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OCt. 7, 2007
Patriotism and Morality
Perhaps the most important word in the title of my remarks, Patriotism and Morality, is the middle word “and.” What kind of work is it meant to do? It can, of course define a conjunction, identity, or dependence of two terms - “infant and mother” - or their disjunction, their mutual exclusion, or independence - oil and water, for example. If the former, should patriotism and morality be identical, coextensive, dependent, then I got the title just right. However if it is the latter, should there be a disjunction, exclusion, or independence, then the title of my remarks should more properly be “Patriotism or Morality.” I tend towards the former, if only because of a professional calling. I teach and write on morality as a profession. I look to join morality to other terms – economics and morality, politics and morality, sex and morality, religion and morality, for example.
Subsequent to 9/11, conversations with more than a few colleagues at my university, the nearly unanimous support of the President by Congress and the media in the run-up and early stages of the present war led me to the conclusion that objective, impartial criteria for determining the just and right in war had been suspended. We seem to have adopted the maxim that “might makes right.” I was reminded then of the words of the American pacifist and abolitionist, Unitarian minister Adin Ballou: "But now, instead of discussion and argument, brute force rises up to the rescue of discomfited error, and crushes truth and right into the dust. 'Might makes right,' and hoary folly totters on in her mad career escorted by armies and navies." As an academic whose primary area of research is political violence I sought to identify some condition to help me account for that folly – the Iraq War of 2003. I have, at least temporarily, settled on patriotism. And so I wish to inquire here, even if only briefly, what if any relation there might be between patriotism and morality. But before I try to articulate that terrain defined by patriotism and morality, I want to explain how I got to thinking about their relation.
In 1981 I was a student at the Weston School of Theology, one of two Jesuit seminaries in the US . I had already taken a master's degree in theology and was experimenting with some ideas, trying them on like a pair of shoes, seeing whether there was a fit. One of those ideas was Christianity, particularly Roman Catholicism, the tradition of my parents and their parents' parents for a very long time. In the fall of that year I registered for a course titled “Morality and War,” taught by Fr. David Hollenbach, a very influential Catholic moral theologian. The title of the course caused me to experience some cognitive dissonance – how can war, the cause of so much suffering, misery, and carnage be in any meaningful way compatible with morality, with Christian morality? The course centered on that moral tradition we refer to as the just war – an attempt by theologians to make the institution of war compatible with the fundamental Christian concept of love – love of neighbor, self-giving, sacrificial love, love of all humanity. Such was the genius of the fifth-century African bishop, St. Augustine and later, in the High Middle Ages, of Aquinas. For them and for almost all of subsequent Christianity, war can be an instantiation of the self-giving, self-denying and sacrificial love of Jesus on the Cross when it is waged in accord with various principles, especially the principle of just cause - for example, protection of the weak and innocent.
It turned out that the idea of Christianity, or religion, did not prove to be a good fit for me. I seem to be, as Max Weber said of himself, tone-deaf in this regard, even when I, like Weber himself, take religion very seriously as a social institution with powerful sway over people's thoughts and emotions, rendering meaning to their lives and legitimacy to collective action. But the apparent incompatibility of morality and war did capture my imagination. Consequently, from the Weston School of Theology I crossed Harvard Square and emerged more than a few years later with a doctorate degree and a dissertation on morality and nuclear war.
It was the 1980s and much of our public debate focused on different configurations of a nuclear defense posture, any one of which could easily escalate to mutual destruction. Department of Defense estimates were that should we unleash our nuclear arsenal against the Soviet Union casualties could reach as high as 325 million. While I prepared that dissertation for publication, several events of the 1980s led me to study what was then called low-intensity conflicts and their tactics- terrorism, suicide bombing, and sabotage. In 1986 I published a short piece on morality and terrorism. Quaint, I thought, kind of romantic – the French Resistance under Vichy rule, the FLN in Algeria in the 1950s, the Anarchists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Fr. David Hollenbach and the 1980s hooked me on war and morality, those seemingly incompatible terms. Perhaps there is some deep psychological reason for this addiction. I am a child of a revolution – absent the Cuban Revolution I would not be who today I am, but an entirely different person: not this but another home, not this but another language, not this beloved spouse, Sarah. My entire identity, I know, is framed by the violence of a revolution.
That is true not only about me, but all of us. Without the wars for colony, territory or empire, without the wars for religion, without the wars for expansion, without the wars for independence or liberation, without these and so many other wars you and I would not be who today we are. War, Heraclitus observed, is the father of us all.
But not all wars or other acts of political violence – terrorism, revolution, assassination – fall under the same judgment. Some maintain that there are good wars, wars that are morally necessary, wars that morally must be waged – to defeat the evil of Nazism or slavery, to feed the hungry of Darfur , for example – and wars that are themselves evil – a war of choice, an unnecessary war, a war without just cause: the Iraq War of 2003.
Wars, whether good or evil, noble or base, cannot be long fought without support of the nation, of the people, of the civilian population. The political and intellectual leadership of a nation must secure their endorsement. This one is for Sparta , this one for Rome , this one for the Fatherland, this one for us. The leadership persuades the war by appealing to what seems a modern expression of the natural sentiment of group cohesion – love of country, patriotism. They persuade it by appealing to who we are – Spartans, Germans, Americans. Only the unpatriotic scoundrel, the ingrate, the traitor – the one living in self-contradiction – will oppose the adventure. All others will declare in unison “My country first. My country right or wrong. My country.”
Religion often comes to the aid of the state in engaging patriotic fervor essential for wars - evidenced in hymns, “Onward Christian Soldier,” and sermons, and in theological doctrines as well, turning belligerency into a form of worship, fueling it with a kind of ultimacy that makes civilized restraint impossible. This is true of our Western religious traditions, and of Eastern religions as well. “A good fighter is generally an ascetic, or stoic, which means he has an iron will. This, when needed, Zen can supply,” remarked D. T. Suzuki, one of the most compelling modern apologists for Zen Buddhism.
Once our deepest self is tapped and put at play– as Spartans, Germans, Americans, as Christians or Buddhists – war becomes total self-expression - pure subjectivity remaking itself in the act, a second sense of Heraclitus' observation that war is the father of us all. Here good and evil, noble and base are at best incipient, inchoate, unformed. Nothing lies outside of it, no objectivity by which to judge whether this war, or war in general, truly must be fought. Consequently, some experienced observers condemn patriotism. Patriotism, George Kateb writes, is a “jealous and exclusive loyalty…need[ing] external enemies ….[while] on a permanent moral holiday….sacrificing universal moral principle [for] worship of a false god…a grave moral error and its source is typically a state of mental confusion”; or Emerson, “patriotism is a maggot in their head”; or Emma Goldman, Leo Tolstoy, Voltaire, among others who have declared patriotism an evil which, much like racism or sexism, denies the equality of the other.
If patriotism is a “maggot,” a “moral error,” I should have titled these remarks “Patriotism or Morality,” right? I should have put before you the choice of an Emerson, Goldman, Voltaire, Tolstoy – universal principle and equality of all humanity or jealous love for one's own kind. Which way would you go? Which way should we go?
But the title of these remarks points to a dependence of the terms – patriotism and morality. What is the “and” all about? Let me draw an important distinction here that will help motivate a conclusion. Distinctions are crucial. Peter will ask for them at the pearly gates. Absent any, you do not get to enter. But not any will do. They must be the right ones. There is patriotism as a psychological hypothesis and patriotism as a normative moral concept. Each makes different claims. The first makes a claim about the human need to belong, the need for association and for a society of fellows – we're are not individually self-sufficient. The other makes a claim about what is defensible from the moral point of view. For convenience, I call the first nationalist patriotism and the other cosmopolitan patriotism. The one looks to the nation – that is, a people, race, or tribe – as the object of concern; the other substitutes humanity for the nation. Cosmopolitan or universal patriotism should be familiar to us all. It is enshrined in our own political documents – that “all are created equal….endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.” No, not just men, or white men, but also women, and not just white women, but also black women and all people of color, and not just Americans, but also all humanity. No creator is worthy of reverence and worship if the goods of life, liberty, and happiness were fixed to a people who by accident of birth were born within particular national boundaries.
In the run-up and early stages of the present war against Iraq , I heard some of the pundits out there in medialand quote from George Washington's farewell address: “Citizens by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism.” Then, in 1796, the term patriotism was of relatively recent coinage, referring to specific political virtue now distorted, corrupted and endangered by a nationalistic era. When Washington wrote those words in the late 18th century, he along with his audience assumed an important distinction – on the one hand, the loyalist to England – i.e., the nationalist - and on the other, the revolutionary patriot who revered liberty and sought above nation the defense of constitutional and human rights. It was the kind of patriotism Tocqueville called “reflective patriotism” - a patriotism of ideas with concerns that are universal and cosmopolitan, not nationalistic. In this very important sense there is an identity and dependence of patriotism and morality: both extend our affections, concern, and respect equally to all.
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