An Essay on Patriotism

[thesmellypocket 1839]

"Et Ego dedi Horeno uxorem primam." (Virtue 3:4)

 

To Almighty God, be all glory, honour and empire, world without end. Amen.

 

 

PREFACE.

 

'Friends,

 

I recently wrote an essay in an Orenian column addressing the High Elven ideas of purity. It garnered some interest. But it lead me to consider the wider implications of patriotism, love for one's own race and nation. It is a virtue that my people, the High Elves, as you will know them, possess to an admirable degree, although, as I mentioned in that essay, we do take it to excess sometimes. This is not a thesis. I am a Priest, and the love of Almighty God permeates every single beat of my heart, therefore, of course, I dedicate this to Him. But this, rather than being a study of Scripture or the Holy Doctors, is more philosophical in nature. To God be all honour and glory, Amen.

 

THE ESSAY.

 

Patriotism is a virtue. As Almighty God gave unto Horen the first wife, so he instituted the simple but beautiful love of the family. It is truly the building block of the state. First of all, note that the word economy comes from the Akritian Oikos, which means household. The economy of the state, therefore, is in like manner to the economy of the household, being derived from it. Secondly, a virtuous family means virtuous men, without which no state can sustain itself. For men of this day covet liberty: but liberty without virtue is soon perverted into licence, and men, enslaved by lust and fear and hatred and appeased by bread and circuses, become either savages or slaves. Men will say: These are bad times. Say this not. For such are the men, such are the times. If men love liberty and have the virtue to lay down their lives for her, you shall have liberty. If men grow effeminate, then you have the ruin of the state. To have virtuous statesmen you must first have virtuous men; to have virtuous men you must have loving families. Finally, one might say that the household is the first unit of governance, and the most natural and loving. A village is formed together of families, and villages form a tribe, and tribes a nation, and so on. But in each upward gradient, the potential for personal interaction decreases heavily. A man will, please God, know everyone in his family, he will probably know all in his tribe, but he will not know every man in his nation, let alone his empire. At the family level, one encounters a person. At the national level, a name on a piece of paper, or even just a vague ideal of what the average subject of the state is like. We love persons, we do not love paper. If we love paper, we love paper for the sake of persons and not persons for the sake of paper. Hence it is that the family is the strong building block of the nation, a sacred precinct in which the domestic love first of man and wife, and then children and extended relatives, binds society together, in a rather natural and excellent way. 

 

Patriotism is therefore this principle of familial love extended. For just as men, belonging to the same family, are united by a common bond, so those who share common kinship in their race are linked by blood, by culture, and by locality. Of course, in this world where we seem to have to move to a new set of islands every century-odd (As an Elf I cannot tell you how annoying this has become, just as soon as you get used to a place!) that third one is probably the least important. Nevertheless, if patriotism is built up from this familial love, so ought it to be modelled upon it. 

 

I love my mother. The more I love my mother, the more I realise than it is a virtue to love one's mother. The more I love my mother, the more I realise that another man must love his mother, and even ought to do so. In the same way, the more I love my motherland, the more I realise that another man must love his motherland, and see it as good and healthy for him to do so. I love my people, but the more I, Pius of Sutica, love, the more I realise how much an Orenian loves Oren, or a Haenseman Haense, and the more I realise how much he ought to, and so, in seeing the patriotism I have for my country reflected in others for their country, the more I reflect that patriotism is, strangely enough, a universal virtue. 

 

Hence the type of patriotism which seeks to domineer and destroy other cultures cannot be accounted a virtue. Is that a love of one's own country, or a hatred of others? True patriotism is the one of hearth and home, rooted in families, culture, traditions and race. It is one that, whilst protecting one's own race and country, understands that a man will love and protect his also. The more a man loves his wife and children, the more he respects that in another, and as I have said, it is the same in the national life. If a man begins to slander, domineer, and hate other families, it is to be questioned whether that domestic love - that of Horen and wife - was real to begin with, but was rather built in the murky quicksand of sinful pride and jealously.

 

Another type of false patriotism is that which says: "My country, right or wrong." How can any sane man say this, and say he loves his country? If your mother was an alcoholic, would you cease to love her? Of course not! And, in loving her, would you say "My mother, drunk or sober" and not seek in any way to cure her of that ill? Saints forbid! That is to reduce love to a mere warm feeling, when love is obviously more than that - it is a selfless principle based on putting the good of the other person first. The true patriots are often the most fierce critics of their own country. Not in a self-hating wise, but in a wise of that same domestic love of which I have written. A man who despises his own family, whom God has told him he ought to love, because he finds them despicable, is himself worthy of despising. And a man who despises his own country for her faults, rather than wishing to correct and reprove her like a good son would his alcoholic mother, is deficient in the supernatural Virtue of charity. For as I wrote to Boniface, it is in the extremity that the virtues are proved, like silver in the fire. Charity means not loving something that is perfect, but something that is imperfect. We are called to love our country in spite of her flaws, just as we are called to love our neighbour in spite of his.  

 

And just as the man who worships his own mother as the supreme principle of life would be clearly deluded, so the man who exalts his country to an idolatrous level, therefore distorting and destroying it, offends God. "For" writes his Holiness, James II "Any ideology followed too closely will become idolatry." Our only ideology is the love of God, and let us therefore love all the things with which He has deigned to bless us, for His sake. No man chooses his own family, rather it is chosen for him. And no man chooses his country either. Does it follow, that we ought not to love our country because we did not merit to be born in it? Not any more than we should cease to love our own family into which God has chosen us to be born.

 

Let every man, therefore, love his own hearth and home, his nation and race, for the sake of that Supreme Love which begat all of these lesser loves. Let him love men of all nations and races for the sake of that God who made the Four Brothers. And let him cherish, protect and defend his own nation should the need arise, fighting not for the hatred of what is in front of him, but for the love of what is behind him. 

 

May Almighty bless you, forever and ever. Amen. (+)

Edited January 5, 2021 by thesmellypocket

[Danielle Guy 0]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on patriotism with us.

 

I agree with your assertion that true patriotism is not about domineering or destroying other cultures but about protecting one's own race and country while also understanding and respecting the love and protection other nations have for their own.

 

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Edited May 8, 2023 by Danielle Guy