" Patriotism is not only respect and love for tradition; it is also the relentless selection and discarding of elements in this tradition. " - Jozef Lipski
Unpacking, I found a piece of paper containing this double-edged quote from a man with a particularly unfortunate career1. While every patriot will make appeals to tradition, they always do so selectively; I no less than you.
There are, however, two extremes of the spectrum, people who may claim the mantle of patriot and who may clothe themselves in the flag but who most certainly and demonstrably are neither patriots nor clothed. Both represent an abuse of history and an inability to pursue the future.
First, there are those with no love and no respect for tradition at all. They are willing to read out whole sections of our founding documents, choose to forget swathes of our history, and deny what they themselves owe to the past. History, for them, is a scale upon which we balance good and evil, and every example of a good turn is opposed by the weight of three or four bad.
Second, there are those who refuse to acknowledge new traditions. They select a point in history (and an interpretation of that moment) and claim that all changes since then are not in keeping with patriotism. For them, the past moment is the truth, the present is a lie, and the future is an apocalypse where the armies of light and dark will clash.
While the first is considered to be more characteristic of the "left" and the second has become associated with the "right", I submit that neither side has any monopoly on these forms of foolishness. Listen to the mangy crows croak about the New Deal and its overthrow of American values or the drab parrots who tell of how much better it all was in the sixties.
Better yet, be a patriot, look forward to the future, and figure out how to pass on our best traditions to our children. Make a few new ones while you're at it.
(For more, if somewhat disingenuous, De Spectaculis on tradition.)
. . .
1 Jozef Lipski (1894-1958) was the Polish Ambassador to Germany 1933-1939, before moving first to England and then to the US.
He is infamous for having negotiated the Germany-Poland Non-Aggression Declaration of 1934, a document that the Nazis used to parse Poland out of existence through a deliberate difference in understanding what was meant by "internal concerns".
Posted by MartialObviously, this post sprang from my finding the Lipski quote on a piece of notepaper. I'm pretty sure that I copied it down because I interpreted the sentiment as one I approved of and agreed with. However, in the course of reading it this time, I realized that the quote was actually true for all "patriots". Given Lipski's experiences, particularly the fact that he was in Berlin as the Nazis reshaped Germany and the definition of German patriotism, it seemed to me that he was making a more subtle point than I had originally thought.
I began to think about abuses of patriotism and how to make an objective statement about what sorts of comments or behavior are and are not patriotic. I am entirely unwilling to cast my ideological opponents as lacking in patriotism for the simple fact that many of them love their country warts-and-all as much as I do. But I also think that it is possible to, in general, distinguish between love (and the effort inspired by it to build for the future) and hate (and the destruction it spawns) despite the fact that they use many of the same words and symbols. This post is a small effort in that direction.
Posted by: Martial on July 28, 2003 11:10 AM