I was intrigued by Dena’s response to my post on Uncle Sam, particularly her assertion that patriotism is good but that nationalism is bad. I know this is largely a question of semantics, but I have always argued that nationalism is good but that imperialism is bad. I am defining “nationalism” as the political philosophy which believes that a world of diverse sovereign territories is preferable to a world in which such territories are subsumed within larger trans-national bodies. According to this definition, Scottish nationalism, which seeks independence for Scotland from the United Kingdom is genuinely nationalist, whereas British nationalism, which seeks to subsume Scotland within a transnational political body is not nationalist but imperialist.
The opposite of nationalism is imperialism. The European Union is an imperialist institution, as is the Federal Government, which systematically subsumes the rights of individual states and the rights of individual families.
Rejoicing in the smallness and beauty of his own nation, a nationalist respects the smallness and beauty of other nations. A true nationalist would never become an imperialist, seeking to destroy the freedom of other nations in order to glory in the supremacy of his own. Hitler was not a German nationalist but a German imperialist, who marched into neighbouring nations in the name of imperialist concepts, such as anschluss or lebensraum. More controversially, it could be argued that the Washington government was behaving as an imperialist nation between 1861 and 1865 when it forced its will militarily on the seceding states.
Yes, it’s obviously in how we define our terms. Hitler’s party was the National Socialists (with obvious historical emphasis on the “national” since there wasn’t much in the way of “socialist” involved in the anschluss, or the lebensraum–or in Hitler’s party, for that matter.
I defer to C. S. Lewis in my distinction between nationalism (which he clearly meant, as did I, to refer to what you call “imperialism”) and patriotism, (which he meant, as did I, love for one’s homeland.) And love, being the grace that it is, and not the merit that it is not, neither has nor needs our justification of it.
In my comment on your post, I asked myself–as Lewis did–what is my country. Not too sure I can simply say “Uncle Sam”, who would remain for me a more or less meaningless caricature if it were not for the significance “he” had for all the heroes of WWII–to whom I owe my freedom.
I lived in Europe for five years when I was in my twenties. I loved my time there, but toward the end, I remember–my husband and I were on a ship in the Aegean Sea. We were the only Americans on board. Someone in the bar took the microphone and sang “Shenandoah.” I dissolved into tears and cried for days. Later, back home in Heidelberg, I heard the largo movement from the “New World Symphony” and I was inconsolable. I never once thought of American democracy, or of Uncle Sam.
Home, said Robert Frost, “is where, when you go there, they have to take you in.” I think home is where, when you leave there, you grieve. It doesn’t matter if home loves you; what matters is that you love home. But then Frost was a New Englander; I’m a Southerner.
I don’t love -ism’s of any sort, political ideologies, governmental philosophies. Truth be told, I’m a monarchist at bottom, and I know it–even though I know very well that democracy is the best governmental system, even with its flaws. But these things can win from me only intellectual approval, moral assent (or not); they can’t claim my heart.
I have in my ancestry five Confederate heroes, all from Georgia. None of them owned plantations or slaves. They all fought for–and died for–the protection and sovereignty of their homeland. Nothing more. These are my kin–by more than blood.
In the end, we are the earth from which we come–we are made of the same material, the same stuff. We are the land made conscious and endowed with a soul. We can no more separate ourselves from it than we can become some other creature than what we are. Yes, I could–perhaps with too much ease for some people’s approval–become a citizen of another country, but no matter where I lived or what my citizenship was, I would always be “from” here, and by “here, I don’t mean “The United States”; I mean my home.
I feel particularly blessed by membership in a small state, the very smallest with a rich heritage, among other things declaring independence two months before the Continental Congress. Nationalism or Patriotism is evil when it becomes an idea detached from real experience. I can conceive of my state, taste it, remember it, but what fool can assert that he knows or loves America? Yeah, like having a passion for some 4,758 lb. hot babe.
Dear Thomas,
In that case, as Joseph says, you would surely respect the way others feel about their own.
I think it’s only in the personal, the unique love of our own that we can respect that of others. It’s a paradox: Only in mutual acknowledgement of sovereignty is real unity possible. No unity that disavows the sovereignty of another is authentic.
Just so, Ms Hunt.