Traditionally, patriotism has usually been regarded as a virtue. Horace said dulce et decorum est pro patria mori — it is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country. Sir Walter Scott wrote:
‘Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
‘This is my own, my native land !’
Usually, yes. Most of us have a built-in affection for the land which reared us, and to which we owe much. Wars down the centuries prove that men and woman spring to its defense in times of crisis.
Yet patriotism, love of country, has not always been approved when it amounts to ‘my country, right or wrong’. O’Flaherty VC, a George Bernard Shaw character, said ‘you’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race’. Of course that was Shaw in 1915, when men were dying by the tens of thousands. Yet much earlier Samuel Johnson had said ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel’.
So thinkers, whether classical or relatively modern, are divided in their opinions.
We are of course dealing with today, a time in which travel and communications have advanced with giant strides. In fact, there is a fashionable one-world concept. This outlook postulates that humanity is one. There should be no racial, cultural or political barriers. The identities of individual countries should disappear. Loyalty should be to the human race, not to one’s country of origin. Humanity should become a worldwide melting-pot.
Yet, since we are dealing with today, we should concentrate on realism rather than idealism. The flaw in the one-world argument is that human nature does not change. Greed, aggression and the inability to forget old disputes create a perpetual, unchanging barrier. Changes in outlook rarely occur until they are enforced by catastrophe. Despite the holocaust, neo-Nazism has re-appeared in Germany. Despite all peace-keeping efforts, Jew and Arab will never live side by side in amity. Territorial disputes, as in Ireland, as in Yugoslavia, as affecting the Maories, the North American Indians, the whites and blacks in South Africa, are unlikely ever to be resolved.
If communications, modern travel and the spread of democracy in erstwhile Communist countries make the one-world concept a realistic possibility, other detrimental modern advances counteract the new challenge.
Irresponsible governments are acquiring nuclear potential. The international arms trade flourishes as liberal governments pay lip-service to control but cynically fail to take action. Freed from the shackles of Communism, the eastern part of the Old Soviet Union is fast becoming a series of independent states, struggling to achieve western forms of democracy, ambitious to create market economies, careful to retain the Soviet nuclear armaments located in their territories. The whole political thrust is towards nationalism. Not only states, but also races, as in Yugoslavia and Iraq, wish to become autonomous. They are fiercely determined to preserve their identities, because apart from political and economic there are also social and ethnic factors to consider. Peoples are not readily going to sacrifice their customs and traditions.
That is why patriotism will continue to hold a strong position in the modern world for the foreseeable future. A strong United Nations can and does prevent, or at least try to prevent national and racial excesses of the worst kind. And if nations and races could achieve their legitimate political and economic aims by peaceful means, if the strong would help, rather than dominate the weak, then the time might come when wars became a thing of the past. In that imaginary situation, the best kind of patriotism, love of country, would evoke the best from all people in the realms of material progress, education, sport, international co-operation.
The unhappy fact, however, is that the world is bedeviled by the worst kind of patriotism – the use of ‘love of country’ as a cover for excess and atrocity. Men and women are imprisoned, beaten and tortured. A regime will try to exterminate Jews, gypsies and the handicapped. An old man will show no remorse at having murdered ten thousand Buddhist monks. Innocent hostages will be taken to be used as political bargaining counters. Essential foods and medical supplies will be denied to the starving.
And all in the name of patriotism.
