Letter to the editor: The Virtue of Patriotism: in response to Culture and personal happiness

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It is often said that we humans are ‘social creatures,’ a truism beginning to border on cliché. While it is clear the human condition begs of us a group of friends, such a need for social interaction is not, as is sometimes asserted, a ‘validation station.’ Being placed in a culture where you fit in with your peers like cogs in a machine seems like the best way to feel social satisfaction and camaraderie, but in reality it is our differences that make us feel most secure. Here in the university system we have clubs and organizations that one can join at will, this helps us all to find people with common interests and gives us university supported ways to share in experience with this group of friends. Shared interests, however, is where the buck stops. Individual personalities bring to the table new ways to see and experience these interests, and allow us to love and be loved for who we are, not because we are agreed with but because we are a person. While there is no denying that finding a place on the globe where the individuals around you share your world view is comforting, it is a quickly diminishing light.

The love that radiates authentic friendship is is so radiant and so authentic because it is unconditional. Unconditional love, the only true love, requires that one loves the other’s personhood as an intrinsic good. To love someone because they resemble you in thought or deed is to love on the condition that they continue to resemble you in thought and deed. A mother’s unconditional love is so prized because she loves her child with a love that does not waver regardless of the child’s behavior. Through the entire life of an individual, it is their family that is a constant reminder of unconditional love. As it is obvious that one does not choose their family, so too is it similarly evident that one need not choose their culture to be happy.

The beauty of any culture is that, while composed of various traditions and ideologies, most of the members of a culture are born into it. Culture is rarely a choice, just like family. A culture is simply a society loving every new member unconditionally, allowing all to thrive in the same location, as a group of haphazard friends. You do not love your neighbor because he is like yourself, but because he is so unlike yourself. You love him because he is there. Just as iron sharpens iron, so to does man sharpen man. To flee from the adversity of your location is to flee from the romantic adversity of life (an adversity often inescapable).

No culture is perfect just as none of the individuals that make it up are perfect. The beauty in patriotism is not in loving your nation/state/team/family because it is better than others’. The beauty in patriotism is loving something simply because it is yours. This love of country is what drives all successful change. Anybody can leave when things are bad, but it takes a true patriot to love his country to the extent that he sees her flaws and loves her all the more for them, and then works tirelessly to change them. Just as you should lend your neighbor sugar for no other reason than they’re there and need it, it is virtuous to love and toil for your nation for no other reason than that is it there and needs it. To love an abstract entity like a nation because you believe it is better than others’ is nationalism, which borders on hysterical fanaticism. It is only in loving her for no reason that the virtue of patriotism is realized.

– Nick Sauer

Nick is a Junior from Indianapolis, Indiana studying Biology and Philosophy. He is also President of the Catholic Newman Club