"...Patriotism can be defined as love of one's
country, identification with it,
and special concern for its well-being
and that of compatriots."
From: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/patriotism/
The issue of patriotism has been rolling around my head for years now, and something I've been wanting to flesh out and examining for over a decade. Somewhere around the second year of college I began to question the idea that we should all walk around thinking 'America' might not be the absolute most lofty and perfect country in the universe. First off, America is not a country, so stop referring to it that way, fellow compatriots. You know who you are, and furthermore, if you have any reliable education whatsoever about geography, you should really know better. America is a continent. Two continents, actually, with a thin isthmus connecting them, and ancient land bridge that allowed people from Asia to come and populate its lands. Our country is called The United States of America. It's ok. We can share America.
Anyway, I digress. So once I started questioning the superiority of the United States in everything and also realized our citizens are not always the best at everything, I started to ask myself what it means to be patriotic, and decided I could still be patriotic and non-arrogant at the same time. For me, patriotism largely means lawfully doing what is good for the people, protecting the interest of the vulnerable in society even if it is costly, and being motivated out of love and respect for everyone in the society (as opposed to money interests, etc).
I was involved in a very interesting conversation on Facebook recently about President Barack Obama and his preference to pledge allegiance to the flag with his hand over his heart or without his hand over his heart. He apparently prefers to not hold his hand over his heart most of the time - to the chagrin of many a self-identified patriot. This issue apparently energizes the anti-Obama (largely conservative) base to the extent that if you Google this, hundreds of articles, news stories, and blog posts, have been written and commented on. Hundreds! These writers inform us that the issue, when you get right down to it, is quite complex. 1. There's the issue about whether he uses the hand at all, and 2. the secondary issue of whether he sometimes uses the hand and other times does not (which implies he is wishy-washy and a horrible unpatriotic president), and 3. the issue of whether the pictures showing he actually uses his LEFT hand to salute the flag (the horror!!) has been Photoshopped because it appears that in these photos, Mr. and Mrs. Obama are wearing their wedding bands on their right hands, so obviously the image has been flipped and published to smear the president's reputation. Yes...very complicated indeed.
Let's zoom out now. Let's remember that all these articles and stories have been published during the worst economic crisis since the Depression of the 20th Century. And we wonder why the Republicans can't seem to get it together enough to produce a viable candidate (because, come on - do we really think Romney is in a position to win this thing? I could be wrong but he's about as attractive in this election as a detached, Wall Street Millionaire in a 'post-recession' economy with high unemployment...oh wait...). This issue, along with the Obama-was-not-born-in-the-USA conversation (Dear Governor of Hawaii, we think you are lying and that's not the REAL birth certificate showing Obama's birth in America), has sure taken up a lot of the time of the conservative base's individuals. Maybe these have been distractions that take the focus off the important issues, such as reversing women's health care initiatives, and making sure we sink as much money as possible into many easily - hoppable fences along the border that pretty much succeed in only keeping animals from moving across the boundary.
Alright, alright (Dammit I digress AGAIN!!). I'll tone it down. I know the sarcasm isn't very helpful. My point is, it's interesting to look at what we define as patriotic. It seems like many times, we use symbolic expression as a yardstick to measure the level of someone's patriotism, and sometimes we judge someone's patriotism on which leaders they support. So then, do we see our leaders as symbolic? I would say yes. I just did that with Romney in the last paragraph. We often choose our leaders based on the sectors of society they intrinsically represent, whether that be business, the working class, etc. Do we expect our leaders to display the appropriate symbolic gestures that demonstrate they are 'all in' and committed to the country? Obviously, yes - that is the nature of politics, particularly when we don't have direct access to our leaders and have little information on which to base our assumptions about these leaders' motives.
The real question should be, though, how will we define patriotism in this era where appearances are increasingly easy to fake? Is a display of public symbolic allegiance patriotic enough? (If this is the case, Hugo Chavez and the late Kim Jung Il are VERY patriotic!)? Is someone who wages war, however improperly, on behalf of the nation's benefit patriotic (George Bush and Dick Cheney come to mind - and perhaps even Obama for continuing the fight)? Is someone who engages in small acts for the public welfare patriotic (millions of unnamed activists protesting local labor injustices)? Is someone who preserves the past a patriot (historians)? What about someone pushing the country forward into the future (Steve Jobs)?
I don't know the answers to these questions yet. As for myself, I do not like putting my hand over my heart, and I do not think this makes me unpatriotic. This is in part because while I pledge allegiance to the country's peaceable, non-militaristic ideals, I cannot give my whole heart to any organization, even a national one. My full allegiance belongs only to God. I don't know why Obama chooses to hold back the hand sometimes, but if he feels as I do, that his allegiance is to a higher power, that is fine with me. I will not judge him for it. In the end, I will choose to allow a person's actions for the good of our people to prove the person's motives - whether they can show they have "love of one's country, identification with it, and special concern for its well-being and that of compatriots".
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*An interesting examination of conservative and liberal definitions of patriotism can be found at Time Magazine*
