Patriotism

Kentes and Kels have convinced me to post about patriotism, so here goes.

Dictionary.com defines "Patriotism" as "Love of and devotion to one's country". Note that it's devotion to one's country, not to any specific and temporary government thereof. It is perfectly possible to protest an administration and still love one's country for the ideals and goals it stands for. "I love my country, it's the current government I have issues with", as it were. I'm betting most readers of this blog agree.

But I think that that above sentiment is probably (hopefully?) pretty apparent to anyone who's stopped to sit down and think about the idea. What interests me here is why there is such a confusion between love of country and love of administration, both now and historically. Part of it is undoubtedly convenience - if you can persuade people that your political opponents are unpatriotic, it goes a good way towards getting reelected. I suspect a deeper reason, however, links back to my earlier post about ideals in government. Patriotism, love of country, is really a love of the ideals a country stands for. However, when these ideals are rarely, if ever, explicitly worded, and then only in such incredibly vague terms as "liberty", it makes it virtually impossible to debate them. The term "liberty" is sufficiently ill-defined that any political party in this country can claim to support it, and it's difficult to debate them. It's hard to argue that you patriotically support liberty and equality, but just disagree with the current administration's approach, when that administration can easily make claims to the same ideals, and when you can't challenge their interpretation on anything more than vague philosophical grounds.

When it's so hard to hold meaningful discussion on these vaguely defined ideals, then, the only standard for these ideals becomes the present interpretation of them. Thus, disagreement with this interpretation becomes unpatriotic, since it becomes synonymous with disagreement with the ideals themselves.

Whenever I post about a word or idea, I try to open with a link to a dictionary definition. This is not because dictionaries are always right, but it gives me a way to define my terms, to show where I'm coming from, and what assumptions I'm making, instead of arguing from some fuzzy "It just seems that way to me ..." stance. If we could do the same thing in politics, I believe, it would make a huge difference. We could meaningfully debate about what it means to be patritiotic, instead of flinging around platitudes, and get at the root o different interpretations of what this country stands for.