Chapter 79
Patriotism: love of country and duty to it; devotion and sacrifice for the fatherland; its claims, limits and counterfeits.
268 passages · 116 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Patriotism, as the great books treat it, is love of one’s country and the duty that love seems to impose. It shows itself in devotion, service and sacrifice for the fatherland, and it raises questions about its proper claims, its limits and its many imitations. It is a great idea for these books because nearly every other political and moral question passes through it. Whether the citizen owes more to his country or to his parents, whether a man may rebel against a tyrant who governs his own land, whether death in battle is the highest honour or a waste of private happiness: each of these is a question about patriotism. The authors range from Sophocles to Henley, and they agree that the sentiment is powerful. They differ sharply on its source, its rank among loyalties, and how to tell it from its counterfeits.
The first question is where the love comes from. One answer is that it is natural, a passion rooted in the soil itself. Goldsmith observes that every climate produces men who boast of their own land, and that hardship binds the poor mountaineer closer to his native wilds, as a child clings to its mother1. Yet in the same poem he notes that a wiser eye sees blessings distributed fairly evenly, so the patriot’s preference is a kind of flattery2. Andersen’s exiled swan-princes yearn for their fatherland’s woods and their mother’s grave above any fairer country3. A child kisses England on the map as her home4. Darwin finds the same instinct, cruder and narrower, in the Fuegian Jemmy Button, who praises his own tribe’s land and abuses other tribes5.
Burke offers a second, more developed account. On his view affection grows outward from family, neighbourhood and province to the whole country6. Love of the little platoon is the first link in the chain that leads to love of country and of mankind7. An inherited constitution ties the country to hearth, altar and ancestors8. On this account the country must earn its love: “to make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely”9. The good patriot therefore preserves and improves what he has received rather than treating his country as a blank sheet10,11. Dennis, in Johnson’s life of Addison, sharpens the point in another direction. He argues that love of country simply is love of countrymen, so that Cato’s dry eyes for his son and tears for Rome are affectation12.
A third view asks whether patriotism can be taught at all. Carlyle holds that in vigorous ages patriotism goes unnamed and unpreached; the Decii simply died for Rome, and the virtue is praised only once it declines13. Rousseau similarly notes that Leonidas practised patriotism before Socrates declared it a duty14. Against this, Milton wants education to make youths worthy patriots15, and Mill thinks training could make a common man labour for the common good as readily as he fights for his country16. Sidney and Shelley credit poetry with making the love of country felt17,18,19. Others treat it as a trait of national character. Taine thinks French habits of obedience yield a weak public spirit broken by outbursts of patriotism20. Renan remarks that Arthur’s heroes fight for personal excellence, with no fatherland and no hatred of the Saxon21.
The sharpest disputes concern how the country ranks against other loyalties. The ancient answer, put most strongly, is that the country comes first. In the Crito the Laws tell Socrates that his country is holier than his parents and must be obeyed or persuaded, never violated22. Cicero repeats Plato’s maxim against offering violence to parent or fatherland23. He also condemns anyone who makes war on his country for a friend’s sake, as Coriolanus did24. Plutarch faults Coriolanus for sparing Rome only for his mother’s sake. He should have spared his mother within his country, whose claim is greater25,26. Creon states the civic principle at its harshest: country outranks friendship, so the brother who attacked the city goes unburied27. Marlowe’s Kent asks nature to yield to his country’s cause28, and Warwick breaks a pledge because “it is my country’s cause I follow”29.
The counter-claims are just as ancient. Antigone defies the city for a brother, though she says she would not have done so for a husband or child30. Corneille’s Polyeucte grants that dying for the fatherland is sweet, but holds that dying for God is sweeter31,32. Milton’s Samson tells Dalila, who pleads the public good, that a country violating the law of nature cannot command obedience33. The civic tradition itself recognises that private quarrels must give way. Jocasta and the Theban chorus rebuke Oedipus and Creon for brawling while the land suffers34. Goethe’s Brackenburg blames himself because private misery has numbed him to his fatherland’s turmoil35.
The relation of fatherland to humanity is more modern and less settled. Burke sees love of country as a step toward love of mankind7, and Mazzini pairs the two as twin objects of reverence36. Emerson, however, wonders whether steam, money and the telegraph are making nations obsolete. Men can now choose where and under what law to live37.
Service and death for the country form the epic centre of the idea. Hector’s ghost tells Aeneas that Troy’s claims are paid, yet love of country drives Aeneas back into the fight38. Virgil’s Elysium reserves a place for those who bled for their country39. Pope adds a sober caution. The same ambition that drove Decius and Curtius to sacrifice themselves can make a knave, so virtue and vice lie close together40. The modern poets keep the epic note. Burns’s dying soldiers glory in falling for king and country41, and Campbell celebrates England’s mariners42. Tennyson’s speaker welcomes war as a cure for mercenary peace, feeling at one with his native land43. Henley asks what he has done for England and offers to die at her bugles’ call44. Lowell commemorates a nation whose substance is all her men45.
Civilian service is defended in the same terms, often by the servants themselves. Cicero claims he would not abandon Rome’s dangers46. Raleigh insists his voyage served queen and country, not himself47,48. Burke defends his pension as payment for a life spent in his country’s service49,50,51. Washington answers his country’s call at the cost of retirement52. He renounced pay53, and he insists that patriotism does not forbid him to retire54.
Machiavelli connects this devotion to the question of arms. Mercenary captains, he complains, left Italy plundered and enslaved55. Macaulay draws the contrast directly. A citizen army has zeal for its own state, while the hireling feels no tie and sells himself to any bidder56. Haskell watches the love of country of fleeing soldiers revive at the touch of his sabre57. In this view patriotism is fragile, and discipline must sometimes restore it.
For many of these writers patriotism means, above all, liberty from foreign masters and tyrants. Machiavelli personifies Italy as wounded and praying for a deliverer58,59. Macaulay vindicates his patriotism on those grounds60,61. Luther calls on the German nobility to recover German liberty from papal exactions62. Macduff cries “Bleed, bleed, poor country”63, and the Scottish lords offer themselves as their country’s purge64. Gray’s Welsh bard curses the conqueror on behalf of a dying country65. Burns makes Wallace “His Country’s Saviour”66,67. Byron feels a patriot’s shame over enslaved Greece and resolves to die for her68,69.
Schiller’s William Tell gives this theme its fullest dramatic form. The Swiss defend hearth and chartered liberty70, and they ground their league in common blood and home71. They swear to die rather than live as slaves72. The nobleman Rudenz is shamed by his uncle73 and by Bertha74 for serving Austria, and he returns to his people75,76. Mill generalises the point: the patriots of old were those who limited rulers’ power over the community77. Mazzini condemns Goethe for standing aloof while Germany rose78.
The American founders turned this liberating patriotism toward the making of a nation. The Mecklenburg patriots pledged lives, fortunes and sacred honour79. The Federalist praises the Convention’s members as moved by love of country80 and asks citizens to stay attached to the Union81. Washington wants the name of American to exalt patriotic pride above local ties82. He makes the Union a primary object of patriotic desire, and those who would weaken it deserve distrust83,84.
Civil war tests that teaching. When a people divides, both sides claim the country. Marlowe’s rebels swear homage “for our country’s cause”85, while Spencer replies that rebellion against the prince is the real treason86. Dante laments an Italy torn by factions and lacking love of a common homeland87. Lincoln appeals to mystic chords of memory stretching from patriot graves88. The dying Armistead confesses he wronged his country89. Haskell declares the Union dead hallowed “As long as patriotism is a virtue, and treason a crime”90. Lowell, however, records the genuine doubt of the time over whether loyalty was owed to country or to slavery91,92.
Absence shows the attachment in its most personal form. Cicero in exile longs for the privilege of dying in his fatherland93. He says he has mourned his country more than a mother mourns an only son94. Burns grieves at leaving Ayr95, and his Jacobite songs join exile to a lost cause96. Cunningham yearns for his own country97, and Ferguson prefers holy Ireland to foreign wealth98. The joy of return answers this longing. Aeschylus’s herald greets the earth and gods of Argos after ten years99. Odysseus longs for his country’s soil100, though the notes suggest Homer’s longing is more domestic than civic. Dana’s sailors remember Independence Day far from home101. In such passages patriotism shades into homesickness, which is love of a place more than duty to a state.
Because the name of patriot carries honour, it invites counterfeits. Socrates mocks Meletus’s pose as a patriotic man102. Aristides rebukes Athens for calling a tolerator of public theft a patriot103. Demosthenes is set against orators who excuse their shifts “for the good of our country”104. Dryden calls Pompey, Crassus and Caesar “patriots for their own interest”105. Burke derides the “patriotic crimes of an enlightened age”106 and the hollow patriotic donations of revolutionary France107. Milton’s Dalila expects to be sung at festivals for betraying Samson108. Sydney Smith shows officeholders brandishing patriotism against reform109. Lowell’s Biglow exposes the office-seeker whose love of country is love of spoils110. Washington warns against the impostures of pretended patriotism serving foreign intrigue111,112. Mill adds the gravest observation of all: Christ’s persecutors were sincere men, full of the patriotic feeling of their people113.
There is also a patriotism that is genuine but excessive. Macaulay argues that Greek patriotism became an ungovernable passion because private fortunes were bound up with the state, so that private happiness was wrongly sacrificed to it114. He scorns the cant of sacrificing everything to a country to which one owes nothing115. Emerson finds the Englishman intensely patriotic because his country is small116. He condemns the “childish patriotism” of national brag, which costs England affection in her colonies117. He also smiles at a Philadelphian’s map with his city at the centre118. Whittier notes that Randolph’s patriotism was confined to Virginia119. Thoreau declares his allegiance to the State of Nature, like a mosstrooper’s120.
Several questions therefore remain open. Is patriotism an instinct the wise should discount, as Goldsmith half-suggests, or an affection that rightly grows from near loyalties, as Burke holds? Does the country stand above parents, as the Laws of Athens insist, or below God and the law of nature, as Polyeucte and Samson insist? The moderns add problems the ancients barely felt. Nationality may be weakened by commerce. Love of union may conflict with love of liberty. Ardent sincere zeal may itself persecute. The books agree that love of country can ennoble a life. They do not agree on how to keep it from becoming conceit, cruelty or a cloak for interest.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
See also: Citizen 5c
See also: Race and Nationality 9a · Liberty 9a · Tyranny 5c
See also: Citizen 5c
See also: Memory and Imagination 4b
See also: Citizen, Liberty, Honor, Tyranny, War and Peace, Race and Nationality