented by bathing with water for the cleansing of the body. Church worship, even the simplest in form, is replete with arbitrary symbolism.

28

And so is in the sphere of patriotism, where the great symbol is the flag. A mere piece of colored bunting, a nation's flag is nevertheless the visible and tangible representation of national ideals. It is national principles, national traditions, national honor, national aspirations, materialized. What religious rites are to the true worshiper, such is the flag to the true patriot. It is the symbol to his eye of political principles that appeal to his understanding and enchain his affections.

29

Rational uses of symbolism need no defense. So long as the symbol retains its proper place as a symbol, its usefulness as an implement of religious, moral and patriotic thought and instruction will hardly be disputed. While the Free Mason finds in the level a crude representation of God's law of equality, which he adopts as his own, he is worshiping God. So with the savage who is reminded by the rude idol before which he bows, of an Intelligence and Beneficence that he cannot comprehend and cannot otherwise even concentrate his thoughts upon. He is a worshiper as truly as if he were intelligent enough to dispense with symbols. It is the same with Christian churchmen. Their worship, however formal, however conventional, however symbolic in its ceremonies, is true worship so long as the forms and ceremonies and symbols are to them but convenient representations of spiritual truths that can be realized in the material world only by means of natural correspondences - of natural symbols. In a similar category, if not the same, is the patriot who reveres the flag of his country because it symbolizes what to him is sacred in the principles for which the government of his country stands.

30

But, when the symbol takes the place of the principle symbolized, when principles are ignored and there symbols are revered for themselves alone, then symbols become the detestable objects of mere fetish worship. What the savage is who makes his idol his god, precisely that is the Free Mason who prates about the square and the level regardless of moral obligations and the principle of equal rights; precisely that is the churchman who clings to forms and ceremonies regardless of the spiritual principles they are designed to symbolize; precisely that is the man who cheers the flag of his country regardless of the cause in which it waves. They are fetish worshipers all.

31

And the worst of fetish worship is not merely that it is personally degrading. The worst of it is that it enables designing men to marshal fetish-worshiping people against the very truths their fetish originally symbolized. Thus hypocrites in the church have been able to turn temples of God into dens of thieves amid the hosannas of the faithful; and traitors to the commonwealth have won applause while digging up its foundations and pulling down its ideals. The fetish of a fetish-worshiping people once secured, all the power of its superstitious worshipers is secured also.

32

Popular liberties never have been and never will be destroyed by the power of usurpers. They are destroyed by the free consent of the people themselves. When a free people turn from the principles of liberty to worship its lifeless symbols, they are in condition to become easy dupes of the first bold leader who has the shrewdness to conjure them with those symbols. No free people can lose their liberties while they are jealous of liberty. But the liberties of the freest people are in danger when they set up symbols of liberty as fetishes, worshiping the symbol instead of the principle it represents.

33

This, then, is the difference between true patriotism and spurious patriotism. Whereas the spurious patriot worships the flag of his country and is loyal to her officials right or wrong, the true patriot honors his country's flag as the symbol of her ideals, and regards her officials as servants who are entitled to loyalty and respect always when they are right but never when they are wrong. The soldier may fight for country, though his country be wrong, yet be a patriot; but the citizen who votes to put his country in the wrong or it keep there, is a traitor.

34

The highest and purest patriotism was expressed by Lowell when he wrote:

35

I loved my country so only as they
Who love a mother fit to die for may.
I loved her old renown, her stainless fame; -
What better proof than that I loathed her shame?