Note: The following text was published first on my old blog in July of 2006. Since I still consider it to be good and true, I republish it here with only minor changes in wording which I did mostly for the purpose of clarity. I hope you enjoy it.

Due to the Soccer World Cup there has been a lot of talk going on here in Germany recently whether patriotism is a good thing and whether it is legitimate to feel “national pride”. Many people have been very enthusiastic about the new “Deutschlandgefuehl” (”Germany feeling”) and concluded that, finally, the Germans have found their way back to a “healthy” feeling of pride for their country and are no longer too much ashamed for being Germans.

But I certainly would not call patriotism that diffuse, alcohol drenched mob feeling displayed by many youths. I especially remember one instance: I was on my way into the city center when I met a group of primed boys flocking in the street and shouting: “Beat them to death! Beat them to death!” I don’t know whom they referred to–but certainly, this is not what patriotism is about.

This, of course, is an extreme example. In fact, most Germans enjoyed the world cup more or less drunken and peacefully, and I suspect that their “patriotism” had more to do with being fans of the German soccer team. Nonetheless, the German media, from left to right, mostly interpreted it all as Germany’s final return to patriotism. I think they only have a very vague idea what patriotism actually is, if any at all.

Patriotism commonly is understood as “love for the fatherland”. From this point of view patriotism mainly is an emotional disposition. It consists in feeling somehow “proud” of the country you live in. Tragically, most people today have no sufficient idea of their country’s history, ideological makeup, and other things that could lead one to be legitimately proud of it. Instead, their pride is a seemingly causeless sense of “belonging”. Ask people in the street why exactly they are proud of their country. If you can get any answer out of them at all, it will be insignificant. What these people don’t recognize is the fact that patriotism is not merely an emotional, but primarily an intellectual issue. It does not merely consist in feeling “good” about one’s country without giving reasons. One should know what is good about one’s country, and reversely, one also should know what is bad about it–and why. Since “good” and “bad” are value judgments, patriotism thus concerns itself with values, and especially–but not exclusively–with political values.

What is the nature of these values?

Observe, that men do not live in a vacuum. Usually, they live together in a society. While this clearly does not mean that they are the property of a collective, it certainly does not mean either that men live as scattered atoms completely unrelated to each other. Society is not a mere aggregation of individuals, but an integration. Several individuals are integrated into one society by means of a social order–specific cultural, economic and especially political institutions such as e.g. a common language, set of values or national “sense of life”, trade, a common currency, a common government and common laws, and many more that ensure a peaceful and cooperative coexistence of men.

(Please note that a social order conceptually is not quite the same as a social system. Whereas the concept “social system” in Ayn Rand’s definition refers to a set of “moral-political-economic principles [...] which determine the relationships, the terms of association, among the men living in a given geographical area”, the concept “social order” refers to the concrete institutions actually embodying these principles. And, in my opinion, one abstract principle can translate into several, but only slightly varying concrete institutions.)

But since man is a being of a specific nature, not every type of social order is beneficial to him, let alone able to maintain a stable and enduring society. If he creates institutions that embody principles which are contrary to his nature and the demands reality imposes on him, he will see his society slowly fragment, disintegrate and fall apart. If he advocates and puts into practice such doctrines as altruism, statism and dictatorship, his society consequently will break down in bloody warfare sooner or later. Remember that Germany, above all, went through such a nightmare.

Thus, the important thing is to advocate and put into practice the right principles, namely such as by their very nature, when translated into specific institutions, are capable of integrating individuals into a peaceful and cooperative society and of maintaining such an integration: e.g. rational egoism, capitalism and the rule of law, among others.

He, who advocates and strives to put into practice rational principles that work to keep integrated the society he chooses to live in, is a patriot. From this point of view patriotism is a certain attitude towards the social order, an attitude aiming at improving, replacing or abolishing bad institutions and defending good ones. It is a critical attitude and has nothing to do with the “my country right or wrong” approach of chauvinists, who regard as intrinsically good those institutions their society may just happen to have. Neither does it consist of arbitrarily imposing such principles upon one’s society as are conceived by one’s sheer whim. On the contrary, patriotism is about defending that which is objectively good about one’s society, and it is about criticizing and improving that which is objectively bad. Patriotism is value-orientedness in regards to the society one lives in.

Since virtue generally concerns the proper relationship of man to reality, one may classify patriotism as that specific virtue which concerns the proper relationship of the individual to that aspect of reality which is society. More specifically, patriotism is a constitutive part of the virtue of integrity; it is loyalty to rational moral-political-economic principles and the moral ambition to modify the social order of the society one chooses to live in according to these principles. Since men do not live together as unrelated atoms, he, who advocates and puts into practice such principles as are harmful and destructive to the society he lives in, will harm himself in the long run. Such a man does not display a great deal of integrity and has to be considered positively unpatriotic and immoral in proportion to the destructiveness and immorality of the principles he advocates.

What then is required in order to practice the virtue of patriotism?

First, it is necessary for every aspiring patriot to have a basic understanding of how a society works, what policies keep it together, and which destroy it. Every patriotic citizen should aim at acquiring a basic education in economics (i.e. how wealth is created on a free market by voluntary and mutual cooperation to mutual benefit, and how socialist and interventionist policies produce an institutionalized “cold civil war” ultimately leading to impoverishment and destruction), political philosophy (i.e. what rights are, what the nature and purpose of government is, and how its different branches work), moral philosophy (i.e. why human flourishing requires the recognition of individual rights, the practice of certain virtues and the rejection of mysticism, altruism, statism and other corrupt theories), and history (i.e. how specific ideas and principles worked in practice in the past, whether they resulted in human florishing or decay). Second, every aspiring patriot should keep himself informed, not about every occurrence, but about the general trends of development and most important issues his society is affected by. After having acquired such knowledge, recognized such trends and analyzed such issues, it is necessary for him to take action by speaking his mind and pronouncing judgment whenever it is necessary, i.e. whenever silence could be taken as agreement with or sanction of evil and destructive principles (for details, see Ayn Rand: “How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?” in: The Virtue of Selfishness, Signet: New York 1984, pps.82-86). In this respect, it is very important to have a proper and just evaluation of major politicians, especially if they run for office in an election campaign, and then act accordingly (good examples of how to judge politicians are provided by Ayn Rand in: Ayn Rand Answers, ed. Robert Mayhew, New American Library: New York 2005, pps.58-71).

Of course, being a patriot requires courage, independence, justice, honesty and many more of man’s virtues. This is just another illustration of the fact that one cannot practice any one virtue as isolated from all the others. Indeed, such comportment would undermine the practice of all virtues. Thus, only a fully virtuous person can be a genuine patriot, and only a genuine patriot can be a fully virtuous person.

Usually around election time, politicians stir up a debate about people’s disenchantment with politics as manifested in low voter turnouts, a general frustration with politicians and, in its extreme form, a passive rejection of the entire political system. Politicians warn that such an attitude could, in the long run, threaten our democracy and our liberty. Since they identify its chief cause as an image problem of politics, millions of dollars are poured into financing campaigns to politicize the citizens and to lure the young into political activism.

Politicians are right to fear that people’s disenchantment with politics will threaten the nation’s political health, but instead of offering a real solution to the problem, they only administer more of the poison that caused it.

Disenchantment with politics is a typical illness of a “mixed economy”, of a society whose government massively intervenes into people’s life and the economy by establishing ever more taxes, controls and regulations—i.e. by replacing self-determination of one’s own life by “democratic co-determination”. To an increasing extent, how to best live your own life—whether it be issues of education, work or health care—is not decided by yourself alone, but by political institutions, committees and government officials, who are elected by you as well as by millions of others.

Since your vote is only one among millions, this minimizes your control over your own life, and does so increasingly the more areas of life are permeated by politics. On the other hand, what is strengthened is the government officials’—the politicians’—power since they are the ones making the decisions that determine vast areas of your life. Since not many people have the time, resources or even the wish to actively engage in the political process or become politicians themselves (and this, essentially, is the cure recommended by politicians!), they become dependent upon the will of some bureaucrat elected by their neighbors.

As with all “collective decision-making” of a mixed economy, political decisions will always involve some sort of compromising between pressure-groups—who are just another product of the mixed economy—and these compromises will leave many people greatly dissatisfied. Government officials seldom decide the way you want them to, and often they will decide against what you perceive to be your vital interests, in important fields like health care reform, economic policy or foreign and security policy.

If such experiences of your most important interests being defied repeat itself over and over, and combined with the impression that you as a single citizen cannot do much about it, there likely evolves a sense of powerlessness and frustration, as evidenced in such typical expressions as “politicians will do what they want anyways”. If you cannot, due to circumstances outside of your control, achieve your goal—to lead your life according to the judgements of your own mind—then you give up striving after it: you resign.

Disenchantment with politics is a form of resignation with the mixed economy’s political system. Those who do not have the political pull in the pressure group game of the mixed economy, those are the ones who likely will become disenchanted with politics and dismissive of the political system. Those are the ones looking out for an alternative promising to remedy their sense of powerlessness, be it a new and rational philosophy giving them guidance how to win back their political and personal self-determination—or a Fuehrer pledging to “clean up the political pigpen”.

The problem’s chief cause is not the bad image of politics—which actually is just another symptom, a corollary of a deeper cause: The chief cause of people’s disenchantment with politics is the increasing politicization of vast areas of their life, which is so characteristic to and inherent in the system of the mixed economy. This politicization—the shifting of decision-making powers pertaining to all important issues of our lives from private citizens to political bodies, including the whole ensuing pressure group warfare—massively curbs personal responsibility and independence, and thus creates a feeling of personal powerlessness—of permanent social crisis—that fosters political discontent and disorientation.

What do politicians offer as a solution? Expensive image campaigns aimed at fostering public support and political participation, as well as recruiting the young for the further politicization of life and society. These measures will not solve, but only aggravate the problem.

The solution is not more politics, not more collective decision-making, but a drastic de-politicization of society—a retreat of politics from our daily lives.

Nota Bene. I wrote this paper for my OAC Introduction to Writing Course, and it accordingly is the property of the OAC. I reproduce the paper here with permission. This, however, does not in any way imply an endorsement of the views expressed in the above paper by the OAC or the Ayn Rand Institute.

A hypochondriac is a person who is in constant fear for his health. He is always on the lookout for symptoms that might convey a major and probably deadly illness of his body, and often he is shaken with anxiety due to the slightest inanity. The hypochondriac’s fear-burdened relationship to his own bodily functioning is a strong obstacle to a happy and normal life.

What differentiates the hypochondriac from a normal man, who trusts his health and his body’s competence to function in a way appropriate to his survival, basically is an issue of methodology, of the basic epistemological approach to health and illness.

A normal man regards being healthy as the normal state of his body. He only questions it when he has sufficient reasons to do so, i.e. if he observes certain symptoms–such as pain, fever, discolorations of his skin/eyes, or whatever–that might indicate a bodily malfunctioning. He then acts accordingly and goes to see a doctor in order to get a diagnosis and the appropriate treatment.

The hypochondriac, on the other hand, does not regard health as the given, which should not be questioned without sufficient reasons. Rather, he doubts his health groundlessly. This seemingly arbitrary doubt originates from his (implicit) methodological approach: Instead of regarding health as the normal and the given, he accepts illness as the normal condition of man’s (or, at least, his own) life.

Nonetheless, the hypochondriac still values his life, and therefore his health–a value under constant threat according to his methodological premise that illness (i.e. bodily malfunctioning finally resulting in death) is the normal condition and epistemological starting point in issues of health. Thus his constant fear, and thus his feverish effort to constantly check his body’s functioning, i.e. to prove to himself, by trying to gather sufficient reasons for it, that he is healthy.

Since the human body is a pretty complex entity, and since it is generally impossible to prove the nonexistence of something–in this case: of malfunctioning–, the proof desired by the hypochondriac has to fail. The hypochondriac is trapped in a situation where he, due to his methodological premises, sees a constant threat to his values, i.e. health and life.

Now, is there any reason why man should accept health, and not illness, as the normal condition? — Yes, there is.

Living organisms are conditional. Their continued existence depends on specific actions and processes that have to be successfully performed in order for the organism to stay alive. If the organism fails, it will disintegrate and finally die. Health is the state of an organism successful at the task of survival, of an organism whose functioning is appropriate to its continued existence. Illness is the state of an organism that fails at this task, and that has begun the slow process of disintegration.

For an existing thing, existence (qua the thing it is) is its normal state. This is also true of living organisms. But since the existence of such organisms is conditional, their existence qua living organisms means nothing but their being healthy as their normal state. Illness is not the normal state of living organisms, but a pathological state ultimately leading to their destruction/death, i.e. to non-existence.

Since health is the normal state of living organismus (and among them, man) metaphysically, it is only sound also to adopt health as the starting point epistemologically, when dealing with issues concerning the organism’s (mal-)functioning.

A rational man regards his health as the given, which does not require any further proof. On the contrary, it is illness the existence of which requires proof. His approach to issues of bodily functioning is: “I will regard myself as being healthy unless proven otherwise.”

The hypochondriac, on the other hand, is irrational. He ignores the metaphysical nature of living organisms and inverses the methodological approach in issues of bodily functioning. His approach to such issues is: “I will regard myself as being ill unless proven otherwise.”

Thus, the hypochondriac provokes a clash between goals and the means to achieve them, between his values and his competence, between his desired health and his seemingly fragile body incapable of achieving it. What emerges (or is reinvoked), then, is a sense of constant, tragic struggle against a failing body that, ultimately, is incompetent to live.