The Virtue of Patriotism

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.