Why Patriotism

Why Patriotism?

Much has been made of the anti-patriotic rant by one or another of the Dixie Chicks:

"The entire country may disagree with me, but I don't understand the necessity for patriotism," Maines resumes, through gritted teeth. "Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country… I don't see why people care about patriotism."

What makes this an astonishing question is that the Dixie Chicks arose from a tradition whose most famous members have directly addressed the very question asked here. Maines can't be ignorant of the answers proposed, because no one who once made a successful living as a country music singer could have failed to encounter those responses. She will have heard, for example, John Wayne's direct answer to the question, which begins:

You ask me why I love her?
Well, give me time, and I'll explain.

And so he does, at length -- not only in the song, but in a book of the same name. John Wayne, feared and loathed by parts of the Left even to this day for his iconic power, was in love with a land of beauty -- truly, and purely, in love.

Nor can the Dixie Chicks have failed to hear "The Ragged Old Flag" by Johnny Cash, composed during the last period of native anti-patriotism. It takes a different tactic, less about the majesty and beauty of America than about her history. No excerpt will do the piece justice -- nor, indeed, do the lyrics do it justice. It was meant to be heard, and ought to be: but if you have not heard it, and have no access to it today, read it through.

I'm reminded of an old Warner Brother's cartoon -- another American icon, that -- starring Porky Pig, called "Old Glory." It features a lazy, child version of Porky, griping about being forced to learn the Pledge of Allegiance in school. He drifts off to sleep, and is visited by Uncle Sam, and given a vision of all that has gone before. On waking, he is insipired with a newfound sense of awe at what has gone into the making of his nation, and he learns and pledges allegiance in a pose of solemn respect.

Have you seen this cartoon? If not, watch it here.

What strikes me about all of these answers is this: to the patriot, they are beautiful, moving, inspiring, the kinds of things that make you want to get up and shout. To the anti-patriot, they are not convincing in the least. As the Salon article about John Wayne demonstrates, they look at the same things and shudder. As the fellow wrote:

For my part, I've spent the last three years working on a novel that features a thinly disguised John Wayne as the villainous central figure in a 13-year-old girl's coming-of-age story.

Why should John Wayne, of all people, seem villanous -- particularly to a 13-year-old girl? My wife tells me that she spent her childhood dreaming of growing up to marry John Wayne. Still, some people do think he is a secret villian, somehow dark and evil.

I think this is a point of departure, a breaking point at which there is little to say. The answers given by Johnny Cash and John Wayne do not convince: you were either convinced when you got here, or you cannot be convinced. The loyalty of the patriot is supernatural. It is like the love of a man for his mother; it pre-exists thought, but instead arises naturally.

Sometimes, perhaps, it tries to arise -- and is instead hurt or twisted by the evil and cruelty of the world. Perhaps the anti-patriots are sensitive but flawed souls who had believed in beauty and happiness, but find that beauty fades in spite of art, and the greatest sources of happiness are also the worst sources of pain. The Salon author, drawn to Wayne though he despises him, writes:

Wayne's greatness lies in his ability to embody this figure utterly while somehow retaining a hint of innocence, of hope. He's the hard-boiled man out on the frontier, after all, not trapped in the decaying, decadent city. While personal psychic redemption may be beyond him, he stands a chance of breaking clean ground for others, of protecting the women and the fresh-faced, naive young men (Montgomery Clift, Jeffrey Hunter and, most oddly, the 54-year-old Jimmy Stewart in "Liberty Valance") who wander into the unfinished, dangerous West. America might have a chance for greatness on the back of a man like Wayne, but he'll always take others to the mountain top, never get there himself. He's seen too much ugliness, in the breaking and mastering of this wild land, in the purging of the hostile natives. In himself.

Yet this is just what the patriot can do, that the anti-patriot cannot. He can love in spite of his pain; it does not twist his love into something else. The world has hurt him, yet it is still his world. The country, his mother, they are not perfect -- but they are his country and his mother. His loyalty is not diminished. He retains hope, and love, and faith.

This is precisely the quality absent in the anti-patriot. It is struck out of them, for whatever cause, a wound in the soul. People bent by such things hate as strongly as we love -- they speak of mother or country, as Maines does, through clenched teeth.

What can we do? Pity them; hope for them to heal. Otherwise, nothing. They are beyond us. Supernatural things are not for men. Perhaps a spirit will heal them. We cannot, any more than we can understand them.

They have left us.