Patriotism and the Self-Referential State

11 minutes

Suppose the U.S. were to break into smaller political regions. We’ll call these the New England, Midwestern, Pacific Northwestern, Southwestern, Eastern Central, Deep Southern, and Texan Regions (leaving out, for the sake of simplicity, Hawaii, Alaska, and the provinces.)These divide along existing borders, and their internal centers of authority (counties, cities, etc.,) stay largely intact. The Seven Regions would certainly retain whatever languages were already in common use; mostly English, with a fair bit of Spanish. They’d also keep the same basic political forms and procedures; jury trials, legislative bodies, executives of one kind or another. Finally, local cultures, to the extent that such things still existed, would hardly disappear. On the contrary, in the absence of a megastate, culture grows thicker, except in those regions where it was only the byproduct of the Federal Government. Now I ask you, would this land of the Seven Regions, whose people share the same language, and retain the same political forms and traditions, albeit with local variations, still go by the name of America? Would it be the same country?

Let me ask it differently: does there remain a cultural and political reality, both in-region and among the Seven Regions, that is still identifiably American, and toward which a familial love can be directed? Might a “Neo-Texan” take pride in Texas, but also in America, in much the same way that a fourteenth century woman might be proudly Genoese, and at the same time recognizably Italian?

If, like me, you answered “yes,” then the following analysis has something to offer you. But if you find the above scenario apocalyptic, and if it summons all sorts of negative feelings of dissolution and loss, then we’ve already reached an impasse. For what I want to argue here is that a country is a special kind of unity that transcends its contemporary state, and that this unity, and not the state itself, is the proper object of that peculiar love we call “patriotism.” To be more specific, I wish to distinguish between the organic state and what might be called the Self-Referential State (hereafter SRS.)

Because I love America, I’d not be the least bit bothered by the above hypothetical. If anything, it seems too good to be true. Certainly the current trend is in the other direction, towards an increasingly faceless megastate on its way to becoming a regional power within an international order whose legal provinces are little more than rubber-stampers for a class of borderless entities, themselves wielding an alien and inescapable international law, backed by a God-like surveillance apparatus. So compared to the facts, my modest scenario is pure science fiction. Still, I will consider it for the sake of exploring the related ideas of political identity and unity.

In human life, as in nature, separateness permits specialization, and specialization breeds variety. Within my Seven Regions, local culture would only grow stronger, as the people of, say, New England, built up their own polities, and strove to understand themselves in terms of their own peoples and history. Local events, and the figures behind them, would take on greater weight. And far from jettisoning whatever was really essential to New England, its peculiar forms and customs would become all the more precious from being all the more scarce.

Consider the cultural uniqueness found within different families, or among small schools, local teams, and regional music scenes. Isn’t it usually the case that a new style emerges precisely among a relatively small number of artists, writers, musicians, athletes, or thinkers? It is from these small unities that ingredients of a larger unity grow and flower. What we call culture is in fact that the product of many small “gardens.”

Along similar lines, Aristotle observed in Politics that households make up villages, which in turn make up towns, which then compose the city-state. The latter political entity is the structure that permits the mutual thriving of these smaller units. The members seem to need this political unity (the State), otherwise — contra the anarchists — people would not always and everywhere be constructing and reverencing them. Still, there is a sense in which the members of the body politic are the really living part, while the state that serves this body only contributes to its essence. Several considerations illustrate the point.

Would anybody deny that the country of France is, in some sense, real; that there is something that it means to be French? But France has varied greatly in both its political forms and in its regional extent over time. Certainly there was something recognizably French from at least the monarchy of Hugh Capet down to its present form of democratic government. It cannot be the case that to be French is simply to be the subject of a French king, nor a citizen of the current democratic French state. Or, to look at the matter from the opposite end of the telescope, when was Greece more Greek than in the days when it was Athens, and Sparta, and Argos, and Corinth, and hundreds of other city states, which, despite their numerous antipathies, spoke similar languages, shared many political forms, and defined themselves in reference to portions of a shared historical mythos? Is the modern state of Greece “more Greek” than those Greeks? Or did Poland really disappear in those periods when the Polish people were under the boot of some foreign power? Is Irishness suspended, like a quantum particle, between Ireland’s periods of humiliation and independence?

Now obviously, the attempt to define the limits of Frenchness, or Irishness, or Americanness is doomed to failure. Demarcation is a hard enough game with actual organisms, let alone when dealing with more ephemeral realities. And it also wouldn’t do to follow the Hobbesian tradition of making society and state a binary, for history shows that both the organic state, and its peculiar legal forms, contribute part of the cultural DNA that makes a country. America-the-country would not exist without the Thirteen Colonies, (so briefly re-branded as Thirteen States.) Something in the political forms of those entities is forever impressed upon anything to be called ‘America.’ Therefore, were the Seven Regions in my thought experiment to jettison government by assembly and trial by jury, I would personally have to stop regarding them as America. So, admitting that the political state has some real relation to this thing called a country, it still seems clear that the latter is not strictly identifiable with the former. And it is this former thing, the thing which endures through change, which, to me, seems the proper object of that species of filial love called patriotism.

Now all patriotism assumes as its object some kind of unity. That peculiar unity is the thing I am interested in. It is, in my view, the only political thing worth loving or dying for, for it is political in the truest sense, namely that it is personal. A country is like a botanical garden of personal and legal relationships, cordoned off from adjacent botanical gardens, and not so much by the external fence (which comes in later) as by the mutual relations of the smaller gardens within it. In a world thick with people, such gardens admit some overlap, but there is at least a point at which one has really crossed from one great garden to another.

So if we want to get an answer to the questions, “What is France?” or “What is America?” we should not consult maps or state lines; rather, we should ask, “What are the ideas, folkways, workways, and placeways here that share a certain identity?” America is not Washington D.C. It is not the flag, nor is it the military. It is certainly not the bureaucracies or the corporations which exert so much shaping force on it. America is the specific geographical embodiment of a certain set of ideas, places, events, customs, and, especially, peoples, which together result in a stable unity.

What I mean by country then is something closer to what Aristotle called “the State” than what we moderns mean by same term. Indeed, there is a natural analogy between the country (the organic state) and the family. Again, in his Politics, Aristotle, who reasoned from observation rather than from his own ideas, describes the fact that households make up villages, which in turn compose towns, which are likewise arranged into a Polis. A country or Polis is a family of families. Both are “perfect” in the sense that they contain within themselves all the basic ingredients that make them singular, and distinct from other such unities. It is only this classical sense of the word “State” which has much in common with what I mean by country. Under this arrangement, the various city-states of Greece might conceivably attempt to combine together to form a “polis of poleis”, but (as the Peloponnesian War attests), there are bound to be limits to the degree of real political unity. Likewise, an outsider like Alexander the Great might briefly succeed in imposing a common order on Greece and parts of Asia, but such an order will be short-lived if its principle of unity does not emerge from within. I will return to this point in a moment.

In contrast with this state/country/polis idea, the modern state is a more alien and remote thing. Whereas the unity of the former emerges horizontally and is only christened vertically, the modern state is essentially vertical. This Self-Referential State lives parasitically on the horizontal country, for it derives both its legitimacy and its prestige from the latter. Indeed, much of its official speech is designed to redirect natural patriotism away from the organic country, and toward itself as a structure. The structure itself, the fence around the botanical garden, becomes the focal point of fidelity. The SRS hides its face within the crowd, like a terrorist, or a spy, or a plain-clothes policeman. A good man who loves this artificial state, or who dies for it, does so only by confusing it with the organic state. The latter is what he really dies for. And such a death is noble, though the SRS swoops in, and, vampire-like, draws that noble blood into itself.

From the SRS, a decent man learns to automatically distrust the State’s critics and whistleblowers — whether foreign or domestic— because he has dutifully imbibed its greatest deception, namely that the SRS is just the same thing as his country. And this deception becomes partly true, for the SRS lives precisely by extending its tendrils ever deeper into the organism, thereby making itself indispensable and un-extractable.

Therefore, if its political class decides to make war on some foreign political class, the common man learns to regard this effort as his effort. Likewise, if some individual or region within the SRS dares to withdraw from it, or even to assert its limited rights, then the good citizen’s thoughts are abridged to one of two possibilities. If he’s temperamentally inclined toward tribalism, he will see the seceders as “separatists” and “rebels.” But if his inclinations are toward universalism, then he will regard the situation as “tragic” and those fomenting it as “misguided.” It is the person in the latter group who says things like, “I agree that they had some legitimate grievances, but breaking up the country is no solution. We need more unity, not less.”

In many ways, the latter opinion is more insidious than the former. Tribalism, (which is really a perversion of localism,) is ugly to behold, and easily rejected. But suppose the seceding person or political body isn’t even violent. It only wishes to peacefully detach itself. The tribalist cries, “Traitor!” The universalist, meanwhile, takes a more delicate (and more deadly) approach. He gives smooth cover to the SRS by legitimizing its false claim that “unity” just means “unity from the top down, on our terms.” Never mind that such unity may possess no more real currency than the false coins that megastates are wont to produce. The main thing, for the sensitive and enlightened man, is the appearance of unity, the tidy fence around the garden. It hardly matters to him who put the fence there, of if there really ought to be sixty-two fences rather than one. The appearance of unity gives him a warm inner feeling. He is more willing than the tribalist to negotiate with the misguided, but there is no question of what the outcome of such “negotiations” must be. Meanwhile, his pacific disposition gives the SRS everything it really needs to maintain control.

That this unity is mostly superstition and illusion can be seen in the fact that to question its basic premises is to invite righteous horror and vitriolic abuse. And it is in this way that “patriotism” ceases to be a virtue like unto its name — the love of one’s fathers and lands — and becomes a tool of control, the last refuge of the scoundrel, the lowest common denominator in a flattened world.

Now a reasonable person might here object, “It’s all well and good to talk about some ideal of unity, and to criticize false versions, but we live in a real world, where such peaceful secessions aren’t likely to happen, and where there is no third option between some kind of nationalism and the frightening internationalism you previously described.” I think this is a fair point, and one hard to argue against. I’m certainly not trying to argue for the Seven Regions in my example. The fact is, it’s hard to imagine how the current trends could ever be reversed, let alone peacefully. But even in a madhouse, it’s important to keep one’s head. It may very well be that a strong nationalism is the best we can hope for in the present world. It’s better than the alternative. But even the national megastate can only be maintained with reference to principles and facts; to what is actually the case.

For example, a man with the refined sort of patriotism I’m defending will be far more likely to value what is truly indispensable to his comm-unity, than if he saw his village/city/province as only a sort of node of the megastate. He is in a better position to understand the stakes behind the principled insistence on whatever local rights the megastate still permits. He is far more likely to be prudent in matters of war and national economy, and far less likely to be swept away by the sorts of policies favored by the political and corporate classes, the two groups least connected to any community (for their relationships are based on utility.) He will be far more able to see the real remaining good in his own country (despite the presence of a reigning parasite,) to find something worth reverencing and preserving, and far less likely to view what is foreign — that is, what is familiar to a stranger — as inherently inferior.

But let me close by returning to my previous point about the limits of real unity. It will not be hard to see why it is so limited if we first consider what it is. Unity is a principle of real commonality. It is that which makes the many into one. The soul of a rose is that singular life which is possessed in common by all the cells, flesh, leaves, stipules, petals and so forth that make it up. It is that which persists in being when one petal falls lifeless to the grass, and which dies when the rose is no longer in motion. In an artificial being, such as a hammer, the principle of unity is that idea around which the wood and metal have been arranged. There are still weaker examples of unity, such as the mere association of proximity, number, and species which makes up a pile of quartz rocks. All of these are kinds of unity, though the pile has only nominal unity. It is an aggregate. But if unity means just any common association, then the word loses all functional meaning.

I may, for convenience, refer to a pile of assorted junk as an “association of refuse,” but it’s obvious that I do so only for convenience or gentility. A pile of junk has no real, intrinsic unity, like a rose, nor does it even have the artificial unity of the parts of a hammer. Likewise, I could refer to a plane’s hijacker and his captives as “fellow travelers,” but then it’s obvious that I’m either making a joke, or else defending the man in court. Nobody speaks like that who is being candid. Likewise, when the State speaks of “unifying” a territory to which it also makes claims, we should be quick to ask why the territory in question isn’t already “unified,” or why it would suddenly become so now. Since real unity means a real commonality among conspecifics, it must be a strange circumstance that requires that this real commonality must also be achieved through external force. And of course, we all realize this — when we’re talking about somewhere else.

If China wishes to “unite” Hong Kong to itself, we know just what this means. If Hitler wants to unite the German-speaking lands, again, we know what this means. Likewise for Catholic Ireland and the United Kingdom. And back in Greece, when members of the Delian League wished to withdraw their membership — and this, from an explicitly voluntary union — we all know (or can guess) how democratic Athens responded. Our current, inevitable retreat from Afghanistan is another example of the shallowness of so much political unity. Were there really a cultural basis for such American-Afghan unity in the first place, then it would not need to be constantly propped up from the outside. Really, if you’re not willing to conquer and annex a place outright, then it’s better to leave it alone. The former option is ugly, imperialistic, and anti-American, but at least it’s not insane. Imagining that you can “plant” American ways in a place that runs on entirely different principles is insane.

And people are not rocks, nor even plants. Unity, if it is to obtain among persons, must be largely voluntary. Any unity short of this has less reality than obtains in the parts of a hammer. A political unity that is enforced from the top down is about as useful — to its members — as a pile of junk, though the pile itself may be useful to the junk dealers.

That is why the frequent calls for more unity, some issuing from politicians, some from clergymen, and some from the man-on-the-street, should be taken with an ounce of thought. Unity is a transcendental. It is desirable and good in-and-of-itself, and yet it can only obtain among men to the extent that it is based on truth. We should realize that total political unity in this life is impossible to achieve, since we are not all the same person. We should also realize that total unity, at least any one human being’s idea of total unity, is undesirable, for genuine human unity arises from actual commonalities, and these common goods are themselves developed through a kind of wholesome separateness, through smaller groups and sympathetic associations. It may be necessary, at a certain point, to sanctify an emergent organic unity with the name of State, but it can neither arise, nor be maintained, in the absence of a healthy and differentiated body. Nor is reasonable to suppose that real unity would necessarily be better served by a handful of powerful states. Being “one”, in an external sense, is not the same thing as being united. Do the Hong Kongese feel more or less united to China, now that China is stripping them of their independence? Do grown children feel warmer toward clingy, controlling parents, or toward parents who are happy to see them thriving as adults? We all know the answer to these questions, and yet, here we are, so quick to call for more unity without addressing the underlying conditions for that unity: truth, healthy variety, and actual commonality. Be careful, then, when you cry out, “We need more unity!” You may only be saying, “We need more force!”

© 2021 Joseph Breslin All Rights Reserved