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Some time last week, Thursday I think it was, I was hanging out with my friend James and his roommate Brian after work. For some reason I didn't really feel like going back to my room and my proper naval twenty-two inches of sleeping space and I ended up wasting time with them. James and I are of like mind on many things, which is one of the reasons we get along; Brian and I both tend towards the silly, which is why we get get along. Anyway, the conversation inevitably turned to politics, unfortunately because of Flash cartoons on the web. The problem is that, as you all know, Internet politics are about ninety percent polemics and ten percent reason, and when people get their hands on any Macromedia product that latter ten percent is crushed under the ability to make propaganda that would make Goebbels proud. Now, I already knew that Brian was, to put it politely, extremely far from the "America Do or Die" mindset. However, as the conversation progressed I went on to discover that he put no value in his American citizenship, was looking into actively renouncing it, and desired to become a citizen of the European Union.
Then and there I learned how heresy must feel like to the orthodox. I couldn't deny his reasons, they being the same ones why I believe in earned enfranchisement: his citizenship was not his choice. Given the option, he would rather be the citizen of a different country; it wasn't his choice to be born in the United States. In that much, it's no different from another friend of mine, Andrew, who happened to be born in Scotland and wants to be an American citizen. It contrasts however in that Andrew is still a decently proud citizen of the United Kingdom to which his allegiance currently lies. The unfortunate thing is that right by birth suggests, nay, demands responsibility by birth and in this Brian is lacking. Again, I understand why.
Still, it bothered and still bothers me on something of a deeper level. I understand that if I'm going to have no problem with a Mexican or a Bosnian or an Israeli wanting to be an American citizen then I should have no problem with an American wanting to be a European citizen. There's something more to it, though, as I feel the same about people who don't wish to renege their citizenship but, say, run to Canada for whatever reason. After thinking about this for a few days I've come up with my own thoughts on patriotism and how it of course relates to nationalism.
"Nationalism" has become a cringe word in academia nowadays; the more liberal the adcademic, the worse it is. Their rationale is simple; from a word that had no meaning in the medieval period has come all sorts of modern horrors such as wars and genocides, based on (to them) nothing more than scraps of fabric and imaginary lines overlaid on land. I will of course admit that they have a point; textbook nationalism being "we are a group of X people that inhabit X land and that makes us better" is always problematic when it is not qualified with a "for us" attached to the end. Where nations are founded in terms of racial, social, or merely geographical lines this is certain. For nations based off of codified ideals, however, this concept breaks down. America, for all its failures in the past, is one of the most inclusive nations on the planet because even because of all those failures we have generally moved towards a better expression of the ideals this country is founded on, particularly the equality of all peoples regardless of race and creed and the equality of all citizens under the eyes of the law.
Are we there yet? Not hardly, but we're a lot closer than a lot of other places. We are one of the most diverse nations on the planet and even with modern polarization we don't suffer the sectarian or racial or social violence that can often be found in more homogenous cultures. Yes, the rich have the advantage in our society but we recognize this and take efforts--some misguided, others not--to make sure that people rich or poor have the chance to start out on an even keel. A rich person can hire better lawyers but that does not inevitably protect him from being equal to a poor man in the eyes of the law. Likewise a rich person cannot simply be lynched by mobbish tyranny of the majority or the misplaced well-wishes of "equalizers" in the Soviet style. Historian Bernard Lewis pointed out that two key features of America's ideals are mutually exclusive: equality and freedom. A perfectly free country is an anarchy, and there is no equality as the strong prosper over the weak. A perfectly equal society is a hive, and there is no freedom as absolute control is required to keep the hive functioning.
So America is based on these two conflicting ideals, walking the knife's edge from falling too far in one way or the other, and because of the failures inherent in any human civilization trying for both these two simultaneously people want to leave. That, in essence, is what bothers me when it comes to the heresy of a lack of patriotism. Patriotism should only secondarily concern itself with the gross-nationalism of "my country do or die" if at all. Patriotism, like nationalism, should be founded in the ideals of a nation, reflecting not how a nation is but how it should be, how it can be. The citizen renouncing his citizenship and running to another country is a heretic in the eyes of the patriot, a coward running away. He wants the choice and choice is our ideal, so we must grudgingly grant it to him, the patriot thinks, but his opinion of the man falls because of it. The heretic runs from the nation as it is with no concern towards what it could be, runs from his obligation to do his part to shape his nation to what it could and should be.
The patriot here is any citizen still working in the system to make it better. When the nation has a conflict built into its very nature, then patriots will inevitably conflict. The person sitting in a lawnchair helping INS pick up immigrants is a patriot, albeit one based on gross-nationalism. The person organizing marches and chanting slogans and protesting is a patriot, one based on their observation of the ideals of the nation and trying to move the nation towards that ideal. The patriot is the person who signs up to protect their nation and its ideals from harm; the patriot is the person who protests to bring our troops home to bring us closer towards our ideals of peace. All of these people, right or wrong, are patriots because they are actively trying to make their country a better place. Is their patriotism occasionally misguided? Of course it is, and who is misguided depends solely on who you ask because they are all working towards one of the key ideals at the inevitable expense of the other. But because of the accident of their birth here, and their association with their home, their country, they live up to their responsibility to make their home a better place and do so with conviction.
They do not selfishly run to what may suit them better now. They try to lift up, to resist and strive and grow rather than simply coast along where it's most comfortable to. They are patriots.
In extreme cases, there are people who must escape in order to change their homeland from without. These expatriates are just that, temporarily out of their home nation. They are also patriots.
Those who move to move... well, they are immigrants. They are naturally heretical to the patriots of their own country, having given up on their home country. They are naturally greeted by (some) patriots of their new land, as verification of their beliefs. I have no issue with participating in this dichotomy because value judgments are a simple fact of life and anyone trying to realize anything as purely relative and thus lacking objective, real ethical value or purely objective and ignoring relative differences discover they cannot judge anything. I reserve the right to censure people willing to leave just as much as their new countrymen reserve the right to greet them; I reserve the right to greet any immigrant here just as much as their homeland's patriots reserve the right to censure them.
So, in the end, patriotism is the acceptance of the conflict in any society and the work to end that conflict by making the nation better. No nation will ever be perfect, and so there will always be need for proper patriots to maintain at least a balance if nothing else. Because of this patriots will often disagree with emigrants and agree with immigrants; still, the choice to emigrate is the choice of the individual and they can additionally choose to become a patriot of their new land, which is honorable and proper. That this incurs the distaste of the patriots of their old land is also understandable and honorable so long as said old patriots realize how things lie.
After all, conflict is the nature of life. Conflict demands adaptation, and adaptation leads to growth. Growth--spiritual growth, intellectual growth, the growth of the real towards the ideal--is the point of everything.
So, even while I heartily disagree with Brian's viewpoints, I understand why it is he has them and only hope that if he does end up emigrating he ends up being a good patriot for his chosen land even whilst I mildly censure him in my own mind for shirking his duty to his (my) country. I relish the apparent inconsistently and would not have it any other way.
After all, Brian's a funny guy and just because he's my friend doesn't mean I have to like him all the time.
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