This whole notion of loyalty to one’s country really has no meaning whatsoever, since countries always change, just as do people who live in them. The only loyalty worth anything is that to one’s values and principles.
– commenter Alisa
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Samizdata quote of the dayAugust 13th, 2012 |
 44 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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No. “One’s values and principles” are not what keep the Huns out, nor what keep the nation from degenerating into a viper pit. This is no different from deracinated internationalist proggs, as ignorant of the blessings of life in the civilized West as fish are ignorant of water, proclaiming that “ideas are the only homeland.” It’s just pompous shorthand for declaring that I’ll share in the benefits of life among you lot, but I won’t admit that we have a shared fate.
“Patriotism has, then, many faces. Those who would reject it entirely do not seem to have considered what will certainly step–has already begun to step–into its place. For a long time yet, or perhaps forever, nations will live in danger. Rulers must somehow nerve their subjects to defend them or at least to prepare for their defence. Where the sentiment of patriotism has been destroyed this can be done only by presenting every international conflict in a purely ethical light. If people will spend neither sweat nor blood for “their country” they must be made to feel that they are spending them for justice, or civilisation, or humanity. This is a step down, not up. Patriotic sentiment did not of course need to disregard ethics. Good men needed to be convinced that their country’s cause was just; but it
was still their country’s cause, not the cause of justice as such. The difference seems to me important. I may without self-righteousness or hypocrisy think it just to defend my house by force against a burglar; but if I start pretending that I blacked his eye purely on moral grounds–wholly indifferent to the fact that the house in question was mine–I become insufferable. The pretence that when England’s cause is just we are on England’s side–as some neutral Don Quixote might be–for that reason alone, is equally spurious. And nonsense draws evil after it… A false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world.”
–C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, 1960
One of the things I value is my family home: the house and the land on which it is built.
One of my main principles is to assert everyone’s right to their property, and to hold (defend) same: for me and mine; almost certainly and reciprocally for others too. [For the avoidance of doubt, this applies to ownership and to continuing right of contracted tenancy.]
Given a (method of) government that leads to such personal principles, to quiet enjoyment and to keeping of the peace, I am most unlikely to give up voluntarily that sort of government. This is even though I acknowledge that it is somewhat (even distinctly) imperfect. And I certainly won’t give it up the say-so of people who live in a different country.
Given that I have good neighbours, near and far, who would (if necessary) join with me in the mutual protection of our lives, property and way of life, I feel rather attached to the bit of land on which I sit and ‘know’ is mine.
Through the above and a somewhat complicated set of arrangements (including access to a dictionary) that have been reliably in place all my life, I call this patriotism.
Through this patriotism, I would certainly (while usefully fit in mind – doubtless now more useful than my fitness in body) fight for my country, were it attacked and my contribution found likely to be useful. This follows unavoidably from my values and principles: I apply it reciprocally and tolerantly (well usually) to people who feel the same, even though they live in (and feel patriotic about) a different country.
Maybe Alisa lives in different circumstances, or has different values and principles.
Best regards
The pretence that when England’s cause is just we are on England’s side–as some neutral Don Quixote might be–for that reason alone, is equally spurious.
So, it’s “my country, right or wrong”, eh? That’s why I don’t look to C.S. Lewis for moral guidance.
Nigel: all of us live under different circumstances, and have different values and principles – although the degree of those differences varies very greatly.
Also, it really depends what one means by ‘country’. For some people ‘country’ means the mere physical entity, for some it’s the people who inhabit that entity, for some it’s that country’s government, for others it’s the values and principles represented by that country’s and its people’s history. For some it is a combination of some or all of the above. This is an important clarification, and I should have added it to my original remark.
Lewis is certainly disappointing in that quote.
“Lewis is certainly disappointing in that quote.”
But “This house woulld not fight for King and Country” did not contribute to the slaughter of millions in WWII?
No. What did contribute to that is the ‘this house will not fight’ part alone. I rather doubt that Hitler really cared what was it that England wouldn’t fight him *for* – what he cared about was that England wouldn’t fight *him*.
Taking this as the patriotism thread pt. 2, I’ve always thought Chesterton nailed it:
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Chapt. 5, 1908(Link)
The area of land is the Country and the people the Nation and ironically no matter how much things change they stay the same.
Nigel:
I got the impression that your comment was meant to contradict Alisa’s quote, but I don’t see how it does. It seems to me that you’re saying exactly the same thing. You live in a country that matches your own values and principles better than most, and so you are loyal to it, which is just a round-about way of saying that you’re loyal to those values and principles. Would I not be correct in assuming that, if your country tried to take your land away from you, you would resist? Wouldn’t your loyalty stay with your values and principles, rather than your country, when the two conflicted?
Bill:
I do like the Chesterton quote, even though I disagree with his conclusion. I probably do have an irrational love of my country that under-girds the loyalty that I have to it as a consequence of the values and principles it represents. That’s the messy thing about being human.
I think where it falls down, at least as a contradiction of Alisa’s quote, is in the final paragraph. The person who loves a country for the values and principles it represents is the person who “loves some feature of Pimlico.” That is the person who will defend the country from itself.
It would be interesting to see what Chesterton would have to say about that.
Coming back to the original point about “the notion of loyalty to your country”, the problem here is that the collectivists have done a good job of conflating the concepts surrounding ‘country’ (pro patria, this green and pleasant land, the home) with the things which effectively mean the state or the government.
I would fight for my country, I would not fight for its state or government – in fact quite the opposite – I would happily destroy the state if it could be achieved with minimal damage.
Loyalty is a decision to align with another’s idea. To do so always brings conflict of interest. This is not a bad thing in itself, it allows you to grow by learning from the decisions you make, the alignments you choose and also those decisions and alignments that are forced upon you by the acts of others.
What use you yourself put a tool to is the proof of its goodness or badness. Patriotism is but a tool, like a hammer or a gun; its value, its worth, its goodness or its badness is dependent on you.
Lewis and Chesterton both understand this and are talking about it in different ways to tackle different questions.
Well there it is. That is exactly why I have no ‘loyalty’ to ‘Britain’. It is abundantly clear to me that the vast Ponzi scheme that is the regulatory welfare state of Britain is, and may well always be… popular. It exists because a plurality of voters sign off on it every election and for the majority of people, they simply cannot imagine a reality in which it does not exist, let along should not exist.
We have a shared fate, you say. Well yes, that is exactly my problem. I did not vote for the fate the majority apparently want and I am really very keen indeed not to share it. I care for my friends, my family (well, some of them) but ‘Britain’? Screw it because it is just a vehicle for screwing me.
If all it did was put out fires, build roads, hang highwaymen, watch for plagues and ‘keep the Huns out’, well that would be a Britain I could be comfortable with… and we could get all that with about 20% of the state we have now, maybe less.
But that is not the Britain we have.
I found this bit of the the CS Lewis quote in the first comment interesting:
While our betters scratch around for ways to write themselves into the history books they seem to think the opposite.
This comment would perhaps fit better in the original post, but it comes to mind only now.
About one year after I moved to England, I made some sneering remarks about it to one of my best friends (Italian).
He replied, with a smirk, that apparently my Anglophilia did not survive a meeting with reality.
I replied that my ideal of the English gentleman still holds, it’s the English people who are at fault for deviating from it.
Gareth… and does CS Lewis say why that is a ‘step down’? But of course this is CS Lewis we are talking about, maybe God told him.
Maybe ha was speaking from the rulers’ POV, rather than expressing his own position?
The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
— G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With The World
I liked the C. S. Lewis quotation. I see a great deal of false transcendence around me in both religion and politics, and it does draw evil after it. If I hear John Lennon’s “Imagine” sung as a hymn one more time at my church, I think I’m going to puke.
Steve Sailer made a similar observation recently: “Modern liberals’ defining trait is making a public spectacle of how their loyalties leapfrog over some unworthy folks relatively close to them in favor of other people they barely know.”
Peter A. Taylor
How about starting your own country? You’ll need to move to the southern hemisphere, and pumice will be your only building material, and your island will move with the ocean currents, but no-one is on it right now!
I just read a news item about a floating pumice island, created by an active undersea volcano, between Tonga and New Zealand. It measures 7500 square kilometers, so there’s plenty of room! Only people prepared to be patriotic libertarians need apply!
I suffer from that mixed illusion.
In the senses of some, the feelings of “loyalty” are distinct from those of “patriotism.”
I can remember the overwhelming urges that drove me 71 years ago at 17 to volunteer for the USMCR and the difference of that from the loyalties that bound men together, though they carped and scrapped.
Whatever philosophers, psychologists, clerics, or atheisists, or whoever might bloviat, that sense, even if only for 17-19 year-olds is real and its commonalities are strong.
Of course it is real, RRS. Emotions are very real and those who ignore them are very foolish. But it is also very important to give emotions a rational framework in one’s mind. It is the only way to control our emotions – otherwise they end up controlling us.
I know a man in his seventies now who was born and grown here in Israel. His father left Germany when Hitler first appeared on the public scene there, but it is his oldest uncle that he has to thank for having been born here (or even been born at all). His uncle had a gentile friend, with whom he one day happened to listen to one of Hitler’s first public speeches on the radio. The friend said ‘listen to this speech – isn’t it wonderful?!’ ‘But what about everything he said about the Jews?’ said the Jewish guy. ‘Ah, don’t worry, he doesn’t really mean that’. From then on my friend’s uncle did everything he could to uproot his entire family (several siblings, including my friend’s father – I don’t remember about their parents) and get them all out of Germany. One went to Israel, another to the US, one ended up in India, and I think one in S. America.
I don’t know if that young man was clearly thinking in terms of loyalties, principles etc. when he made his decision and tried to convince his siblings, but if I had to imagine such thinking, I would see in in terms of his gentile friend’s loyalty to his friend as opposed to his loyalty to his country (whatever ‘country’ meant to that man at that time). When one views loyalty in terms of physical entities (friends, family, country, society), then when shit hits the fan, one is inevitably faced with a moral conflict. Who do you choose – your best friend, or your country? What about your family? What if you are in love with a Jewish woman? The possibilities are endless, as they say.
To get back to both Lewis and Chesterton, to their credit they both try to do the impossible: to rationally analyze the irrational (in this case love). Even though they commonly go together, love and loyalty are two very different things. Love is by definition irrational (‘love is blind’). Loyalty, on the other hand, implies active support for the actions of others. Those who demand blind loyalty for whatever or whoever, actually demand blind support for the actions of those others – ‘blind’ meaning without rational consideration. Loyalty that is not blind is actually loyalty to values and principles. If human life is one’s highest value, and one also subscribes to the principle of equality of all human life in that regard (including that of Jews), then one will side with that principle, even against one’s friends and one’s country. If one’s country is one’s highest value (whatever ‘country’ means for him), then he will side with those who support his country’s actions against anyone, even one’s friends and family. The same if one’s highest value is family, or friends, or “social justice” – whatever. We all can – and will – differ on our personal values and principles, but the point is having those in the first place, and being logically consistent, to avoid confusion. You don’t want to be confused when shit hits the fan.
It is true that principles do best in an historical context – a culture (a country).
However, in the end, a country has to be judged by principles.
Herder was right that different cultures and traditions are beautiful in different ways (think of styles of building, or of dress, or of food…) but he was wrong (terribly wrong) to imply that there are no UNIVERSAL principles by which to judge basic matters of the use of force (political matters).
There are universal principles of political economy – and universal principles of HONOUR.
And it is simply a mistake to say “my honour is loyality” (no – honour is the means by which one judges whether one has the right loyalities, is on the right side) or “my country right and wrong”.
Although a Bloomsbury degenerate who says “if faced with the choice of betraying my country or betraying by friend, I hope I would betray my country” is also in error.
Friends (like countries) have to be judged by universal principles also.
Even blood kin must be judged in this way.
For example, if one’s own child becomes a monster (raping and murdering) it is a job of a parent NOT to protect them.
Indeed the parent should take the lead in HUNTING THEM DOWN.
Alisa is correct – love and loyality (although connected) are different.
Sometimes love does not die as one’s “loyalities” must.
For example, a man who has to hunt down his own son (for terrible crimes) may still love him.
The father may weep and rend his clothing – as he puts the rope around his son’s neck.
So a person who chooses to fight against his country may still love it.
A German who choose to fight against “the nation of hangmen” in memory of the “nation of composers and poets” did not stop loving his country.
Even as he planted a bomb that would kill people in the same uniform that he himself was wearing.
Even to give information (as some high ranking Germans did) means to condemn vast numbers of one’s fellow countrymen to death.
What makes such Germans right and such people as Kim Philby wrong?
PRINCIPLES – right or wrong, PRINCIPLES.
Marxism is wrong.
Opposing ethnic genocide is right.
Indeed, Paul.
Paul Marks (solo)
I am disinclined to accept that broad generalization.
There are few (if any) universals so far recorded in human endeavors to form and maintain consistent social groupings.
If such universals are known, where are they inscribed, or derived from what form of historicism.
True, there are commonalities that bring peoples into groupings, societies, orders, cultures and civilizations (their intensities are sometimes noted as ideologies – driving forces). But, they are just as often (perhaps alaways) transient, being displaced or replaced.
These are subjects better given to oral, conversational, exchanges than to hard print or screeds. But, I would suspect that Paul is familiar with the extensive studies of Isaiah Berlin, and that is where my inclinations lie with respect to universals.
Perry de Havilland ,
I think he does starting earlier in the same quote: “Where the sentiment of patriotism has been destroyed …”
and later saying: “The pretence that when England’s cause is just we are on England’s side–as some neutral Don Quixote might be–for that reason alone, is equally spurious. And nonsense draws evil after it… ”
If there is no or weak self-evident national interest then leaders will invoke a noble cause and that opens the door to corruption.
I found the position CS Lewis took to contrast quite markedly with that of our leaders. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and we have leaders today falling over themselves to appear to be good people. But I don’t think it is a sign that patriotism has been destroyed, just that we keep electing people whose patriotism is pointed more towards Europe than Britain.
At risk of going Godwin, Nazi soldiers were fighting for their country too. Many of them good and honorable men no doubt.
“What if they held a war and nobody came?” No doubt, in the vast majority of cases, the old boss would be replaced by the new boss and a lot of children would have their fathers come home. Other than outlying particularly good or particularly bad regimes, “country” can largely be regarded as synonymous with “gang territory” and the best most of us can do is keep our heads down and pay the protection money.
I think Richard Thomas pretty much nails is from my perspective.
Yep. Also, as Michael had hinted a few posts below, I am getting really tired of that Godwin fellow.
As I mentioned in the other discussion last night, sometimes I get discouraged and feel like saying Goodbye to what no longer feels like my country.
But as often happens, I ran across something that reminded me of why, really, that would not be the right thing for me (personally) to do. It was something David Horowitz (former New Left leader and editor of Ramparts, the premier New Left magazine of its day) said at the end of a speech he delivered at the College of Idaho, and it reminded me that indeed there are many reasons to be proud of my country, and there are good reasons not to give up–the existence of people like Mr. Horowitz being one of them.
He ended his talk (which was about the leftist indoctrination that goes on in our colleges) with this comment:
I’ve talked about it before…and so have many others. One of the great aims of the Left is to demoralize us into giving up. Demoralize us how? Why, by (among other things) instilling in us the feeling that we are worse than worthless–that we are bad people, and a bad people. By teaching us that our past is evil, and our present is hopeless.
I’ll be dam’d if I’ll let them sell me that crap. There ARE people like Mr. Horowitz, like so many of the folks on Samizdata, like the people who go to the Tea Party rallies, like the people who are made happy by the sight of others who are happy or successful. The people who find freedom worth fighting for; who believe that HUMAN LIFE is worth fighting for. The people who believe that even if we must endure a thousand years of Darkness, there must always be a few people who work to keep knowledge and the vision of freedom alive, and it begins with them.
*Proud of my country? Well, yes. As when I say to my child, or my husband, or my parent, or my dog, or to the people of England or Israel, “You done good.” And it makes me feel good inside.
David Horowitz’ speech: To see the whole thing on YouTube, go to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSVZmTKJM8Q&feature=related(Link).
The quote begins at 46:22; the whole thing is worth seeing, especially for those who aren’t entirely aware of how latter-day goings-on may be a further outcome of the Radical Sixties. For instance, he tells the story of terrorist Susan Rosenberg, who took part in the stickup of a Brinks truck in which one of the guards and two Nyack, N.Y. cops were killed…who was finally convicted and sentenced on a different charge, and whose sentence was commuted years later by an outgoing President…and was invited to give a one-month seminar at Hamilton College. (In the end, she didn’t do so.)
(For more on Rosenberg see, e.g.,
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1806(Link) .)
Sorry Julie, but with all due respect to Horwitz, he is incorrect. I don’t know much about him. He may be a good man and means well, but from that quote alone it sounds like he simply exchanged one flavor of collectivism for another by switching camps.
As to the rest of your comment, it is all about emotions. Like I said above, emotions are nothing to be sneered at – without them we would not be human (or maybe not even mere animals, as animals seem to have emotions too). But emotions can only get us so far, and without rational analysis they can also get us to some very bad places. And, take this from a very emotional person.
I just now saw the link to the speech – I will try to watch it later.
Collectiv – ism, in the sense Alisa attributes can be a negative factor in the motivations of any social order.
There are those forms of voluntary actions, taken collectively; there are those co-operative associations which have their strength in collective action.
In the U S, we have been observing efforts of large groups seeking to re-establish commonalities of their individual principles (Pace! P.M.), which results in forms of voluntary collective actions. Much of this used to be (a great deal still is) centered around dominant forms of ideologies such as religious affiliations.
The searchs for affinities are constant in the efforts to hold societies together.
As you hint, RRS, there’s nothing wrong with a collective in and of itself. Collectivism though is the ultimate deference to the authority of the collective over the individual in all matters of importance.
The fact that someone leaves the “left” camp to join the “right” camp still does not mean that he suddenly acquired an independent moral position on important issues.
No, our youth should be taught to be proud of the values and principles upon which this country was founded. They certainly should feel no pride when their country is rapidly moving away from those values and principles.
RRS – you are correct, I am familar with the work of I. Berlin. But, of course, that does not mean I always agree with it.
As for basic right and wrong being universal (not culturally specific) and being defined in terms of themselves (not in other terms) – I am quite a reactionary bigot on this subject.
David H.
I know of him – and I like what I know.
Although of course he can be wrong.
On countries.
If there is NOTHING in a country you can be proud of (be happy that you are live in a place that is about it) – then it really is time to leave.
The hatred of America is generated by telling ONE SIDE of a story.
For example, stressing the expansionist American desires in 1848 – whilst ignoring the MEXICAN expansionist desires.
Richard:
Just a small nit, but perhaps an important distinction in this context. The soldiers who fought for Germany in WWII were soldiers of the German army, not Nazis.
By and large I think they fought for Germany, not for Naziism — for their country, not for the ideology that happened to be ruling it at the time — as soldiers have historically done. You quite rightly point out that this distinction makes no practical difference; they still fought the same war. But, for me, if makes a big moral difference. Morally speaking, there’s little to choose between the axis soldiers and the allied soldiers, on an individual level.
Warning: Long–and I’m sparing you the second half, on reason, emotion, and the will! :>)
First, it’s important for us Americans, at least, to understand the history of “The Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left” (to steal the title of a book by Ronald Radosh, another Leftist who has come to see the light). David Horowitz is an absolute expert on the left and its methods, having been one of its main members, and also having continued to educate himself after his awakening. A large part of his effort today is given to educating people about this history, and about how today’s leftist enemies and their positions continue the evil of their past.
It’s perfectly true that David Horowitz speaks passionately about his subject, but particularly when addressing a general audience, passion lends force to reason (in the fullest sense: logic plus observations and honest evaluations of factual reality). And emotional force is necessary to capture the attention of an audience would often enough fall asleep during a dry exposition of the facts.
I posted the quotation simply because it makes (yet again) one of the points which I consider profoundly important. And I didn’t recommend the video because of any emotional style or rhetoric, but rather on the basis of its PERFECTLY RATIONAL attempt to awaken (or strengthen) in the audience awareness of what is going on in Academe, and also because of the interesting (if depressing) story about Susan Rosenberg. I do not, in fact, think that Mr. Horowitz is at his best in that video. Nevertheless, his main point is valid.
Alisa, you wrote:
That is a perfectly true statement, but I will caution that many of our enemies use it as a talking-point for discrediting converts away from their cause. We must be very careful to judge each case on its own merits and given the facts as best we can learn them, if we are to opine. As one who has read his first two autobiographies (including the absolutely indispensable, and fascinating, Radical Son) and most of his post-Leftist political writings, I know that the statement’s implication of a “change of principle” based on nothing of REAL principle does not apply to Mr. Horowitz. There was nothing “sudden” about his coming to have a truer picture of the world and the recognition of the need to substitute new, actually-moral principles for former faux-moral ones.
The very first thing I found to admire in David Horowitz was his absolute commitment to learning and then acting in accord with the truth of things, no matter what upheaval clearsightedness and intellectual honesty might cause as they forced him to abandon his old principles, no matter the pain involved in wrenching his psyche away from identification with all the principles and comradeship he held dear.
Paul has commented on the agonizing journey such people go through. He’s known them in person; I haven’t; but I’m positive that he’s correct.
I do not always agree with D.H. (I could produce a list of disagreements easily enough.) But on the fundamental principles that America, the U.K., and the West in general have a heritage that is indeed worthy, and that ought to be preserved and furthered for our own sakes–those of us alive now, discussing things on Samizdata–and also for those of succeeding generations–and that political freedom and the right of each human being to decide his own fate are essential to a morally proper political order; on those principles I am in full agreement. As I am in full agreement that our leftist enemies must be defeated in their project to lead people (who are the individual human persons who constitute a people) to believe that they are helpless without Big Brother, or Rulers, and that their forebears bequeathed to them a legacy of evil that they can never live down nor atone for; and who therefore are no more worth defending than the individual ants in the Ant Farm.
Because that is the main way in which one may conquer a certain sort of enemy without firing a shot.
You disarm him upfront by destroying his sense of self-worth: Some people can be shamed into submission.
When an individual does this to another individual, say a parent to a child, it is recognized as abuse. It is recognized as evil. It is recognized as something that must be stopped. And some people recognize that apart from the sheer cruelty of it, that sort of upbringing makes it very difficult for the child to become a properly-functioning adult.
Jean-François Revel and many others have noted this fact.
This was the closing point of D.H.’s speech.
Moving to another angle, I quote part John Galt’s statement above:
Alisa, you wrote:
That is what I personally mean by “my country,” along with the sense that “my country’s” people are “my” people. I believe that it’s close to David Horowitz’s meaning as well.
I am sure that Mr. Horowitz would sign onto Paul’s observations in a New York minute:
and
I disagree . If a country is built in an idea to which i agree i should be loyal to it.
If a country is built on a worthwhile idea or ideal, then you should judge if it is still pursuing that idea/ideal. If it is still true to that idea, and no other country is around with better building blocks, then you could be patriotic about that country. None of this should stop us trying to make our countries freer, or stop us from starting a better country elsewhere, of course!
Tedd, indeed. I made the Nazi reference to indicate the regime that they were supporting by proxy while fighting “for their country”.
Personally, if anything, I feel more loyalty to the system of laws (rule of law), flawed as they are, that have lead to increased freedom and standards of living, where they have held sway throughout the West.
If anyone’s still following this discussion, there’s an analysis of the Forster posish entitled “E.M. Forster and the Politics of Betrayal,” posted in 1999 by a Patrick O’Hannigan, which I think is interesting. See
http://billstclair.com/lodge/F_PoliticsOfBetrayal.shtml(Link)