Part Two
4
John Kleinig
In my initial essay, I saw myself as having two tasks – first, making a case for the virtuousness of loyalty and then providing an argument for its patriotic embodiment. Those tasks included, on the one hand, establishing the claims of loyalty as a virtue in certain associative relations and, on the other, showing the importance of patrial associations as a venue for loyalty. In fulfilling those tasks, I had the argumentative advantage of previously published papers by Igor Primoratz and Simon Keller and thus of anticipating some of the arguments they have advanced in the present context. Nevertheless, my task here is not to recycle my earlier arguments but to develop them further in response to the essays they have produced for this volume.
1 Identification
One issue that concerns each of us is the type of identification with country that patriotism presumes. The issue can be seen as one of either specifying what that identification requires or specifying the relevant kind of identification. Provided that we are clear, I’m not sure that it makes much difference whether we cast the issue one way or the other.
Although we parse it in slightly different terms, all three of us view some type of identification as central to patriotism. The patriot must identify with the country as his or hers. As Keller makes clear, this does not resolve into love or admiration for a particular country, for one might love and admire a country that is not one’s own.1 That is the case with Keller’s Steve who, though not French, loves and admires what is French. The country that one loves and admires must be one’s own and, moreover, be known to be one’s own. For even if Steve is French, if he does not know himself to be so, the fact that he loves and admires things French does not constitute him as patriotic. That may not yet be enough if Steve’s inclinations are cosmopolitan and his knowing himself to be French is viewed as no more than an administrative category: in such a case, his love and admiration for things French may not constitute him as patriotic. To identify with one’s country in the relevant sense, it must not only be one’s own and be known to be one’s own, but one also needs to own it in some important sense.
Ownership of the relevant kind includes a willingness to identify oneself with what one takes one’s country to stand for, and what one takes one’s country to stand for may not be what one actually takes it to be. One may identify with a country that one believes has taken a seriously wrong turn. Nevertheless, one can identify with it patriotically if, first, one believes that at its core it stands for something else; second, it could be otherwise than it now is; third, one is committed to its being otherwise; and fourth – most probably – one can contribute to its becoming what one takes it to stand for. Such commitments tend to be action guiding. Of course, one may be dreadfully wrong about a country’s capacity for recovery. Our patriotism may be mistaken, blind, or delusional.
Not all identification with one’s country need be patriotic identification. One may have become deeply ashamed of one’s country, believing that it has abandoned what should be its core values and has sold itself to the devil. One may be acutely conscious that one is a German, an Israeli, or an American, even though one thinks that Germany, Israel, or the United States has prostituted itself, rendered itself unworthy of one’s allegiance. One would probably leave one’s country if one could. Even if one is critical of one’s country as it is, patriotic identification requires something more positive. It requires some congruence between what one identifies with and what one stands for oneself. In extreme cases, one may lose that sense of identification – as is likely when, instead of shame, one loses any feeling for the country or comes to hate it.
So, even though one identifies with a country, one may not patriotically identify with it, and even if one patriotically identifies with it, one may be uncomfortable with the status quo, for one identifies with what one takes the country to stand for at its core. One may be a loyal but vigorous opponent of the status quo, intent on achieving one’s country (Rorty 1998).
This leaves me in a slightly awkward relationship with Keller who, not surprisingly, tends to unpack patriotic identification in a way that anticipates loving and admiring it and not simply identifying with what it is taken to stand for. Keller speaks of patriotic endorsement – of “some kind of positive judgment about [one’s] country, or that [one has] positive feelings for it” (this volume, 55–58, at 56). I am not entirely opposed to that, but think that he underplays the extent to which one may be critical of one’s country as it is while yet remaining patriotically attached to it.2 The patriot may think her country has taken a seriously wrong turn but still identify with what she takes it to stand for, still retain hope that it can return to or realize its core values and ways, and work toward achieving this.
What Keller also underplays, I believe, is the extent to which one’s patriotic identification may also be connected to things other than what it stands for, where stands for has primary reference to its political character. Without downplaying the latter but reaffirming what I said in my initial essay, identification often incorporates other features of a country – certain of its literary and cultural traditions, its landscapes, architecture, and language. When George Orwell wrote, “By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life” (Orwell 1953),3 and affirmed his own form of English patriotism, he was not endorsing capitalism, the monarchy, or the English class system. His mind was on English cooking, English pubs, darts, cricket, and stamp collecting. Without denying the importance that a system of government may have to the character of a country, one’s country may involve much more, and one’s identification may be with these, even if one hates other things about it. That was one reason why Orwell was so conflicted during World War II.
Keller’s rosier account of identification and endorsement, with its tendency toward the political, lends itself more readily to the delusional bad faith that he considers endemic to patriotism. Although I concede such delusional forms, I do not believe they exhaust the range of identifications; they allow for – indeed anticipate – much more robust criticism of the country with which one identifies. Within liberal democracies at least, the idea of a loyal opposition is central, not marginal. My broader sense of identification is reinforced by the notion of a country as a narrative or project rather than a static entity or status quo.
In a slightly different way, Primoratz draws attention to the fact that one may not identify with what is in some clear sense one’s country and thus not be patriotically attached to it (this volume, 85–87). One may be formally a citizen of it and may therefore have legal membership obligations to it; nevertheless, one may not have the personal commitment to it that patriotic identification implies. Primoratz employs Ferdinand Tönnies’ useful distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft to characterize the difference. The person who has come to hate her country may retain a gesellschaftlich relationship to it, even though any gemeinschaftlich (and thus patriotic) relationship has disappeared.4 The patriot is not only a member but also an insider who sees her country from the point of view of someone committed to it.
The significance of a gemeinschaftlich identification is that it not only signals a certain bond with and commitment to its object but also specifies a relationship in which one sees oneself as obligated to it. Friendship without obligations is no friendship, and the same applies to other gemeinschaftlich and loyalty-based relationships (including patriotism). Special obligations are integral to these kinds of relationships. They are not merely obligations of membership, which may hold even if one resents the association, but obligations of identification in which one’s own persona is acknowledged to be partially constituted by the relationship, giving one a commitment to its well-being or flourishing.
Primoratz rightly recognizes that political – or even citizenship – obligations need not be the same as patriotic obligations. One may be a member of an association or part of an institution without having bonds of loyalty to it. There may be membership obligations that are distinguishable from and potentially fulfillable independently of loyalty-based obligations. As a citizen, one may be obligated to vote or pay taxes. Yet one may lack any sense of patriotic obligation that involves putting oneself out for one’s country. Nevertheless, one might want to ask – as Primoratz does only perfunctorily – whether membership obligations ought to include loyalty obligations. Should one’s political obligations include obligations of loyalty – patriotic obligations? Just as one might ordinarily think that membership of a family should carry with it certain obligations of loyalty – along with whatever other membership obligations there may be (e.g., doing one’s fair share) – so too one may ask whether membership of an enterprise such as a country should carry with it obligations of loyalty beyond those that formally come with legal citizenship.5 This does not reduce one to the other or confuse one with the other but asks whether a complex associative object such as a country should include among its membership expectations a further set of obligations of the kind that one associates with loyalty.
This need not deny that circumstances may arise in which loyalty-based obligations are diminished or erased. If a child is abused or a country oppresses some of its members, loyalty-based claims may be forfeited even if some other formal expectations remain.
2 Patriotism’s Value
Primoratz seeks to establish two theses: (1) patriotism of the ordinary kind – worldly patriotism – has no positive moral value, and (2) if one is inclined to patriotism, the only morally valuable kind is ethical patriotism. In this section, I will address the first of these theses, leaving the second for the section that follows.
Primoratz’s argument for (1) is largely negative. That is, he critiques several arguments that defend stronger or weaker forms of patriotism and concludes that, in the end, they fail to show it to be obligatory, valuable, or even supererogatory. Insofar as the views and arguments he criticizes do not exhaust the field, this procedure is somewhat risky, even though it may place the onus on those who take a contrary position to make good their claims. I attempt to do so, first, by drawing attention to what I think are deficits in some of his critiques and then by suggesting some alternatives that he might have explored.
Because I am not partial to what Primoratz characterizes as extreme and robust patriotism, I will bypass his criticisms of them and focus instead on his critiques of the arguments for its liberal or moderate versions.
To some of Primoratz’s critiques of moderate patriotism, I am sympathetic, even though their protagonists would probably be unsatisfied with the treatment they receive. For example, I do not believe that David Miller’s view that patriotism is widely believed to be a duty reduces to an appeal to numbers. Miller’s point is the more subtle one that in the absence of strong arguments against patriotism, its widespread acceptance should be given some argumentative weight. Sure, “50,000 Frenchman can be wrong,” but Miller’s position ties in with a plausible view of moral justification, namely, that realistic moral justification is not constituted by argumentation in vacuo, but is relative to perceived objections or deficiencies. The former is unattainable, and though the latter is contingent on or relative to a status quo, it takes the more pragmatic and workable view that, in the absence of sustainable objections, we are warranted in holding a widely shared position to be justifiable.6 It is true that we need reasons for the positions we adopt, patriotism included. But in the case of widely shared beliefs, the sufficiency of those reasons is often a matter of meeting objections that may be raised against them.7 No doubt, there are plausible critiques of patriotism – Keller offers one – and where a critique is advanced, it is incumbent on the proponent of patriotism to meet it.
Although I am in general agreement with Primoratz’s arguments that some defenses of patriotism fail to make an appropriate distinction between membership obligations and patriotic obligations, I have suggested that membership obligations may sometimes include loyalty-based obligations.8 That is, we should take seriously the possibility that, by virtue of their membership, members of an institution ought sometimes to be loyal members. Sometimes, and sometimes with good reason. I would have liked to see Primoratz address Albert Hirschman’s argument that the capacity of institutions to sustain themselves in the face of entropy and other challenges is contingent on the presence of loyalists within them (Hirschman 1970). I do not deny that the value of loyalty to institutional health falls short of demonstrating the value of the institution itself. Given, however, that Primoratz has no problem with the state as an institution – indeed, he concedes its importance – and given, further, the role that political institutions play in the maintenance of a country, I would have thought that some measure of patriotism would be necessary for a country to survive and thrive. This may not show that every member of a country has such obligations, or what their content should be, or that such obligations are overriding, but it offers a plausible argument for the contingent value of patriotic loyalty. Such an argument would not convince an anarchist, but Primoratz is no anarchist. More generally, though, to the extent that a country survives in virtue of its having certain institutions, whether or not they amount to a state, those institutions are likely reliant on the significant loyalty of some of its members.
As I shall later suggest, bare patriotism is not enough. Patriots come in many shapes and sizes, and it may be the misguided patriotism of some that aggravates a country’s situation or helps to make it unworthy of support. Just as some friendships are bad to have and some familial relations are toxic, some patriotic commitments are oppressive or dangerous. As virtue theorists have persistently sought to maintain, no virtue on its own, unmoderated by other virtues and norms, is immune to perversion. Neither conscientiousness nor sincerity is enough; justice without mercy is defective and even kindness without discretion is liable to go astray. Loyalty without discernment is likely to be blind or misguided.9
In the end, Primoratz argues that patriotism is a form of connection with others that is morally neutral. If people wish to relate to their country patriotically, if their identity is partially constituted by their connectedness to their country, there is nothing to prevent that. But neither is that any moral reason for their being patriotic. There are some parallels here with Alan Gewirth. In his attempt to establish the legitimacy of special relations, Gewirth argued that morality’s fundamental principle – the recognition of agency – makes it permissible that we form special bonds, with their associated obligations, so long as they do not deny the agency of others (Gewirth 1988). Their permissibility does not ipso facto show their value (apart from their personal value to us), and such permissibility is limited by broader moral constraints – in Gewirth’s case, the principle of agency. True, as Gewirth argues, this justification of special obligations – such as those implicit in patriotism – is not merely instrumental, for the associations in question are expressive of our freedom and our purposes for entering into them will be partially constitutive of our well-being. Nevertheless, it would not follow from my development of patriotic connections that Primoratz should do likewise. Such special relations as he develops and considers constitutive of his well-being may differ from my own.
3 Making Patriotism Work
Primoratz argues that if one is inclined to patriotism, one ought to support ethical patriotism. At first blush, that seems reasonable enough. Whatever group we belong to, whether it is a family or focused on some activity such as bushwalking, stamp collecting, or football, we should be concerned with its ethical dimensions. Perhaps Primoratz’s point is this: in the case of family, the special concern for members has a moral import of its own, whereas in the case of bushwalking, stamp collecting, football, or country, there is no independent reason for giving its members special concern. Particular attention therefore should be given to the group’s ethical dimensions. In the case of a bushwalking group, property rights should be observed and care should be taken not to engage in environmental destruction or despoliation; in the case of stamp collecting, one should correctly represent an item’s significance or value; and in the case of football, one should not seek to fix games. But Primoratz seems to want more than this. He contrasts his position with that of Marcia Baron, who thinks that a patriot should be concerned with her country’s moral flourishing as well as its political, social, and cultural interests. Whereas Baron thinks of moral flourishing as an important dimension or even add-on for the patriot, Primoratz sees a country’s moral standing as the only thing that a patriot should find worth pursuing. Primoratz’s point, if I understand it, is that the only concern one should have for one’s country – unlike that for one’s football team or stamp-collecting group – is its moral qualities.
I think Primoratz overreaches here. As I believe he would agree, countries are not featureless entities. They are constituted by distinctive political, economic, cultural, and other characters, and those will be part of the special concern for it that a patriot has. I do not know how else one can see a country as an object of special concern than through its multiple features, and the ethical concern one has for a country will be mediated by these other features. What a patriot ought to be concerned about – as Baron recognizes – is that those features are configured, realized, and advanced in ways that are ethically acceptable. Anything less is no more than a bare concern for living morally in a particular location, and whatever may be said for that, it will not constitute a form of patriotism. Unless the concern one has for the moral integrity of one’s country is embedded in what is distinctive about one’s country – and that includes its political, economic, cultural, and other dimensions – one’s concern about the moral integrity of the country in which one is living is not going to be distinctively different from concern about the moral integrity of any country. It must be one’s own country in the relevant sense.
The three reasons that Primoratz offers for ethical patriotism are unpersuasive:
1. As an argument for ethical patriotism, it will not do – as he suggests – to assert that a reason for concern about the ethical standing of one’s own country is that one is best placed, psychologically as well as practically, to assess and improve the ethical status of one’s own country. No doubt, there can be strategic advantages to ensuring or restoring the ethical well-being of one’s country if one is a citizen of it. But apart from being at best contingently true (and in some cases surely false), this does not constitute the country as one’s own in the sense required by patriotism. It is not an argument for patriotism, ethical or otherwise. It is a consequentialist argument for focusing one’s moral reformative efforts in one country rather than another.10
2. Nor does it help greatly to argue that, because of the benefits one may enjoy or moral burdens one may acquire by virtue of living in a particular country, one should have a patriotic concern for it. Primoratz writes that even if citizens do not contribute to their country’s unjust policies, “in accepting benefits from those wrongs, or from their association with the wrongdoers, they underwrite those wrongs. In doing so, they accrue a degree of moral responsibility and join the class of those properly blamed” (98). Here again, we have at most contingent considerations for expressing gratitude or accepting responsibility. These are arguments for an ethical engagement with a particular country, but do not go any way toward manifesting or establishing one’s engagement as patriotic. The country from whose unjust policies I benefit and for which I may be partially responsible may not be my own. The coffee I like, purchase, and drink may come from a country that is not my own, and it may be that my purchasing it helps to perpetuate the unjust policies and practices that produce it. “My own moral identity and integrity” (Primoratz, 98) may be shown in how I respond to such policies and practices, but in doing so, I do not display patriotic identity or ethical patriotism.
3. The participatory responsibilities of democratic citizenship – Primoratz’s final reason for ethical patriotism – may well provide an ethically weighty reason for engagement with the moral standing of the country of one’s citizenship, but these are regular membership obligations rather than patriotic ones. It may be my responsibility to engage with the ethical dimensions of any group of which I am a member – and particularly so if membership involves participatory governance – but that carries with it no loyalty-based obligations beyond those that Primoratz eschews.
In claiming that none of his three reasons for ethical patriotism amounts to an argument for ethical patriotism – whatever it may amount to as an argument for ethical patriotism – it may be argued that I am being unfair to Primoratz. After all, what he claims is that if one is inclined to be patriotic, then one’s patriotism should take the form of ethical patriotism. But that also applies to every other special relationship one forms – whether it is to a bushwalking, stamp-collecting, or football club.
4 Patriotism’s Hazards
I find one feature of Keller’s argumentative style particularly frustrating.11 At many points, he makes robust and provocative claims about patriotism that – for a defender of patriotism – call for an equally robust response. But then one regularly finds these categorical and provocative statements qualified: is becomes tends to be. Is patriotism deluded – as he avows in his first sentence? Or is a patriotic person simply inclined to see the world inaccurately – as he suggests in the third sentence (48)? Sometimes, it is not a simple matter of expression: an argument for patriotism’s failures is advanced. But then there is a concession: not every instance of patriotism is subject to such failure; some people are able to be clearheadedly patriotic. If the first, there is a heavier burden on the defender of patriotism. If the second, the defender of patriotism might agree but argue that seeing the world inaccurately is a moral hazard of patriotism whose risks are outweighed by values associated with patriotism.
It is of course open to Keller to argue that the moral hazards (as contrasted with the moral benefits) of patriotism are of such a magnitude that we are better off avoiding it altogether, even though some (few) may be capable of maintaining an ethically clear-sighted patriotism. That will also require a contrast between patriotism and other associative relations that embody or encourage participant loyalty.
Keller recognizes that his major challenge is to differentiate the loyalty expressed in, say, friendship and familial relationships, from the loyalty involved in patriotism. Otherwise, his argument against patriotism will weigh as decisively against friendship and familial loyalties. And the counterintuitiveness of that conclusion would call into question his critique of patriotism.12 As I grasp his argument, what he seeks to do is, on the one hand, show that the moral hazards generally associated with loyalty are unacceptably exacerbated in the case of patriotism and, on the other, suggest that any values associated with patriotism can be secured without it.
The major hazard associated with loyalty is characterized by Keller as bad faith – the tendency (at least) to convince oneself that a situation is other than it is. This is a hazard of every associative situation in which identification, commitment, and trust have come to expression. If something occurs that casts a shadow over a friend or family member, I will be inclined – at least initially – to counter it. And this lack of objectivity is a sign of bad faith. However, if I show no inclination to counter it, but treat the criticism with the same seriousness – or at least lack of inhibition – as I would in any other case, I will display a lack of trust, of loyalty, of identification. At worst, this constitutes only an inclination, a tendency, or, as I would grant, a moral hazard associated with loyalty. I may bury my head in the sand and thereby show bad faith, but if I take both my integrity and my relationships seriously, I will not dismiss such criticism out of hand. And so, despite my partiality to the object of loyalty, I may be persuaded to accept the criticism as a legitimate one – and thus come to view the object of loyalty in a less favorable light. My friends and family are not perfect, and even if I remain loyal to them, I may become critical of some of their ways.13
I think Keller may be willing to grant this much – namely, that every loyalty, whether it is the loyalty of friendship or familial loyalty, carries within it the potential for blind or bad faith. That is, it carries the potential either of being oblivious to the defects of its object or of self-deceptively discounting them. The question that then arises is: what is it about countries that makes patriotism so problematic? Why is the problem of bad faith so critical where patriotic loyalties are concerned?
At least three possibilities come to mind:
1. Unlike our friends, we do not usually choose our countries. Our countries are ordinarily given, and our identification with them predates our capacity to determine whether they are worthy of our loyalty. From a young age, particularly given the constraints of compulsory schooling and the frequently patriotic character of some schooling rituals (such as daily recitation of a Pledge of Allegiance or singing a national anthem), we are inducted or indoctrinated into ways of looking at our country that are sanctioned or promulgated by the powers that be – a version of our country that is sanitized and perhaps even chauvinistic. By the time we reach the age of discretion, our attitudes to our country will already have been formed in its favor, and even if we hear it criticized, we are likely to dismiss any criticism impulsively.
This is a worrisome objection, one that a defender of patriotism can also feel keenly. Even if there are good reasons for patriotism – an issue to which I will return – it is troubling that certain associational connections are likely to be forged under circumstances that will tend to circumvent or even corrupt responsibility. By contrast, the formation of our friendships is usually under our control: we determine who our friends will be. Whether we choose them wisely or badly, we can be held to account for our friendship-based loyalties. True, it is not a perfect contrast. As social beings, friendship tends to be important to our flourishing, and our social circumstances may limit the choices we have while not sparing us from the psychological desire to form close relationships. Our need for friends might thus induce us to enter into unwise friendships. On the other side, our increasing autonomy and exposure to alternative perspectives may lead us to question (the character of) our patriotism. Nevertheless, our friendships are more likely to be self-chosen than our patriotism, and we are likely to be better placed to take responsibility for the associational obligations that come with the former.
Families, though, are somewhat different and make the contrast that Keller desires even less stark. We have much less choice about our family than we have about our friends. And because of our dependence, we are likely to find ourselves under considerable pressure to develop loyalties to our primary carers. We are, moreover, not only encouraged – individually and generally – to develop loyalties to those whose nurturing environment is critical to our later selves but inclined to condemn those who appear to lack strong familial loyalties. Even when family members have violated public moral expectations, loyal support is often expected. When David Kaczynski conveyed to the FBI the possibility that his brother Ted was the notorious Unabomber, he was made to feel and often seen as a traitor (Ventura 1996). When Sukhreet Gabel testified in court against her judicially corrupt mother, she was criticized as ungrateful and disloyal (Chambers 1988). Even in cases of serious child abuse, there is often pressure from other members to keep it in the family (Burgess et al. 1978). My point here is not to suggest either that family loyalties should be unlimited or that they are bad. It is the more mundane point that the all-too-frequent corruptions of unchosen family loyalties do not show the illegitimacy of family loyalty as such. The moral hazards associated with it are reasons for caution and discrimination, but not for its abandonment.
Unlike Keller, I do not see a radical divide between loyalties of the kind involved in friendship and familial relations and those involved in patriotism.14 Nor, for that matter, do I see a strong divide between them and religious, organizational, professional, and national loyalties. Not that I see all loyalties on a par or even on a continuum. Racist and mafia loyalties are unacceptable just because there are serious problems with associational groupings of those kinds.15 Given, though, that the associative group is not inherently unacceptable, forming loyalties to it should not – in itself – attract criticism. That goes for loyalties to football clubs and bushwalking groups, even though, with Keller, we might be inclined to see these as less serious than those involved in friendships and familial relations.16
I do not wish to deny that some loyalties are likely to be more hazardous or more prone to abuse and corruption than others – though I would be hard put to rank them indexically. I suspect that chosen loyalties are less morally hazardous than unchosen ones – though I think that some chosen friendships might be extremely toxic. And perhaps nonserious loyalties are likely to be less hazardous than serious ones, though one might instance sporting loyalties that express themselves in morally unacceptable ways.17 In addition, it remains to be shown that countries, as associative entities, are benign or even desirable. That of course goes for the other associative entities to which I referred – organizations, professions, friendships, and religions, for example. Perhaps any general reference to such associative entities will be overinclusive. We may need to say more about the particular organization, profession, friendship, or religion. I will soon have more to say about that.
2. A further reason for thinking that patriotism is special in some way is that patriotism gone wrong can be socially dangerous in a way that other loyalties are unlikely to be. A friendship that reflects a misguided loyalty is likely to be damaging to oneself. Whether others are affected will depend on a number of contingencies – the implications, perhaps, that the friendship has for people outside its immediate ambit. If my misguided friendship with Alex enables him to have access to Brian’s property, then not only will my fingers be burned by the relationship, but Brian may also suffer. More acutely, if the president, in order to reward a loyal friend, gives him a high-ranking position in the executive, the friend’s lack of competence may have serious consequences for many others.18 We can tell similar stories about other misguided loyalties – in families, clubs, professions, and other organizations. Usually, the damage caused will be confined to those immediately involved, even if it sometimes has wider implications.
What may appear to be toxically different about patriotism – and, we might add, nationalism and religious fundamentalism – is that, socially widespread, it is a loyalty that binds a large number of people in a collective, usually with considerable coercive power.19 Altercations may result from the misguided loyalties of individuals and small groups, but wars have frequently resulted from misguided patriotism, nationalism, and religious fundamentalism. Not only do wars bring considerable death and devastation in their wake, but for their successful prosecution, they also require a high level of group loyalty. Wars generally involve and demand the ultimate sacrifice, and patriotic commitment is generally necessary to foster the willingness to make such sacrifice.20 We associate patriotic loyalties with perversions – chauvinism and jingoism – widespread enough to have gained linguistic recognition.
The dangers of misguided patriotism are indeed formidable and strong reason to develop the kind of critical patriotism that will enable one to constitute an effective loyal opposition in the event that one’s country acts improperly, either toward other countries or toward groups within them. If we combine their potency with their unchosenness, we may argue that patriotism is a problem waiting to happen and therefore to be eschewed. A good deal will then hang on the positive values associated with patriotism and whether, therefore, the risks associated with it should be taken.
I will soon return to the former point. With regard to the hazards, I think we need to look more carefully at their moral import. Although I am skeptical of the common claim that democratic states do not war against each other, I think that how incendiary patriotism will come to be tracks the political culture of the country that cultivates it. Even though countries with liberal polities engage in patriotic education/indoctrination, they also tolerate a good deal of internal self-criticism, and there is substantial opportunity for those who have been inducted into an unchosen and unthinking patriotism to question and revise it. The result of that may be a diminished patriotism, but more likely it will be an increasingly realistic one, like the friendship that begins with adulation or slavish devotion but later develops into a relationship in which there is a mature appreciation of the friend’s strengths and weaknesses. We have of course seen instances of seriously misguided patriotism in liberal democracies, and to that extent, it should be challenged. Those who opposed the patriotic appeals associated with the Vietnam and Iraq Wars were almost certainly justified in doing so, and they were justified in doing so as an expression of their patriotic commitment rather than as a rejection of patriotism.
There is an important corollary to the last point. If, as I suggest, dangerous patriotism is more likely to be a feature of nondemocratic polities, then there is an increased likelihood that they will pose a danger to others, whether minorities within them or others without. Such was the character of National Socialism. It cultivated and fed off a misguided loyalty that became dangerous to the rest of the world. But consider what the outcome might have been had the British and others not patriotically responded to the threat that this constituted – if, for the reason that patriotism can be dangerous, they had not been able to draw on patriotic resources. We might argue with some justification that in the politically diverse and divided world in which we live, patriotism keeps us from despotism (even while despots feed on and pervert it).
3. The third possibility – to which I have alluded – is that whereas other associative connections, such as friendship and familial relations, have a lot to be said for them – both instrumentally and intrinsically – close associative connections to patriae have little to be said for them. That of course was Primoratz’s contention, and it may also be Keller’s. Or perhaps fairer to Keller, it might be argued that any benefits supposedly associated with patriotism can be obtained in other ways – through more localized political groups and other smaller-scale associative arrangements.
In my original essay, I sought to indicate certain benefits associated with patriotism that were unlikely to be met through smaller structures. We might characterize these as effective framing and integrating benefits that enable us to see ourselves as part of a larger picture in addition to enabling its various parts to function together in a (reasonably) coherent way. I argued that patrial connections can be seen as an element in our human flourishing. Thus, being Australian gives an effective shape to and support for a whole range of cultural and social as well as political institutions – institutions for which I have a special concern. These are the very institutions that Keller thinks can provide the benefits of patriotism without a patriotic commitment to their shaping and maintenance. Sure, there are many dangers to that, from stereotyping to exceptionalism to jingoism. But, at least in countries with liberal polities, I believe that patriotism has more going for it than against it.
I would invite Keller to reflect on the capacity of his various alternatives to survive and thrive in the absence of countries in which they are embedded. Within liberal democratic states, cities, ethnic groups, religious communities, and even families rely on a structure of tolerant laws and other patrial supports to enable them to flourish and commingle in ways that do not become threatening. Moreover, even these smaller groups may, absent that larger patrial structure to mediate among them, come to exert themselves in flawed and even oppressive ways.21 In this regard, there is no sacrosanctity to countries. At a certain level, we must also get beyond them – we need federations of countries, Leagues of Nations, United Nations, European Unions, NATOs, and the rest, as (still flawed) contingently serviceable ways of keeping countries from being oppressors as well as integrated units for human flourishing.
I do not see any metaphysical necessity in either countries or patriotism. Although I think (something like) countries will be with us for the long haul, I do not want to rule out a priori the possibility of alternative human arrangements – whether cosmopolitan or anarchical. I am simply skeptical that humans as we currently find them to be are likely to flourish in environments that do not include patriae and commitments to them – a patriotic commitment to ours and a belief that others have a legitimate claim to existence as well.22 What I do think we should ensure – along with maintaining the distinctiveness of our social, cultural, geographical, and political inheritances – is that they hew to ethical norms. That is the truth of Primoratz’s position. But we can ask no less of any institution.
References
1. Australian Government. “Australian Citizenship Pledge.” Available at http://www.citizenship.gov.au/ceremonies/pledge/. Accessed November 27, 2013.
2. Burgess, Ann Wolbert, Lynda Lytle Holmstrom, and Maureen P. McCausland. 1978. “Divided Loyalty in Incest Cases.” In Sexual Assault of Children and Adolescents, edited by A.N. Burgess, A.N. Groth, L.L. Holmstrom, and S.M. Sgroi, 115–126. Lexington: Lexington Books.
3. Chambers, Marcia. 1988. “It’s Daughter Against Mom in a N.Y. Case.” National Law Journal, November 14, 13.
4. Gewirth, Alan. 1988. “Ethical Universalism and Particularism.” Journal of Philosophy, 85 (6): 283–302.
5. Hare, R.M. 1981. Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method and Point. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
6. Hirschman, Albert O. 1970. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Response to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
7. Orwell, George. 1953. “Notes on Nationalism.” In Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters Vol. 3, edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, 361–380. London: Secker & Warburg.
8. Rorty, Richard. 1998. Achieving Our Country. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
9. United States Government. “US Naturalization Oath of Allegiance.” Available at http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=facd6db8d7e37210VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=dd7ffe9dd4aa3210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD. Accessed November 27, 2013.
10.Ventura, Michael. 1996. “The Ties that Bind.” Los Angeles Times, April 14. Available at http://articles.latimes.com/1996-04-14/opinion/op-58449_1_david-kaczynski. Accessed November 27, 2013.
11.Wikipedia Foundation. “Oath of Citizenship.” Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_citizenship. Accessed November 27, 2013.
12.Wolf, Susan. 2014. “Loving Attention: Lessons in Love from The Philadelphia Story.” In Understanding Love through Philosophy, Film, and Fiction, edited by Susan Wolf and Christopher Grau, 369–386. New York: Oxford University Press.
Notes
1 Keller 53–54. I make a similar point when I argue for patriotism as loyalty to country rather than love of country, (20–21).2 My criticism is not that Keller ignores the critical dimension of patriotism – indeed, he draws attention to it – but that he underplays it. His critique is largely grounded in bad faith endorsement of one’s country and is weakened to the extent that he gives no serious place to loyal opposition.3 Orwell was vehemently opposed to nationalism, which he sharply differentiated from patriotism. His patriotic affection for the English way of life comes out in “England Your England,” written during the blitz of 1941. I think too of Russian Jews whom I have known for whom the old country still held their allegiance even if they were no longer able to live there.4 Primoratz, 90. I worry though that Primoratz treats Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft as nonoverlapping categories.5 What those obligations should be is of course a further question. Interestingly – though this does not establish the conclusion – most citizenship ceremonies require new citizens not only to observe the formalities of citizenship but to give their patriotic allegiance to their new country. See, for example, Australian Government (2013), United States Government (2013), and Wikipedia Foundation (2013).6 Even responses to Cartesian skepticism are a largely matter of dispelling certain objections (e.g., that one cannot tell whether one is awake or dreaming or whether one’s everyday beliefs are the devious work of an evil genius).7 Killing is wrong, but it is not easy to provide a set of reasons for its wrongness in vacuo. Many of our arguments are directed to making good on apparent deficiencies to the position.8 Primoratz notes the possibility of such a position but says – correctly – that it needs an argument. Hirschman provides such an argument, one I articulated in my opening essay.9 This is the truth behind the ancient doctrine of the unity of the virtues.10 The argument is reminiscent of R.M. Hare’s attempt to give a consequentialist account of parental loyalties and suffers from the same defects. See Hare (1981, 137).11 It was not the only frustration I experienced. The 2008 election campaign offerings by Barack Obama and John McCain were, like all such offerings, politically crafted, not philosophically serious. I have little doubt that in a cool hour both Obama and McCain would have conceded Keller’s criticisms. They were not deluded, just politically opportunistic.12 That it is counterintuitive is of course not a decisive consideration. In another context, one would need to defend loyalty against its detractors.13 We should also recognize the possibility that coming to see the failures in our associative objects can enhance our attraction and loyalty to them. See, for example, Susan Wolf’s discussion in her 2010 Phi Beta Kappa Romanell lecture (Wolf 2014).14 It is not without significance that when Keller characterizes patriotism, he finds it easy to draw analogies with other special relationships.15 Even membership of such groupings (without associated loyalties) is morally problematic.16 Each of the features of loyalty to which Keller draws attention in characterizing loyalties and differentiating among them fails both individually and collectively to distinguish patriotic loyalties from other mundane loyalties.17 I have in mind incidents involving European football crowds and the disabling of competitive rivals.18 A complaint often made post Katrina about George W. Bush’s appointment of Michael Brown as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).19 I accept Keller’s distinction between patriotism as an individual quality and patriotism as a societal quality, but do not think that it creates a problem for the point I am making.20 One of Machiavelli’s complaints about mercenary armies is that they lack genuine loyalty.21 I do not wish of course to cast doubt on the various possibilities for flourishing that Keller envisions. There are a lot of ways in which we may flourish. I suspect though that even those of us who flourish more eclectically are free riders on patterns of social organization for which the countries and patriotism of the many are of great importance.22 Even committed cosmopolitans, I suspect, have more than a little patriotic feeling for the countries of their origin or adoption.