Citizenship in this sense is an intrinsically valuable relationship, and grounds certain special duties fellow citizens have to one another. Now citizenship obviously has considerable instrumental value; but how is it valuable in itself? The first of these two special duties can be put aside, as it is not specific to patriotism, but rather pertains to citizenship.
It is the second that is at issue. If we indeed have a duty of special concern towards compatriots, and if that is an associative duty, that is because our association with them is intrinsically valuable and bound up with this duty. The claim about the intrinsic value of our association might be thought a moot point.
But even if it were conceded, one might still resist the claim concerning the alleged duty. If someone were to deny that she has a duty of special concern for the well-being of her country and compatriots, beyond what the laws of her country mandate and beyond the concern she has for humans and humanity, would she thereby cease to be a citizen in the sense involving equal standing?
If she were to deny that citizens generally have such an obligation, would that betray lack of understanding of what citizenship in the relevant sense is? If she came across two strangers in a life-threatening situation and could only save one, would she have a prima facie moral duty to save the one who was a compatriot? All the main arguments for the claim that patriotism is a duty, then, are exposed to serious objections.
Unless a new, more convincing case for patriotism can be made, we have no good reason to think that patriotism is a moral duty. If not a duty, is patriotism morally valuable? Someone showing concern for the well-being of others well beyond the degree of concern for others required of all of us is considered a morally better person than the rest of us other things equal , an example of supererogatory virtue. One standard example of such virtue is the type of concern for those in an extreme plight shown by the late Mother Theresa, or by Doctors Without Borders.
But they are exemplars of moral virtue for the same reason that makes a more modest degree of concern for others a moral duty falling on all of us. The same moral value, sympathy for and assistance to people in need, grounds a certain degree of concern for others as a general moral duty and explains why a significantly higher degree of such concern is a moral ideal. This explanation, however, does not apply in the case of patriotism. Patriotism is not but another extension of the duty of concern for others; it is a special concern for my country because it is my country, for my compatriots because they are my compatriots.
If it could, other types of partialism, such as tribalism, racism, or sexism, would by the same token prove morally valuable too. If patriotism is neither a moral duty nor a supererogatory virtue, then all its moral pretensions have been deflated. It has no positive moral significance. There is nothing to be said for it, morally speaking. We all have various preferences for places and people, tend to identify with many groups, large and small, to think of them as in some sense ours, and to show a degree of special concern for their members.
But however important in other respects these preferences, identifications, and concerns might be, they lack positive moral import. They are morally permissible as long as they are kept within certain limits, but morally indifferent in themselves. The same is true of patriotism Primoratz All four types of patriotism reviewed so far seek to defend and promote what might be termed the worldly, i. They differ with regard to the lengths to which these interests will be promoted: Instead, he would seek to make sure that the country lives up to moral requirements and promotes moral values, both at home and internationally.
He would work for a just and humane society at home, and seek to ensure that the country acts justly beyond its borders, and shows common human solidarity towards those in need, however distant and unfamiliar. A patriot of this, distinctively ethical type, would want to see justice done, rights respected, human solidarity at work at any time and in any place.
But her patriotism would be at work in a concern that her country be guided by these moral principles and values which is more sustained and more deeply felt than her concern that these principles and values should be put into practice generally. She would consider her own moral identity as bound up with that of her country, and the moral record of the patria as hers too. But her patriotism would be expressed, above all, in a critical approach to her country and compatriots: As a rule, when someone is wronged, someone else benefits from that.
When a country maintains an unjust or inhumane practice, or enacts and enforces an unjust or inhumane law or policy, at least some, and sometimes many of its citizens reap benefits from it. The responsibility for the injustice or lack of basic human solidarity lies with those who make the decisions and those who implement them.
It also lies with those who give support to such decisions and their implementation. But some responsibility in this connection may also devolve on those who have no part in the making of the decisions or in their implementation, nor even provide support, but accept the benefits such a practice, law or policy generates. A degree of complicity may also accrue to those who have no part in designing or putting into effect immoral practices, laws or policies, do not support them or benefit from them, but do benefit in various ways from being citizens of the country.
One may derive significant psychological benefit from membership in and identification with a society or polity: If one accepts such benefits, while knowing about the immoral practices, laws or policies at issue, or having no excuse for not knowing about them, that, too, may be seen as implicating him in those wrongs. To be sure, he makes no causal contribution to those wrongdoings, has no control over their course, and does not accept benefits from them. But in accepting benefits from his association with the wrongdoers, he may be seen as underwriting those wrongs and joining the class of those properly blamed.
His complicity is lesser and the blame to be laid at his door is lesser too — but he still bears some moral responsibility and deserves some moral blame on that account. He cannot say in good faith: I am in no way implicated in them. If this is correct, we have reason to develop and exercise a special concern for the moral identity and integrity of our country. By doing so, we will be attending to an important aspect of our own moral identity and integrity.
While patriotism of the more usual, worldly kind is neither morally required nor virtuous, but at best morally permitted, ethical patriotism can, under certain fairly common circumstances, be a moral duty Primoratz While moral philosophers debate the standing of patriotism as an instance of the problem of reconciling universal moral considerations with particular attachments and loyalties, political theorists are primarily interested in patriotism as an ethos of the well-ordered polity and an antidote to nationalism.
Since the rise of the nation-state, it has been widely held that some form of nationalism is indispensable as a pre-political basis of the unity of the state that makes for solidarity among citizens and provides them with motivation to participate in public life and make sacrifices for the common good. But in the course of the 20 th century nationalism was deeply compromised. That has led political theorists to look for alternatives. Some have argued that an emphatically political patriotism could perform the unifying function of nationalism while avoiding its perils.
In view of the disastrous record of national socialism, it is not surprising that German thinkers in particular should be suspicious of patriotism as long as it has not been dissociated from nationalism. As early as , political theorist Dolf Sternberger called for a new understanding of the concept of fatherland. The fatherland is the constitution, to which we give life.
Habermas argues that this identity, expressed in and reinforced by constitutional patriotism, can provide a solid foundation for such a state, given the ethnic and cultural heterogeneity characteristic of most countries in western Europe. This new, emphatically political version of patriotism has been met with both sympathy and skepticism. In what is still the sole book-length philosophical study of the subject, Stephen Nathanson , 34—35 defines patriotism as involving: Normative issues Patriotism has had a fair number of critics.
Therefore, if I do not understand the enacted narrative of my own individual life as embedded in the history of my country … I will not understand what I owe to others or what others owe to me, for what crimes of my nation I am bound to make reparation, for what benefits to my nation I am bound to feel gratitude. Understanding what is owed to and by me and understanding the history of the communities of which I am a part is … one and the same thing.
One might find fault with the step from communitarianism to patriotism: Even if his communitarian conception of morality were correct and even if the process of moral development ensured that group loyalty would emerge as a central virtue, no conclusion would follow about the importance of patriotism.
The group to which our primary loyalty would be owed would be the group from which we had obtained our moral understanding. This need not be the community as a whole or any political unit, however. The nation need not be the source of morality or the primary beneficiary of our loyalty. Nathanson , Yet another objection would focus on the fundamentally irrational character of robust patriotism: As Richard Dagger puts it: Compatriots take priority because we owe it to them as a matter of reciprocity. Everyone, compatriot or not, has a claim to our respect and concern … but those who join with us in cooperative enterprises have a claim to special recognition.
Their cooperation enables us to enjoy the benefits of the enterprise, and fairness demands that we reciprocate. Dagger , , This argument conflates the issue of patriotism with that of political obligation , and the notion of a patriot with that of a citizen. Citizenship has intrinsic value because in virtue of being a citizen a person is a member of a collective body in which they enjoy equal status with its other members and are thereby provided with recognition.
It offers them the opportunity to contribute to the cultural environment in which its laws and policies are determined, and opportunities to participate directly and indirectly in the formation of these laws and policies. Mason , Mason goes on to claim: Part of what it is to be a citizen is to incur special obligations: In particular, citizens have an obligation to each other to participate fully in public life and an obligation to give priority to the needs of fellow citizens. The political import of patriotism While moral philosophers debate the standing of patriotism as an instance of the problem of reconciling universal moral considerations with particular attachments and loyalties, political theorists are primarily interested in patriotism as an ethos of the well-ordered polity and an antidote to nationalism.
Anderson, Benedict, , Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism , rev. Essays in Honor of E. Reprinted with a postscript in Primoratz ed.
The first sentence of The Nation's prospectus, dated July 6, , promised "the maintenance and diffusion of true democratic principles in. Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available. Click here to visit our frequently asked questions about HTML5.
Billig, Michael, , Banal Nationalism , London: Reprinted in Primoratz ed. Debating the Limits of Patriotism , Boston: A revised version is reprinted in Igor Primoratz ed. It means defending the right to vote and ensuring more Americans are heard, not fewer. True patriots don't hate the government of the United States.
They're proud of their country and know the government is a tool to help us solve problems together. They may not like everything it does, and they justifiably worry when special interests gain too much power over it. But true patriots work to improve our government, not destroy it. Finally, patriots don't pander to divisiveness. They don't fuel racist or religious or ethnic divisions.
The other company of patriots does not march to military time. This patriotism is profoundly municipal, even domestic. Its pleasures are quiet, its services steady and unpretentious. This patriotism too has deep roots and long continuity in our history. Its voice is often temporarily shouted down by the battle cries of the first company, but it has never been stilled.
There were a few recordings: There are some songs: No one has blessed America more movingly than Woody Guthrie. But as a general matter the left seems sour on America and more sour still about patriotism. But none of that even begins to excuse the disdain with which the left greets even a tip of a patriotic hat. Adlai Stevenson understood that patriotism could rightly be defined as the celebration of "the right to hold ideas that are different—the freedom of man to think as he pleases. Why such a crabbed view of Americanism at its best?
Why not celebrate Justice Brennan? Or Justices Marshall and Blackmun? Or the th anniversary of the Bill of Rights? Or a message of freedom beamed from America to the rest of the world that has often been received there but too often has been denigrated here? What the left criticizes about America is often worth criticizing.
Its unwillingness to celebrate what we offer the world at our best—and to call that patriotism—is not to its intellectual or moral credit. My country right or wrong. Even as an abstract idea, it is hard to see how thinking people justify blind loyalty. And considered historically, patriotism is plainly dangerous, helping to unleash military rampages in the name of nation and obliterating the essential democratic capacity to assess concrete and particular interests. The ubiquitous loyalty to nation-state is puzzling. How is it that people become passionately devoted to the abstraction of the state and its symbols?
Propaganda could not be the human condition, such as the attachments most feel for kin and community. And perhaps nationalistic propaganda acquires the force it does because it draws on these axiomatic attachments. Still, there is a difference. However parochial the ties that bind people to clan or place, these ties have something to do with the concrete experience of people, so that threats to clan or place can sometimes be assessed by direct experience. Not so with flag and nation. When state leaders appeal to patriotism, they mobilize citizens by invoking foreign threats that cannot be assessed by ordinary people, except sometimes when it is too late, as in the aftermath of war.
In the process, not only are people made to sacrifice lives and resources to the contests of state-makers but the emotions generated overwhelm popular capacities for a reasoned and conflictual domestic politics. Never has that been more obvious. Adolf Eichmann comes to mind. But if uncritical lovers of their country are the most dangerous of patriots, loveless critics are hardly the best. No one is safe until all are safe. The ancient Roman Tacitus defined patriotism as entering into praiseworthy competition with our ancestors.
I think we should enter into praiseworthy competition with Washington and Jefferson. As they declared their independence from England, let us declare our inter dependence with all countries. Beyond saluting the flag, let us pledge allegiance "to the earth, and to the flora, fauna and human life that it supports; one planet indivisible, with clean air, soil and water, liberty, justice and peace for all. Everybody claims the designation and claims loyalty to the particular set of ideals and institutional arrangements they choose to identify as the essence of Americanism.
We hold to a set of values older than Bush and more enduring than a single misguided administration. We hold to an insistence that the needs of people come before the display of hardware, however technologically brilliant. We hold that all human life is valuable, and that the view that some nationalities, races, religions, sexual orientations and genders are more valuable than others disgraces the notion of democracy—just as the growing disparities in wealth and privilege in our own country discredit the notion that we are the exemplars of democracy.
We hold to an insistence that the rights of conscience take precedence over the profits of business. We hold to a celebration—internationally—of human diversity, and we champion the integrity of indigenous cultures over imperialistic demands for conformity.
Richard Falk Professor of international relations, Princeton University Confusing patriotism with unconditional support for government policy does core damage to the meaning of citizenship, especially during time of war. In Lord Bolingbroke identified the essence of patriotic fervor as devotion to the public good, whether as official or citizen. To uphold a policy that is believed harmful to the country is then, with such an understanding, highly unpatriotic, exhibiting either weakness of spirit or fear of consequences. At such times of national emergency, arguably, unity may be relevant to survival.
These wars have been distant encounters in the Third World, of dubious legality and morality.
In my America the blood and sweat of millions created an industrial power, and fortunes for relatively few. Everyone, compatriot or not, has a claim to our respect and concern … but those who join with us in cooperative enterprises have a claim to special recognition. One might find fault with the step from communitarianism to patriotism: In Lord Bolingbroke identified the essence of patriotic fervor as devotion to the public good, whether as official or citizen. She will also expect it to live up to certain standards and thereby deserve her support, devotion, and special concern for its well-being. Mirror Sites View this site from another server: Follow Robert Reich on Twitter:
It is the appropriation of the symbols and language of patriotism for such wars that poses a profound challenge to our political identity. Admitting the predicament of young people conscripted or professionally obliged to take part in an improper war in such a circumstance has nothing to do with patriotism. Indeed, a patriot may express solidarity with fellow citizens caught on the battlefield by working hard to oppose a war or bring it to a rapid end.
It was a mistake often made in the Vietnam era for opponents of the war to confuse their opposition with expressions of contempt for Americans in the military, as if they were responsible for the war policies. Supporters of the war tended to make the opposite mistake, blaming the soldiers subjected to the hell of Vietnam for the loss of the war. Straightening out this mistake might have been one of the few bright spots to emerge from the Persian Gulf war. But the Bush effort to honor and praise the troops asked to risk their lives on the authority of the elected leaders was deliberately confused with enthusiasm for the war and a celebration of the battlefield victory.
That confusion repeats the Vietnam mistake in the guise of correcting it. By seeming to associate battlefield results with our attitude toward taking part is to build war fever into military victory and shame into military defeat. To mingle patriotic fervor with militarism is pernicious and dangerous for us all.