Is Patriotism a Good Thing? What is a Country?

The following goes deeper into the issues involved in my Substack article Patriotism and Jingoism. I respond to comments from 'Jacques' from November 2015. My responses are in blue. 

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I read your blog every day.  Quite apart from the high level philosophizing, it's a rare bit of political sanity and rationality and decency.  Academic philosophy is now thoroughly controlled by the most evil and insane factions of the Left.  It's good to know that real philosophy, and real political philosophy in particular, is still alive in the hearts and minds of some individual people, even though the philosophical institutions are dead or hopelessly corrupt.  Thank you! 

BV:  You're very welcome.  I am happy to have you as a reader and correspondent. While academic philosophy is not thoroughly controlled by the  Left, not yet anyway, you are not far from the truth.  

But I do have a quibble about your recent post on patriotism, where you write:

"... As Socrates explains in Plato's Crito, we are what we are because of the laws. Our country and its laws have overseen our nurturance, our education, and the forming of our characters. We owe a debt of gratitude to our country, its laws, those who have worked to maintain and defend it, and especially those who have died in its defense."

This argument (if it's valid) must have a suppressed premise.  The premise must be something like the following:  "It is good that we are what we are", or "Some of the features of our characters that are due to our country and its laws are features for which we should be grateful". 

BV:  Right, my argument is an enthymeme and those tacit assumptions are in play; without them the argument is invalid. 

Of course, the inference would only be valid given some further assumptions, e.g., that our country and its laws have not also caused us to have other features that are so bad or regrettable that, all things considered, it would be reasonable to wish that our characters hadn't been shaped by our country and its laws in any way. 

BV:  I agree.

But in any case, I don't think that these suppressed premises are true.  Not if they are meant to support the conclusion that, in general, patriotism is good--let alone that, in general, it is a virtue. 

If my character was shaped by my experiences growing up in Maoist China, say, then it seems entirely possible that most or all of the features of myself that I came to have as a result of those experiences are bad.  Or they might be features that just have no particular value or disvalue.  At any rate there seems to be no reason to expect that, for any arbitrary person whose character was formed by any arbitrary country or legal system, the relevant features will be such that, on balance, this person ought to be grateful for whatever it was that caused him to have these features.  To be sure, those who were lucky to have been formed within good countries or good legal institutions should probably be patriotic, for the kind of reason that Socrates gave; but this is not to say that patriotism in general is a duty or a virtue or even a good thing in any respect.

BV:  Your critique up to this point is a good one and I accept it.  I take you to be saying that I have not given a good argument  for the thesis that in general patriotism is a good thing.  For whether it is good or not will depend on the particular  patria, the particular country, and its laws, institutions, and traditions.  Presumably, citizens of North Korea, Cuba, Nazi Germany, and the USSR ought not be or ought not have been patriotic.  But much depends on what the object of patriotism is.  What exactly is that which one loves and is loyal to when one is patriotic? More on this below.

I would suggest that there is no basis for healthy patriotism beyond the fact that my country is MY country.  The reason why I should have some loyalty to my country, or love for it, is just that it is mine.  Not that, in being mine, it has shaped my character.  Not that its laws are better than others, or that they encode certain 'propositions' which a rational being should believe, or anything like that.  But if this is right, the proper object of healthy patriotism is not a country in the sense that you seem to have in mind, i.e., a government or set of political or legal arrangements or traditions.  Because that kind of thing is not really mine, in any deep sense, and because that kind of thing is not something I can love or feel loyalty towards.  So if this suggestion is right, the proper object is my 'country' in the sense of the concrete land and people, not the state or its laws.  [emphasis added by BV.] (And this distinction seems especially important nowadays.  You would not want to confuse the real America that Americans may properly love with the weird, sick, soft-totalitarian state that now occupies America.)

BV:  You rightly appreciate that a proper discussion of this topic requires a careful specification of the object of patriotic love/loyalty.  You say it is "the concrete land and people, not the state and its laws." Suppose I grant that for the nonce.  Why should I love/be loyal to my country just because it is mine? That is not obvious, indeed it strikes me as false.  I take you to be making two separate claims.  The first is that one should display some patriotism toward one's country.  This first claim is a presupposition of "The reason why I should have some loyalty to my country, or love for it, is just that it is mine." The second claim is that the only reason for so doing is that the country is one's own.  

But do you really want to endorse the first claim?  Even if country = "concrete land and people,"  there are possible and perhaps also actual countries such that you wouldn't want to endorse the first claim.  As for the second, if you endorse it, will you also say that the only reason you should be loyal to your spouse, your parents, your siblings, your children, your friends, your clan, your neighborhood, your gang, and so on is because they are yours?  Should you be true to your school only because it is the one you attend?   

The above doesn't sound right.  That a friend is my friend is not the only possible legitimate reason for my being loyal to him, assuming it is a legitimate reason at all.  A second legitimate reason is that when I was in trouble he helped me.  (And so on.)  That my country (concrete land and people) is my country is not the only possible reason for my loving it and being loyal to it; other legitimate reasons are that the land is beautiful  -- "purple mountain majesties from sea to shining sea" --  and that the people are self-reliant, hard-working, frugal, liberty-loving, etc., although how many of these people does one encounter theses days?  

You write, "The reason why I should have some loyalty to my country, or love for it, is just that it is mine."  Do you intend the 'just' to express a biconditional relation?   Are you proposing

1. One should have some loyalty for one's country or love for it if and only if it is one's own country

or

2. If one should have some loyalty for one's own country or love for it, then it is one's own country?

Is my country's being mine a necessary and sufficient condition of my legitimate patriotism, or only a necessary condition thereof?  On a charitable reading, you are affirming (2). 

What is a Country?

If patriotism is love of and loyalty to one's country,  then we need to know what a country is.  First of all, a country will involve

a. A geographical area, a land mass, with more or less definite boundaries or borders.

But this is not sufficient since presumably a country without people is no country in the sense of 'country' relevant to a definition of 'patriotism.'  A backpacker may love the unpopulated backcountry of a wilderness area but such love of a chunk of the earth and its flora and (non-human) fauna is not patriotic love.  So we add

b. Having a (human) population.

Are (a) and (b) jointly sufficient?  I don't think so.  Suppose you have a land mass upon which are dumped all sorts of different people of different races and religions, speaking hundreds of different languages, with wildly different habits and values and mores.  That would not be a country in a sense relevant to a definition of 'patriotism.'  It seems we must add

c. Sharing a common culture which will involve  such elements as a common language, religion, tradition, history, 'national narrative,' heritage, a basic common understanding of what is right and wrong, a codification of this basic common understanding in law, and what all else.

I should think that each of (a), (b), and (c) are necessary to have a country.  'Jacques' apparently disagrees. He seems to be saying above that (a) and (b) are individually necessary and jointly sufficient. I say they are individually necessary but not jointly sufficient.  I say further that the three conditions just specified are not jointly sufficient either, or not obviously jointly sufficient.  For if the basic common understanding of right and wrong naturally evolves toward a codification and detailed articulation in written laws, then we are well on the way to 'the political.'

And isn't it obvious, or at least plausible, that if a country cannot exist without geographical borders, that these borders cannot be merely geographical in nature, but must also be political as well?  

Take the Rio Grande.  It is obviously not a social construct.  It is a natural feature of the earth.  But the southern border of the USA, its border with Mexico, is a social or socio-political construct.  It is 'conventional' not 'natural.'  The southern border  might not have been the Rio Grande.  But as things are, a river serves as the southern border.  

My point is that, while a  border must be naturally or physically realized by a river, or a coastline, or the crest of a mountain range, or by a wall or a fence (an electronic 'fence' would do) or whatever, borders are also political entities.  Thus the Rio Grande is both a natural feature of the earth but also a political entity.  And so what I want to say is that nothing can count as a country in the sense of 'country' relevant to a definition of 'patriotism' if it is not a political entity.  Two countries bordering on each other cannot border on each other unless both are political entities.

Can I argue this out rigorously?  I don't know.  Let me take a stab at it.

A country is a continuant: it remains numerically the same over the period of time, however short, during which it exists.  And while a country can gain or lose territory without prejudice to its diachronic numerical identity, it will cease to exist if it loses all its territory, or lets itself be invaded by foreigners to such an extent that its characteristic culture is destroyed (see point (c) above).  So a country must defend its border if it wishes to stay in existence.  But for the USA to defend its southern border is not for it to defend a river.  It is to prevent non-citizens from crossing illegally into a country of which they are not a citizen.  Am I begging the question?  Perhaps.  I'll have to think about it some more.

In any case it seems intuitively obvious to me that we need

d. Under the jurisdiction of a government.

But it is important to distinguish between a government and a particular administration of a government such as the Reagan administration or the Obama administration (regime?).  Consider the bumper sticker:

What does 'government' mean here?  It means either the current administration or some administrations, but presumably not every administration.  It cannot mean the institutional structure, with its enabling documents such as the Constitution, which structure outlasts particular administrations.  That is shown by the American flag above.  What does it signify? Not the Nixon admin or the Obama admin.  It signifies the ideals and values of America and the people who uphold them.  Which values?  Liberty and justice are named in the Pledge of Allegiance.  But not social justice, or material equality (equality of outcome or result).

The person who would display a bumper sticker like the above does not fear the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence or the institutional structure of the USA or the values and ideals it enshrines.  Take a gander at this sticker:

Someone who displays this supports the U. S. Constitution and the Second Amendment thereto in particular.  What he fears is not the U. S. government in its institutional structure; what he fears are gun-grabbing administrations.  What he fears are lawless, hate-America, gun-grabbing, liberty-infringing, race-baiting leftists like Barack Obama and Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton.

In sum, I suggest that an adequate definition of 'country' must involve all of (a)-(d) supra.  But this is a very difficult topic and I am no expert in political philosophy. 

Comments

[Hector Cruickshanks]

How would nineteenth century nationalist movements fit into this scheme? Many of them conceived of a nation based on a distinct national identity - a sort of defined area of proto-nationhood based on the shared features you cite in (c) but without the legal element. These usually arose within a multi-lingual, multicultural Empire such as the Russian Empire or Austro-Hungarian Empire. But these were not yet national entities in the sense of a nation as a 'sovereign state'. Were Estonian nationalists, for example, not patriots? If they established a nation, does that nation not owe its existence to their patriotism? It seems to go against common sense to say they were not patriots before their nation came into being but only after.(the American revolutionaries called themselves 'Patriots' right?) Their patriotism therefore required the imaginative act that constituted their people as a separate nation before that nation came into existence by law and treaty, etc. So I think your definition of country excludes at least some of these examples. They would fulfill (a), (b), (c) except the legal element, but not (d). So either patriotism does not require an actually existing country or 'country' has to be redefined.

Also countries have existed for which patriotism obviously existed but no separate law existed for that country as distinct from another country which was under the same jurisdiction - such as Wales within the United Kingdom. Wales is a country (one of the four 'constituent countries' of the United Kingdom) but it has been subject to English law for hundreds of years (though since the devolved Senedd came into existence in 1999 this is not so clear cut now). But surely it was still possible to be a Welsh patriot though there was no nation-state called Wales - the nation-state was the United Kingdom. Likewise for England, Scotland, Northern Ireland (though the latter's status as a country is disputed). So Wales was under the jurisdiction of a government but a government shared by at least one other country (this is distinct from Scotland which has its own legal system). So again, a country is not necessarily a sovereign state.

[Cyrus]

How elastic is (a)? Suppose Napoleon had won the Battle of Trafalgar and conquered the British Isles. Further suppose that the royal family fled to Canada and re-established a capital there. Would Great Britain have survived?

(For a second, I thought you were asking for an ontological assay of countries.)

[BV]

Hector,

You're a smart guy. Excellent comments. It may be that the hunt for an adequate definition of 'country' is a fool's errand. *Country* is perhaps better thought of as a "family resemblance" concept in Wittgenstein's sense. And yet clear thinking about these matters seems to require that we we use such words as 'country,' 'nation,' 'state,' and 'government' in disciplined ways.

[BV]

>>Also countries have existed for which patriotism obviously existed but no separate law existed for that country as distinct from another country which was under the same jurisdiction - such as Wales within the United Kingdom.<<

That is true. But I didn't sat that a country has to be a sovereign state.

Now: what makes a state sovereign? I'll have to review what Carl Schmitt says about this. He's essential reading, by the way. But you already knew that.

[BV]

Cyrus,

(a) is consistent with a country moving. All it says is that a country must have some land mass or other. But then it occurred to me that there could be a floating country on the high seas consisting of one or more ships, or a country moving through outer space.

[Thomas Beale]

One well-known test of whether two individuals are from the same 'country' is how they would relate if they were to come across each other in some foreign country / airport / crowd / war. What is enough to make individual A (let's say a Russian) coming across individual B (another Russian, or say Belorussian, Lithuanian with Russian parents etc) in the middle of a natural disaster situation in say Thailand, consider him to be a 'brother'? Let's say they talk and drink together, and discover they both detest the last 100 years' of Russian government all the way back to 1917. And then the tsarist regime before that. They will be brothers, because they both believe in some intangible idea of 'being Russian', and neither will be very patriotic to today's Russia, nor any recent (to them, obviously corrupt) version. But if one happened to be an oligarch and the other was a morally upright journalist, there would be no brotherhood. (The oral histories of Svetlana Alexievich's 'Second hand Time' are an interesting account of what various people during the last century think it means to be Russian).

I think it's mainly about a mythical notion of culture. Being a 'real Russian' or a 'real Welshman' are things that could be described, but the descriptions would only relate patchily to reality. The version that real people (not corrupt thieves) want is the one that would make them proud to call themselves by that name - the mythical hero who is usually a small man fighting against injustice or endless natural disaster, and eventually coming out on top by dint of stoic determination and unwavering moral character. The William Wallace of the Scots or Ertugrul of the Turks. Earlier mythical heroes can be replaced by later ones - perhaps Ataturk would fit for the Turks.

What or who is the mythical culture and its heroes for US citizens? The founding fathers? Jefferson? The smallhold farmer on the western frontier? Or Henry Ford? Or some wolf of Wall St.? The US is a complicated place...