...more recent posts
July 4, 2004
Independence Day
20002001
2002
2003
Patriotism and nationalism are more or less synonymous, though patriotism somehow sounds a little less aggressive to me. My problem with the present holiday is that I don’t really feel much of either; I’ve just never had that deep-seated need to wave the flag. And it shows in my Fourth of July posts, which, when they haven’t been more concerned with celebrating Summer, have often critiqued notions of patriotism. That was only natural last year, when the nation was too busy warring to keep me employed, but even in the peaceful days of 2000 I was expressing my preference for the original Dionysian lyrics to the battle-born song that became our national anthem. Interdependence, rather than independence, has been another recurring theme, comparing the ties of nation to those of family in 2001, while in 2002 I stood at the continental divide and wondered how a land so wide could truly be united.
But I don’t actively dislike my country, disjointed though it may be. Its problems are the typical problems of human beings, magnified by historical happenstance that has brought us to a peak of worldly power beyond the expectation of our original patriots. If we have squandered opportunities for virtue, others might have done no better in our position, and some would surely have done worse. But there you have it: it’s my country, right and wrong.
Country has two meanings: one natural and one artificial. It is at their juncture that my reticence comes into focus. We refer to the Land itself as “country”, and use the same word to indicate an infrastructure of human agreements, a political construct that binds the people who populate a particular region. Traditional spirituality insists that those subsisting upon the Land, flora and fauna alike, are a sort of emanation of it, and this includes human inhabitants. That notion harkens back to the dawn of human consciousness, and America, paragon of the modern world, might seem to give it the lie: a country recently created, composed of immigrants and migrants of varied stripes, spread over such a range as to comprise many kinds of country in a single one of the national sort.
Of old, countries were mostly drawn along ethnic lines, which were typically enforced by local geographies. America was never so earth-bound; it was born of Enlightenment ideals. That idealism had its flaws, disregarding the native population and countenancing slavery, as well as making the predictable compromises of practicality and self-interest, but the liberal democracy it spawned has demonstrated an elasticity that has allowed for increasing diversity and a measure of self-improvement over the last two centuries.
Even so, allegiance to ideals is of a different order than adherence to place, and the two will learn different lessons. For my part, I’ve always felt more connected to the earth beneath my feet than to the institutions of the social space around me. In this regard I no doubt take the advantages of being an American somewhat for granted, but the “fruits of liberty” must grow from humble soil, and exploitation without regard will exhaust the very land that gives us life. And that’s as true in the country of ideas as in the countryside. Hence the Arboretum is a sort of country within the country, observing natural laws more than national.
As far as my idea of America goes, the last few years have been bleak, and don’t reflect my hopes for the nation. This has not been entirely our fault, but it doesn’t seem to me that we’ve done much to help our case, or uphold our supposed ideals in the world at large. Best intentions aside, it may be that we have yet to fully grow into the land that we have occupied here, wide as it is. Learning to live properly in our own home still has much to teach us. Surely that should be enough to occupy us, without pursuing occupations in other lands. Still, I wouldn’t make the nation’s birthday the occasion for partisan political positioning. Any patriotism that alienates half of the population is not worthy of the name. Not that I claim to be much of a patriot, but I will say that I am lover of the Land that is America, and a believer in the possibilities we may yet cultivate here.
This country is still being born.