In the light of our recent discussions about the United States, this excellent article by Thomas Storck will add grist to our cognitive mill:
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2012/the-varieties-of-american-exceptionalism
Taking Exception to Exceptionalism
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About the Author: Joseph Pearce
Joseph Pearce is a Catholic author and biographer who has written about subjects as various as GK Chesterton, economics, and Shakespeare.
That’s so well done. I’ve mentioned this before and referred to C.S. Lewis’ essay/radio speech on this same topic (lamenting that I didn’t know where to locate it.) He said that when he thought of “England,” he thought of Victoria Station. Love of one’s country is love of one’s home. It’s part of us.
And so Thomas Storck says,
“Genuine patriotism is love for one’s country—and for one’s region, one’s state, one’s town—because it is one’s own.”
In my recent post “A Little Blasphemy”, I began with the modern American July 4th celebration, but probably because of a project I’m working on right now, I got sidetracked to England, but the point is that the “blasphemy” is unique to neither country.
Patriotic hoopla always makes me nervous, especially when someone refers to America as “an idea.” No, it isn’t. I don’t love an idea. I do, however, love the smell of Georgia pines, ice-crystaled red clay “early on a frosty morn”…etc. And because I do, I imagine others hold dear their own home as much as I do. But I’m sorry–apart from a literary appreciation of certain documents, none of them matter much to me…though I do acknowledge that’s blasphemous.