What is patriotism?

(written by lawrence krubner, however indented passages are often quotes). You can contact lawrence at: lawrence@krubner.com, or follow me on Twitter.

[ this post was originally published on a weblog called What Is Liberalism ]

Kevin Carson elaborates on the meaning of the word “patriotism.”

Patriotism, in this [second] sense, is a love for one’s native soil (in the literal sense), an attachment to hearth and home, and piety toward the graves of one’s ancestors. It is a desire to defend these things, and the ordinary way of daily life that goes with them, against the violence of any outside enemy–including the central government. Or as Edward Abbey said, “A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”

The patriots who founded this country were surely patriots in the second sense of the word more than the first…

It’s an interesting post which touches on a lot of things, and reading it over, 4 unrelated points occur to me:

1.) His definition of patriotism leaves out the necessary idealistic element, without which a person would likely be more inclined to passive quietism than to positive action.

2.) His (later) reference to 1688 reminds me that the English Revolution was the model that everyone during the American Revolution (both for and against the American cause) took inspiration from.

3.) People like Sean Hannity, of Fox News, are ideological descendents of the American Tories who fought for the King during the American Revolutionary war – both Hannity and the Tories are and were willing to twist facts and reason to justify whatever the ruler wishes to do.

4.) There is a type of person who possesses a great deal of angry energy, which can express itself on the political right as easily on the political left. Such people may start off loyal to the cause of freedom, but if their feelings get hurt, or they are disappointed with their allies, they can easly switch over to the other side. In recent decades we’ve seen David Horowitz, who was a leader of the New Left during the 1960s, switch sides and become a voice of pure reaction on the right. The earliest American example of this kind of conversion is the sad case of Benedict Arnold, who started off a passionate advocate of the American cause, but felt betrayed by factional disputes among the revolutionary leaders, and was seduced by the Tories to their cause.

In order, then, starting with point #1:

It is impossible to form a large, revolutionary army without some kind of cause to rally people around, and that cause needs to be greater than merely “defend yourself.” There needs to be an abstract ideal of freedom to which people feel they can aspire. Examining the different personalities of those who took up arms against the British, I suppose we could try to make a distinction between patriots (as Carson defines them) and idealists, but I think that would be a false distinction. The people who actually took up arms were all idealists, moved at least in part by an abstract ideal of freedom. Thomas Paine inspired the country with his vision of America as the world’s last and best asylum for the free:

The social compact would dissolve, and justice be extirpated from the earth, or have only a casual existence were we callous to the touches of affection. The robber, and the murderer, would often escape unpunished, did not the injuries which our tempers sustain, provoke us into justice.

O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her.—Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

This is, obviously, not just a call for people to defend themselves from injustice, this is a cry for opposition againsty tyranny everywhere. And Paine’s words were (as Ellis’s book makes clear) what it took to convince the American people that they wanted independence, rather than reconcilliation, from the British crown.

My problem with Carson’s definition of patriotism is that it leaves out what might move someone to action. Those Americans who sat out the American Revolution, not caring which side won, might also have had a “love for one’s native soil” and “an attachment to hearth and home” and the desire to live in their “ordinary way of daily life”. And they just didn’t give a damn who won the fight. Maybe they felt the new (American) government would be just as evil as the old (British) one. Maybe they felt their security was ensured by their ability to keep their heads down and not get involved in politics. The people who did get involved, who did take up arms, were those who felt that it would be possible to build a better world. Perhaps like Paine, they felt it would be possible to go back to first principles, begin from scratch, and assemble a government that more perfectly reflected their ideas of freedom than what the current (British) government gave them:

I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature, which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered; and with this maxim in view, I offer a few remarks on the so much boasted constitution of England. That it was noble for the dark and slavish times in which it was erected, is granted. When the world was over run with tyranny the least remove therefrom was a glorious rescue. But that it is imperfect, subject to convulsions, and incapable of producing what it seems to promise, is easily demonstrated.

He then goes on to demonstrate how much better the Americans could do if they attempted to build their own government, free of the British.

Paine had not been in America very long when he began to agitate for its independence, so he, more than most of the revolutionary generation, falls outside of Carson’s definition of a patriot. He was not defending land he’d long owned or an “ordinary way of daily life” that he’d long had a chance to enjoy. Rather, he was defending the abstract ideal of a country in which people would be able to enjoy an “ordinary way of daily life”. Nevertheless, Paine was more dedicated to America’s freedom than many who had been in the country for generations. A love for one’s native soil doesn’t automatically lead to a willingness to fight for one’s freedom – it can lead simply to a desire to get by as best one can, compromising where necessary with the evils of the world, a desire which will manifest as political apathy. It’s worth noting how many times both the Continental Army and the British Army appealed to the people to join them in arms, and how little response both armies got. The British General Howe decided to attack Philidelphia via Deleware because he’d been told that the Deleware countryside was strongly Tory in sentiment, nevertheless, when he got there, he got no response from the people. Nor did the Continental Army. These were people who simply wanted to be left alone on their farms with the soil that they loved, the land their family had tended for generations, the graves of their ancestors. A desire to defend one’s “ordinary way of daily life” can manifest as a willingness to put up with the foolish whims of government. It only takes a small dose of fatalism, a belief that there will always be government and that government will always be stupid. And so I’m left thinking that all patriots must have the idealistic element – there really is no separation between the patriot and the idealist. A person has to believe that the current government can be made better, otherwise there is no reason to fight.

More so, no one family can stand up and defend their soil, alone. People have to group together into a large army if they are to fight a large army, and therefore an act of imagination is needed – a willingness to empathize with other’s misfortunes and feel them as your own. It is not enough to say simply “I want to be left alone.” When the enemy army comes for you, if it comes for you, then you will be left to defend your home alone, and you will lose. And during the American Revolution, many left the fighting to others. The patriots were the ones who were willing to get into the brawl before the brawl was clearly their’s. As Paine put it:

It is the good fortune of many to live distant from the scene of sorrow; the evil is not sufficiently brought to their doors to make them feel the precariousness with which all American property is possessed. But let our imaginations transport us for a few moments to Boston, that seat of wretchedness will teach us wisdom, and instruct us for ever to renounce a power in whom we can have no trust. The inhabitants of that unfortunate city, who but a few months ago were in ease and affluence, have now, no other alternative than to stay and starve, or turn out to beg. Endangered by the fire of their friends if they continue within the city, and plundered by the soldiery if they leave it…

…But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, Hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and still can shake hands with the murderers, then you are unworthy of the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant.

This is not inflaming or exaggerating matters, but trying them by those feelings and affections which nature justifies, and without which, we should be incapable of discharging the social duties of life, or enjoying the felicities of it. I mean not to exhibit horror for the purpose of provoking revenge, but to awaken us from fatal and unmanly slumbers, that we may pursue determinately some fixed object.

A patriot, then, is not someone who is only willing to defend their own land, but is also willing to come to the defense of someone’s else lands, when they see plainly that that other person’s natural rights are being violated.

As to point #2, Carson’s post also intrigued me because of this reference to 1688:

The real American Revolution started, certainly not in 1776, and not even on April 19, 1775, but back in 1774 (See Ray Raphael, A People’s History of the American Revolution). One of North’s “intolerable acts,” in response to “provocations” by the Massachusetts-Bay colony, was to order the royal governor to suspend that colony’s General Court. The lower house, in response, met as a revolutionary Convention, without royal assent–in conscious imitation of the Convention Parliament of 1688, which met as a revolutionary body (despite election writs never having been issued under the royal seal, which James II threw into the Thames on the way out of Dodge).

It is interesting to note that the American people were groping their way forward in the 1770s, trying to figure out the right path for themselves, and as they did so, like sailors at sea looking to the north star, they looked constantly to the twin English Revolutions of 1640-1660 and 1688 to figure out what they should do.

The references to the English Revolution are thick in the letter that the Virginia Commonwealth asked Jefferson to write in 1774, “an instruction to the said deputies [Virginian delegates being sent to the first Continental Congress], when assembled in general congress with the deputies from the other states of British America, to propose to the said congress that an humble and dutiful address be presented to his majesty, begging leave to lay before him, as chief magistrate of the British empire, the united complaints of his majesty’s subjects in America”. This next remark comes after a brief recounting of the history of British settlement in North America:

That settlements having been thus effected in the wilds of America, the emigrants thought proper to adopt that system of laws under which they had hitherto lived in the mother country, and to continue their union with her by submitting themselves to the same common sovereign, who was thereby made the central link connecting the several parts of the empire thus newly multiplied.

But that not long were they permitted, however far they thought themselves removed from the hand of oppression, to hold undisturbed the rights thus acquired, at the hazard of their lives, and loss of their fortunes. A family of princes was then on the British throne, whose treasonable crimes against their people brought on them afterwards the exertion of those sacred and sovereign rights of punishment reserved in the hands of the people for cases of extreme necessity, and judged by the constitution unsafe to be delegated to any other judicature. While every day brought forth some new and unjustifiable exertion of power over their subjects on that side the water, it was not to be expected that those here, much less able at that time to oppose the designs of despotism, should be exempted from injury…

That is to say, the Stuart Kings attempted to make themselves absolute monarchs, and so Parliament , for the sake of saving English liberty, overthrew the King and put him to death. And the colonies were just as hurt by the Stuart Kings as the citizens of Britain were. And now (Jefferson is implying), surely, Parliament and the King will not repeat the mistakes of the past, by asserting absolute, unenumerated powers over the colonies? When the Stuart Kings asserted they were absolute kings, Parliament put them to death, so what should the colonists now do, if Parliment suggests it has absolute power over them? Jefferson adds:

History has informed us that bodies of men, as well as individuals, are susceptible of the spirit of tyranny. A view of these acts of parliament for regulation, as it has been affectedly called, of the American trade, if all other evidence were removed out of the case, would undeniably evince the truth of this observation.

This next remark also references the English Revolution, by referencing the patent (government granted monopolies) disputes that lead to the English Revolution:

That to heighten still the idea of parliamentary justice, and to shew with what moderation they are like to exercise power, where themselves are to feel no part of we take leave to mention to his majesty certain other acts of British parliament, by which they would prohibit us from manufacturing for our own use the articles we raise on our own lands with our own labour. By an act passed in the 5th Year of the reign of his late majesty king George the second, an American subject is forbidden to make a hat for himself of the fur which he has taken perhaps on his own soil; an instance of despotism to which no parrallel can be produced in the most arbitrary ages of British history.

Anyone reading this in 1774 would have remembered that before the English Revolution the Stuart Kings had sold monopolies on every imaginable item that might have appeared in a market in England, including fur hats. There was a monopoly on making pens, a monopoly on making hats, a monopoly on bowling balls, a monopoly shoelaces, etc. But even under the Stuart Kings the monopoly would have only extended to the sale, for money, of the items, it would not have outlawed making a hat with one’s own hands off of an animal one had killed with one’s own hands on one’s own land. To advance monopoly that far, to outlaw making a hat for personal use out materials caught on one’s own land, was to reach a new extreme of arbitrary governmental power. Jefferson’s point, and it was one nearly all of the revolutionary forces would have agreed with, was that Parliament was now recreating all of the injustices that had caused Parliment to put Charles I to death. Parliment was now in the position of Charles I, claiming to itself the right to be an absolute sovereign. And since Charles I and been put on trial and had been found to have violated English law and had paid for it with his life, so now too Jefferson was implying that Parliment was breaking English law. And how should the colonies react to that?

In 1774 there was only one historical model for a revolution based on ideals of freedom from arbitrary governmental power. The Greek and Roman classics afforded many cases of publics rebelling against a dictator and establishing a republic, but these tumults tended to be factional fights, with one leader gathering enough public sentiment that he was able to kick out the established ruler. Also, the Greek and Roman examples all involved city-states, not nation states. There had also been the struggle of the Dutch Republic to gain its independence from Spain, but that had been a small part of the overal religious wars of the 1500s, a struggle of Protestant against Catholic, and as such, our Founding Fathers didn’t feel they could draw much inspiration from it – the British King was not forcing an unwanted religion on the colonies. The only revolution from the past that seemed to have any lessons that the American revolutionaries could draw upon was the rebellion of the English Parliment against the English King, and so the English Revolutions were the model that everyone looked to.

Jefferson thus concludes his history:

That thus have we hastened through the reigns which preceded his majesty’s, during which the violations of our right were less alarming, because repeated at more distant intervals than that rapid and bold succession of injuries which is likely to distinguish the present from all other periods of American story. Scarcely have our minds been able to emerge from the astonishment into which one stroke of parliamentary thunder has involved us, before another more heavy, and more alarming, is fallen on us. Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate and systematical plan of reducing us to slavery.

The American colonies were now preparing to assert the same truth that Parliment had asserted back during the 1640s: that there were some rights people held naturally, that no government could ever take away. Thus, at the beginning of his letter, Jefferson addresses the British King with the explanation that the letter will be:

penned in the language of truth, and divested of those expressions of servility which would persuade his majesty that we are asking favours, and not rights

Thus the incident that Carson mentions above, of the Massachucett’s legislature meeting with permission, in concious immitation of Parliment’s actions during the end phase of its long struggle with the Stuart Kings (1688), is just one instance out of many where the Enlgish Revolutions were taken as the model for action.

Point #3:

Carson’s post is a good one, but this line forgets the historical truth that during the Revolution a lot of Americans screamed for Sam Adams blood:

Shithead “patriots” like Sean Hannity, who fulminate against “criticizing the Commander-in-Chief in wartime,” had they been alive in those days, would have screamed for the blood of Sam Adams.

It’s important to remember that there were a lot of these “Sean Hannity” types of people during the American Revolution – Tories desperate to see the restoration of the King and the extension of his power. These type of people are best thought of as “true conservatives”. They adore power, and they tend to manifest strongly romantic emotions regarding tradition and authority. Thus a rebellion against a King is no mere rebellion against a man, it is a rebellion against truth, beauty, sentiment, love, God, tradition and culture – a rebellion against anything with which these people may have positive emotions associated. Sean Hannity is merely the modern expression of a type that has haunted the American landscape since before the beginning.

Philidelphia, perhaps surprisingly, had a mildly Tory spirit near the beginning of the war, and it became much more Tory as the war dragged on. Huge crowds turned out to cheer the invading troops when the British took control of the city (9-26-1777). These kinds of people did (often) what Carson suggests – “screamed for the blood of Sam Adams.” I would dearly love to see a movie which tells the American Revolution from the point of view of an American Tory in Philidelphia. Because then the link between those who opposed freedom in America then and those who oppose it now would be obvious. And Philidelphia must have been an unusually interesting town during the war, full of Tory spirit and also the capitol of the new country, the city where the Continental Congress was meeting. Even after the British left (spring of 1778) and the Americans returned, it remained a city rife with Tory spirit, and those in the city who were loyal to the King remained in constant contact with the British generals, and through them, the British generals were able manipulate the situation inside the city, exaggerate factional differences among the American leaders, and sow discontent.

It was in this environment that one of America’s greatest heroes and bravest generals was converted into its most famous traitor. The Tories studied, and amplified, the disputes that were arising between the different leaders of the Continental Congress and the Continental Army. The Tories held lavish balls and attempted, as much as their money would allow, to control the social world of the upper class in the city, and they spread rumors about George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benedict Arnold and others. The Tories listened for discontent, and they soon realized Arnold was among the discontented. Arnold had won several of America’s early and important victories, but his enemies accussed him, repeatedly, of theft and Congress investigated him repeatedly. He was cleared, every time, of all charges, but after awhile he began to feel that all his victories were forgotten and the only thing that the public would remember about him were the charges that had been made against him. Injured in battle and needing to be inactive for awhile, he was appointed by George Washington as the defender of Philidelphia, which was no longer under any direct threat.

He soon became engaged to a Tory lady, Margaret, daughter of Edward Shippen, afterward chief justice of Pennsylvania. She was celebrated for her beauty, wit, and nobility of character. During the next two years Arnold associated much with the Tories, and his views of public affairs were no doubt influenced by this association.

Note that Edward Shippen, a Tory, later became the chief justice of Pennsylvania. The sad truth is that from the beginning of this country, those who oppose its freedom have held positions of high power. Their money has always allowed them to buy their way to prominence. And that has certainly held America back from reaching its full potential, or of living up to its best ideals. People like Sean Hannity are just the current crop of traitors who hate everything this country was originally meant to be. One of the greatest things about the American Revolution, perhaps its greatest achievement, was the lack of large scale genocidal purges. All the people who cheered for the British troops were left unmolested after the American victory. In this, the American Revolution was quite different from the many revolutions that swept over Europe and Latin America during the next 60 years. The people who hated American freedom in 1774 were allowed to go on hating American freedom till the day they (peacefully) died. Those who wanted to see revolutionary America humbled and beaten, its spirit broken, its leaders hung from the gallows, its people forced to submissive displays of servility to the monarchy, were allowed to go on wishing ill upon the new Republic. Such people have formed one of the themes of American politics, their ideas have never died, their tradition lives on, underground, hidden, only occassionaly coming out. These people have, over the centuries, occassionally been in government, in coalition with other groups, but more than 200 years past before these people were able to gain power on their own, without help from other factions, for not until the year 2000 did America ever seen an Administration wholly dedicated to seeing revolutionary America humbled and beaten, its spirit broken, its leaders hung from the gallows, its people forced to submissive displays of servility to the ideal of monarchy. It’s important to remember where people like Sean Hannity come from. They were not summoned, like succubi, by Rupert Murdoch’s evil pact with the devil, to blight the world. Rather, they’ve been here all along, like the bacteria that live on your skin and wait for injury, they’ve been here, waiting for those events that might set them free, and give them the power to enact their dark fantasies of a total war against freedom. Politically, they are close cousins to Benedict Arnold. They no longer dream of restoring the British monarchy, instead, they now dream of establishing an American one.

Finally, point #4:

For a man as active as Arnold, it must have been a blow to his self-image to find himself injured and unfit for active service. More so, he was the type that needs validation in the form of positive feedback from others, so to find himself repeatedly accussed of wrongdoing, when he had in fact done nothing, must have diminished some of his motivation for helping the American cause. He was drawn to those who were willing to praise him, which increasingly meant the Tories. Then there was the reality of the war, the long string of setbacks that the Americans suffered, the increasing chance that the British would defeat the rebellion. Did more people have to die? Perhaps a reasonable settlement with the British could both ensure America’s happiness, plus keep the British Empire together and the British monarch powerful?

Arnold was assured that Lord North would renew the liberal terms already offered in 1778, which conceded everything that the Americans had demanded in 1775. By rendering a cardinal service to the British, he might hope to attain a position of such eminence as to conduct these negotiations, end the war, and restore America to her old allegiance, with her freedom from parliamentary control guaranteed. In order to realize these ambitious dreams, Arnold resorted to the blackest treachery. In July, 1780, he sought and obtained command of West Point in order to surrender it to the enemy.

Why do people change sides like this, after having given years of their life fighting for a cause? Injuries, a sense of powerlessness, a sense of not being heard by one’s friends? Evil whispers, rumors, slander, the way people fail to understand you, the meanness in other’s hearts, friends who fail to be as loyal to you as you’ve been to them? Depression, doubt, lonliness, self-hatred, a craving for external validation? Perhaps a hunger to be loved by authority can bring out both passionate rebellion, where that love is lacking, and passionate loyalty, where that love is shown? What won Arnold over to the Tory cause? Was it their money, their glamor, their parties? Was it Margaret Shippen’s wit, her looks, the curve of her hip? Perhaps the need to be a hero to any side was more important than being loyal to any side?

In my own lifetime, I have seen this pattern, of someone becoming involved in activist politics, and sacraficing a good bit of their time and energy, as well as precious years that they could otherwise have been building a career, and for all that receiving no support from friends and allies, and afterwards feeling used and betrayed and burned out. I’ve seen many activists slide into depression after too long a period focused on the injustices of the world, and too much effort expended with too little progress being made. I myself have known what depression is like, and I would describe is as the mental equivalent of not having an immune system – you can no longer defend the values and ideals that used to matter to you, because you can no longer remember why anything matters, or what your original motivation might have been. And one is vulnerable then, of betraying everything that one might have originally loved. And Arnold strikes me as an early example of that, someone who gave supremely to a cause he believed in, and for payment was injured, rendered helpless, mocked, slandered, investigated and isolated, finally falling into a depression, and then becoming vulnerable to praise and affection from those who wanted him to change sides. Which he did, to his everlasting shame.

Post external references

  1. 1
    http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2006/01/real-patriotism.html
  2. 2
    http://www.bartleby.com/133/3.html
  3. 3
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375705244/sr=1-1/qid=1137956443/ref=sr_1_1/102-0469724-1004163?%5Fencoding=UTF8
  4. 4
    http://www.bartleby.com/133/1.html
  5. 5
    http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefSumm.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all
  6. 6
    http://www.benedictarnold.org/
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