Mea Patria

Since the computer was unplugged and off in a corner for the long weekend (as we finished with the flooring adventure in the living room) and I returned to an unusually frenetic work week, I find myself posting on Independence Day very late.

The 4th of July is the day on which many Americans pause to be grateful for the sacrifices of those who founded our country 232 years ago -- while a few others pause to decry what they term the "nationalism" and "triumphalism" of their fellow citizens. In one thing, at least, we are most of us united: we take the day off and grill.

Many among our "best and brightest" like to talk about us having entered a post-national age. In this new age, it is imagined, we will all treasure the traditions of our regions and ethnic heritages, but we will be "citizens of the world" first and foremost, and we will think of "nation states" as mere "administrative units".

This modern internationalist/post-nationalist line of thinking has never appealed to me -- perhaps in great part because the available international institutions which these enthusiasts seem to hold dear (the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, the EU, etc.) do not impress me. They seem to provide all the dehumanizing bureaucracy of the various world-spanning empires of history, with none of the cultural heritage which these provided us with. (Imagine, if you will, that the Greeks of Alexander's age and beyond and the Romans, Byzantines, Carolingians, Normans, Holy Roman Emperors, Persians, Turks, Hapsburgs and British had, rather than spreading their cultural and political institutions throughout their spheres of influence, simply set of ponderous committees and NGOs, which provided all corruption and slowness of empire, but none of the cultural legacies. Would we be better off? Perhaps by some standards, but surely not by mine.

And yet, it has struck me increasingly of late that my own attitude towards my country has changed quite a bit over the years -- whether through a shift in philosophy or simply through maturity I cannot say. The Latin word for one's country was patria, a word which would best be translated as "fatherland" if the Third Reich had not forever tainted the connotations of that phrase. And it was very much as a parent that the ancient Greeks and Romans (our cultural forebears) saw the state.

When I first encounter the final Socratic dialogues, Crito and Phaedo, I was deeply disturged by Socrates' notion of the relationship between the citizen and the state. In Crito, Socrates, who has been condemned to death under an unjust charge, refuses the offer of his wealthy friend Crito to help him escape from captivity in Athens to another city state. Socrates refuses, arguing that by living his whole life as a citizen of Athens, and even fighting for it as a soldier, he has committed himself to live by Athens' laws -- and so it would be wrong of him to violate their laws by fleeing punishment, even though he believes that he was wrongly convicted.

To my modern, youthful mind, this was clearly idiotic. Sure, one could love one's country. But if one were wrongly convicted of a crime and sentenced to death, why not skip out? This seemed like an excess of loyalty that bordered on insanity.

Looking back, I think that my line of thinking was that one's association with a country was voluntary: I think this country is basically a good country, therefore I decide to live there. And based on that, it seemed to me that if at any point the country did something wrong, one should have no qualms in severing that voluntary association. At an individual level, that may be an appealing view. But once you get beyond the extreme individualism which is the province of the sixteen-year-old male, you realize that few people ever think themselves in the wrong. If everyone opted out of every country the minute that he felt he was being treated unjustly, we would have anarchy. In order for a nation to provide the order necessary for a stable society that protect the common good, it is necessary that we generally obey that nation's laws even when we think them unjust. (We can work to change them, to be sure, but we can't simply ignore them or leave -- except in the most extreme situations.)

Socrates' other line of thinking was more based on emotion and loyalty: Athens was his polis. One famously cannot choose one's family. Socrates clearly believed that beyond a certain point, one can't choose one's country either. Given that he had remained a constant Athenian citizen during good times, he could not now abandon it in bad. (Much though he might suffer for that decision.)

At the time, thinking of one's relationship to one's country as similar to one's relationship to one's parents struck me as very odd. After all, your parents made you. And much of the time, your parents are responsible for providing your with an educational, cultural and religious background which remains part of you through the rest of your life. A country is just a place where you live, right?

Well, clearly a country is something more than just a place where you live. Nations have specific histories and cultures, and often embody certain ideals or approaches to the world through their laws, culture and national characters. I think most of us acknowledge at least this much. Certainly, I did even in my much more individualistic youth. However, it seemed to me then that countries were spread across the world, buffet like, and that one chose (either actively or passively) with one of them. Thus, I chose to live in the US, partly perhaps because it was where I had been born, but at a deeper level because I thought it was the best country for me to live in based on its culture and founding ideals. If I didn't think that, I could go elsewhere, couldn't I?

It's true, one can leave one's country, and indeed, many people do very much become citizens of countries they emmigrate to. (My boss was born and raised in Belgium, but has become very much an American in his thinking over the last 15 years that he has lived here.) But truly becoming a member of another nation involves more than an airline ticket and a citizenship form -- in that very sense in which nations are rather more than "administrative units". Indeed, the process of truly imbibing the culture and ideals of another nation is probably best seen in analogy to the process of adopting another family. It is a process that (unless one is very young) takes a good deal of time -- and is seldom achieved completely and without traces of the old allegiance.

From my current vantage point, Socrates analogy between parent and patria seems increasingly reasonable. There really is a deep sense in which we belong to our nations, we are a part of them, and they are a part of us. Some are founded upon beautiful ideals and have inspiring histories. Others are dysfunctional to the core. Yet others simply have a lot of history, a back story which defines and shapes the current reality. You can move from one country to another, but it takes a great deal of work and abandonment of self to truly become a member of the new country. All too often, one is simply a resident in a strange land. Like it or not, we are the children of our country. And that fact has a great deal to do with who we are.

And so, looking back two hundred thirty-two years and five days, I am thankful to be an American. The United States is the country that gave birth to me, and to a great extent it is responsible (whether I like it or not) for who I am.