Patriotism, etc.
In light of Donald Trump’s election victory, there are both substantive and strategic reasons to take up questions about what patriotism is and what it asks of us.
Other traditional political, social, and moral concepts, such as rule of law, community, security, and loyalty, may likewise be of increased interest.
Readers, what else along these lines should we be thinking about? And for any of them, what philosophical works, from the ancients to today, would you recommend?
I’m not American but I heard a conservative say in a debate about a hot-button issue where I’m from (after Nazis had been brought into the discussion): “You can say many bad things about Göbbels, but at least he would not have betrayed Germany’s national interest.”
Just to be clear, he was responding to someone else bringing up Nazis, so I don’t interpret him as praising Göbbels exactly, but the claim stuck with me, because before he said that, I would have thought it obvious that starting a doomed war and instigating genocide against your own citizens would very much not be in the national interest.
Since then I’ve very much seen debates about patriotism and so on in this light and my sense is that for many conservatives, being a patriot or acting in the national interest and so on is more an attitude rather than being based on any substantive view of what is in the interest of the country and how that is best achieved. Liberals (or the equivalent in other countries) thus cannot be patriots by definition, because they lack that attitude.
I think that explains why Americans by and large don’t consider Trump a traitor to the Constitution for instigating the attack on the Capitol.
Roger Scruton’s analysis of conservatism is like this. He says that conservatism is an inclination to side with “us” over “them”; he contrasts this with leftists like Chomsky, whose inclination, he claims, is to side with “them” over “us.”
I think something along the lines described here is right: both sides have implicitly defined “America” to mean “Red America”, so patriotism basically means support for Red America. I think that’s a real problem (that’s obviously a bizarre and bad way to think about patriotism) and part of why I was happy to see the displays of patriotism at the DNC: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
BennyS: This is very interesting. I wasn’t aware that Scruton said this. I find it very interesting because while Chomsky is an extreme example, I would for instance say of myself that I see my country quite realistically: it has some flaws and has done some things wrong, mostly it’s good. But he just admits that he has a bias—which seems Moore’s Paradox-adjacent.
JDRox: Thank you very much for that essay. I enjoyed it.
But I must say, even though from the end, you seem to be saying that you don’t belong to the Blue Tribe but the Grey, you do what all Blue Tribespeople do and only describe the conflict in terms of the Blue Tribe. I know you also think the Red Tribe is a tribe, but all your examples are of the Blue.
What do I mean? I mean that you will not find any talk of polarization and tribes in Red spaces, you won’t find discussions of how to better understand the other side, and so on. All of this has dominated Blue spaces since 2016.
I am fairly certain JDRox is not the author of that piece, FYI.
Ah, my misunderstanding.
Yeah, I think the essay is interesting but I also think it’s somewhat dated (or maybe it was always wrong): e.g., things are now more mutual (the outgrip for both tribes is just the other tribe), but if anything the animosity of the red tribe is more focused on the blue tribe than vice versa.
Still, the bit about how, in popular usage, ‘America’ basically means ‘Red America’ largely rings true for me.
I recommend two very good recent books on patriotism: Steven B. Smith’s Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes and Yuli Tamir’s Why Nationalism.
The thing mentioned most often last night was the economy. It’s kinda weird that people keep thinking conservatives will do better managing it, even when they are consistently worse. I think there’s an interesting genealogy here. I.e. who do people trust when talking about it? Why do (e.g.) businesspeople seemingly have more authority on that matter than (e.g.) social workers, even among progressists?
Whether reasonable or not, I don’t think it’s much more complicated than that during a period of inflation and a ‘bad’ economy, people trust the opposition more than the incumbents. That’s not a new principle in politics.
It does feel quite a bit more complicated… but maybe your explanans is fairly restricted. I’m curious as to how people attribute trust, credit, authority, etc. wrt the economical outlook. Certainly, this play a role in it, but it’s hardly an explanation.
You are overcomplicating things. Your average voter does not have views on trust, credit and authority. They see inflation, and say ‘incumbent bad’.
I don’t think so. “the economy” and “inflation” are just rationalisations.
If the shoe was on the other foot, these voters would have had no trouble seeing through such “reasoning”.
This election presents an interesting challenge to the incumbent v challenger/change v referendum paradigm common sense view of elections becuase the ‘change’ was a change-back to the past–not a change-forward to the future. And there’s is this rosy, nostalgia based view on his presidency that I am not sure anyone could have talked voters out of–they were just convinced things were better under Trump and memory holed the pandemic.
Yes, but I think there is an asymmetry there.
They wouldn’t have reasoned this way if the shoe was on the other foot.
This is really uncharitable and there’s not much reason to think it’s true. When the economy is bad incumbents usually lose and when it’s good they hardly ever lose. Plus it’s simply true that by most metrics the economy was in pretty good shape under Trump. I don’t give Trump credit for that and I generally think that sitting presidents get too much credit and blame for economic conditions. (I also think Biden did a good job with the economy as one can see when we compare how ourse has recovered from COVID with most of the rest of the world, but “Hey look I know it seems bad but you wouldn’t believe how bad it is in France and the UK right now” doesn’t get much traction with the average voter.)
What’s interesting here is that by the metrics economists tend to like the economy is “good” right now but many people, especially people on the lower end of the economic ladder are reporting quite a bit of economic distress. One explanation for this is that well they’re stupid. I think that’s a bad explanation though. A more promising one is that the measures economists like are missing some important things. Now I don’t know what, but that’s a question that economists and, even more so, Democratic operatives ought to be thinking about very seriously.
I think my theory predicts that very soon, too soon to be plausible, people will say that they feel good about the economy. If that doesn’t happen, I think I would be wrong.
This is a peculiar response, given that we’re on a philosophy blog. The average voter doesn’t know what confirmation bias is, and yet they will make these kinds of faulty inference. The point of genealogy is precisely to uncover things about concepts that average people don’t know about, even though they are possess them. Also, I think you’re swinging at wind mills.
On patriotism: the country is not the government. And fierce opposition to the government of a country is entirely compatible with a deep love of its people, culture, land, etc. And sometimes that love may be what demands the opposition.
Something that ought to be of interest to those who find themselves in this position is the concept of avoiding the tyranny of the majority, something that was of interest to the American Founders. And Trump just did win a majority of American voters.
I imagine a lot of people reading this comment would have been incredibly sympathetic to a more liberal government doing away with the senate filibuster, or with packing the Supreme Court. I have actually shared these sympathies at time. But some political norms have a general value even when they hamper the short term political advantage of your side.
This comment on patriotism is certainly true, but one needs to be quite careful, because if all one talks about is their criticisms, then the deep love doesn’t exactly come across.
Tolstoy is always a good read on patriotism, but he’s thoroughly against it. Best read alongside something more sympathetic.
Thanks for raising this question, Justin. This seems like a good time for ameliorative definitions of “patriotism.” Liberal academics should reclaim the term in a way that doesn’t fall along partisan lines. My guess is that other people have already been working on this…
You might look to radical centrism, and the communitarian movement, for inspiration here.
Three remarks:
1/ I think the best starting point for understanding modern nationalism remains Benedict Anderson’s IMAGINED COMMUNITIES. He stresses that, starting with the French Revolution, modern nationalism has always been intimately connected to warfare. As he puts it, “a nation is something you die for” (as opposed to, say, the post office). Thus national anthems, like America’s, all celebrate martial achievements.
This connection with war persisted up to the 1970s in the United States; prior to that, what it meant to be an “American” what you served your country. This is why, believe it or not, as recently as 1965 the draft was the most popular institution in America.The Vietnam War severed this link, but nationalism remains centered around fighting some foreign enemy. Thus its reemergence post 9/11, but with the caveat that fighting the enemy no longer required sacrifices on the part of oneself.
Trump has successfully reclaimed all this by finding enemies everywhere, starting with the foreign “invasion” of “illegals” (now joined by “enemies within”). No one who understands the essentially warlike nature of nationalism should be surprised by this.
2/ But the situation was American nationalism is a bit more complicated. There have always been to political traditions in the United States, which I call the “civic tradition” and the “frontier tradition”. The first is most familiar/congenial to political philosophers, since it is oriented to the Constitution and its civic values. Its patriotism revolves around civic engagement; it champions the Supreme Court in its best moments, e.g. the Warren Court. Its heroes might be someone like JQ Adams.
The frontier tradition is exemplified by Andrew Jackson: it is violent, racist, it doesn’t give a shit about the Constitution, and its image of citizenship is to be left alone. Trump is today’s Andrew Jackson, whose politics is one of endless grievance, anxieties about “masculinity”, blah blah blah. Again, a historical perspective helps place all this.
3/ Why now?
Here, the question of empire cannot be avoided in my view. America is clearly losing if it has not already lost its status as the hegemonic empire. Different empires have reacted differently to this. Post 1945, it was clear that Great Britain’s empire was a thing of the past. Great Britain reacted in two ways: domestically, electing Clement Attlee and creating the national health service; in foreign matters, becoming the junior partner of the United States. But in general, empires did not go gently into that good night.
The only conclusion I would draw is that the question of nationalism must be placed in the context of imperialism, about which there is now an excellent literature. I would start with HOW TO HIDE AN EMPIRE: A HISTORY OF THE GREATER UNITED STATES, by Daniel Immerwahr.
My sense is that the clearest and best voices on the American right use “patriotism” to mean something like pride in your country’s heritage and willingness to make personal sacrifices to protect and/or amplify that heritage. Does anyone know of a philosopher who understands the term this way?
That really shouldn’t be right-coded. (I guess provided you have a somewhat idealistic take on ‘heritage’.)
I believe Spencer Case has a book on patriotism coming out. Yoram Hazony’s The Virtue of Nationalism is worth reading, especially for its prescience and timing. Tamir’s two books on liberal nationalism provide a nice contrast. For works in the history of philosophy, Hegel’s Outline of the Philosophy of Right and Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. Both influenced Roger Scruton, who is the best recent philosopher of conservatism. There is also a nice Oxford teaching volume titled Ethics, Left and Right: The Moral Issues that Divide Us (ed. Bob Fischer) that cover these topics from a representative conservative point of view.
Yes, my book in progress is Why It’s Ok to Be Patriotic. Thank you for the plug!
It’s time to start reading the 20th Century French theorists.
I would recommend reading A Conflict of Visions, by Thomas Sowell.
It’s been years since I read it, but I remember Camus’ “Letters to a German Friend” having some interesting things to say about patriotism, specifically that love of country could actually be a reason to defy its laws and authorities. I always think of this and mention it when I teach the Crito (I mean come on Socrates if you really love Athens how can you let it commit murder? The city’s name is stained through the centuries because you were too cantankerous to let Crito help you).
Rorty’s “Achieving our Country” has a lot to say on patriotism. I’d have thought it would be more central to our discussions of this issue than it has been.
I recommend George Orwell’s 1945 essay ‘Notes of Nationalism’. The examples are of course eighty years out of date (as well as being British rather than American) but much what he says is applicable to the MAGA movement as also to some of their opponents.
There is a connection to the kind of view of democracy as in Achen and Bartel’s book on democracy. That identities and tribes matter more to people than ideologies, doctrines and theories. Patriotism seems to be a kind of (element of) a tribe for most people. There is republican patriotism and there is democrat patriotism and that is what matters (to them, the people).
As for the economy, there is the major problem that people don’t seem to understand the difference between causation and correlation and then they make inferences on a faulty basis (economy was good under Trump, economy is bad under Biden, economy will be good under Trump). Should people know such things? Well, they certainly should be educated to know…
But I think there is also the obvious problem that the US distributive system is just bad (unjust, imprudent even), it consistently works against the poor. The poor who then blame the sitting president, but in fact, the system is such that every sitting president could be equally blamed. And of course, presidents like Trump will do nothing to reform said system to the better. On the contrary. Yet, they vote for him. It boggles the mind. (But again, people are ignorant. Does this excuse their choice?)
All I know is that, patriotic or not, the electorate has totally disposed of the the dictum “no one is above the law”, electing a convicted felon over an accomplished prosecutor, and thus making the January 6th case to overthrow an election and the pretty obvious case of retaining secret documents after warrants have been served and now probably eliminating 34 convictions by a jury, etc. go away. When the January 6th convictions are pardoned, we can see even more that America has literally elected to destroy the rule of law, and mostly all because of the price of groceries. Whatever patriotism is, this certainly isn’t it.