Patriotism is usually the refuge of the scoundrel. He is the man who
talks the loudest. In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave,
and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for
then it costs nothing to be a patriot. Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under
his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous
uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people's
countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals
between campaigns he washes the blood of his hands and works for "the
universal brotherhood of man"- with his mouth. The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral
cowardice -- and always has been. |
Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he
is hollering about. Patriotism is a high and holy thing. It will remain a high and holy thing,
and jointly admirable and praiseworthy, Christianity will never change
it. Its noble doctrine of universal brotherhood is for the angels, if
for anybody -- it is not possible for men. Christianity cannot teach a
fish to fly nor aliens to love each other. We can not even imagine a heaven
where there are no frontiers -- where all foreigners -- including Satan's
people -- are brothers, and Patriotism is a vice unknown. ... By the law
of his religion a Christian must labor for the breaking down of all walls
that interrupt the fusion of the race into a common brotherhood, and one
of the most formidable of these is Patriotism; it marches with every frontier
in the world. We teach them to take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with
the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter
-- exactly as boys under monarchies are taught and have always been taught.
We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt,
such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are
cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of
place -- the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else's
keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan. We have a bastard Patriotism, a sarcasm, a burlesque; but we have no
such thing as a public conscience. Politically we are just a joke. ...the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the
Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it. |
"Expatriates"
by Halsted Craig Hannah
Cover of Banana
Republic
catalog no. 32, Summer
1987.
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