Patriotism as the last refuge

Perhaps it might work for some people, what do we know?

What does your country mean to you? Do you love your country? Does the love for your country provide you with a sense of meaning and purpose in your life? I remember travelling with a friend in Italy, walking around in Rome, admiring the stunning beauty of its classical architecture and luxury apparel outlets, and him saying with passion “I work for Russia to have the same”. 

Do your feel moral obligations towards your country? Nassim Taleb wrote with contempt about people who acquire citizenship of convenience, absolving themselves from any emotional attachment to the coat of arms displayed on their passport. Another prominent proponent of patriotism (alliteration intended) was a Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. Not a household name, but he was indeed one of the greatest moral philosophers of the 20th century. He was the one who brought virtue ethics back to the forefront of philosophical discourse from its 2,000-year long obscurity. In his 1984 lecture he argued that patriotism is the central moral virtue, no less. You have to serve your county and culture, everything else is the explanation, go and learn, to paraphrase Hillel.

What do you think? Are you committed to the culture and values of your country? Would you call yourself a patriot? Over the past century patriotism was steadily going out of fashion. I wonder what is happening to the US patriotism now. In 2019 it hit the lowest point in all recorded history. Only 42% of the polled were "extremely proud to be an American", down from 69% in 2003. This, perhaps, is a surprise to nobody. The last 20 years of American politics were plagued by scandals, blunders and disasters which led to the US losing a substantial chunk of its moral authority in the world and bitter internal divisions. It's simply not cool to be American, at least not as cool as it was 20 years ago.

At this very moment, however, America again looks like the Leader of the Free World. The level of national consensus on all matters Ukraine seems unprecedented. Both sides of the political spectrum broadly condemn the invasion. The right-wing Putin supporters like Tucker Carlson became fringe overnight. The core of the American founding project: liberal democracy, free press and open dissent is meaningful again. Did it become equally cooler to be an American, I wonder?

I also wonder what is happening to Russian patriotism. Is it cool to be Russian when your state TV provides you with a round-the-clock stream of reports on military victories? Unfortunately, there is no Russian sociological data I would call reliable. VTSIOM reports a decline in Russian patriotism over the past 20 years, with only 46% claiming to be “unquestionably patriotic” in 2020, down from 84% in 2000. FOM reports the exact reverse, with patriotism going up from 57% of “mostly patriotic” citizens in 2006 to 82% in 2020.

However, my guess is that recent events produced no major resurgences in patriotism, neither in the US, nor in Russia (quite unlike Ukrainian patriotism, of course, which is on its meteoric rise). Another guess is that patriotism is on its slow and inevitable way out, worldwide save for a very few places. Both Russian and US polls clearly show that patriotism is the last refuge of the... not, of the scoundrels, but of the old people. Among the Russians aged 60+ only 8% are openly unpatriotic, compared to 22% percent of unpatriotic youngsters, aged 18-30. The same is true for the US, 53% of 55+ are "extremely proud" with only 26% of 18-34. The age gap is HUGE.

What on Earth are you talking about, Alexei, I hear you saying? What about the US white nationalism? Hindu nationalism? English nationalism, yes, the one which led to Brexit? What about the Ukraine, isn't it a direct product of the populist nationalism which seems to be en vogue now all over Europe again? Yes, you're right, but this is nationalism, a whole different beast!

Can you see the upticks in patriotism during the two great wars? In World War II it’s barely even noticeable in English, but Russian (below) paint a different picture. Over the past 50 years patriotism has flatlined. Nationalism, though, is still alive and kicking. These are only English-language results, the situation in other languages can be vastly different. This is what it looks like in Russian, the same colours apply:

Patriotism is about loving your country, its culture, values and ideals. Nationalism is about loyalty to the nation whether it has its own country or not, like Catalan nationalism, for instance. Patriotism is more concerned with values as promoted by the state. Nationalism puts more emphasis on blood, shared language, culture and history. Nationalism is mostly used pejoratively, while patriotism rarely so. I will be writing about patriotism today. There are quite a few different ethical positions one can subscribe to here.

Extreme patriotism posits that preservation of the country is the ultimate ethical goal and thus supersedes any other considerations. The beauty of this position is simplicity. My country, right or wrong. Extreme patriots “just follow orders”, always. This version of patriotism no longer exists as a moral theory, so utterly it was discredited after the World War II that no thinking person can subscribe to that, not even Machiavelli, if only for practical reasons. It's just bad PR.

Robust patriotism, the one MacIntyre argues for, does allow you to have some dissent. MacIntyre was a moral relativist, for him universal morality did not exist, the only morality was the one taught by the country. This, however, doesn't mean that whoever is in power espouses the country's values. Your moral obligation is to set whoever’s in power straight according to the nation’s values. An obvious objection to robust patriotism, voiced by many, is “why nation”? Why not family? Why not the professional or scientific community? Also, there's a widespread conviction in the fields of moral anthropology and moral psychology that some sort of universal morality does exist, after all. More on this later. 

Liberal or moderate patriotism breaks away from unconditional love to one's fatherland by introducing, well, a condition: the country must follow universal moral obligations. If your country is sick with genocidal fever, it should be cured first, loved second. 

This is what a lot of people I know believe in, and something I can relate to. Again, your moral obligation here is to love your country’s culture as well as to improve its governance. Personally, I’m not patriotic in any sense of the word and after three years of consulting (2004-2007),. having the Russian Ministry of Economics as a client I would not touch my country's government with a bargepole. 

Russian culture, of course, will always have a special place in my heart. Trouble is, Russian culture I relate to is not exactly... well, Russian. It's actually pretty European or even American at times. It tries to cross the national borders, either by smuggling something Western in or exporting something Russian out—or both. Does the popularity of Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky among non-Russians make them less essentially Russian? Yes, I believe, it kinda does.

Tolstoy, who wrote whole chapters in French, is hardly an exemplary Slavophil. Himself, he considered patriotism stupid and immoral. My darling Venedict Yerofeev, who wrote prose which I think cannot be fathomed by a non-Russian (or non-Soviet, to be precise), is essentially a classical Europe-educated intellectual transplanted onto the harsh Russian soil. His prose is not really Russian. Not because it is subversive and disloyal to the regime, which it is, but because it's not exclusionary nationalistic, which seems to be the requirement. He makes a bit too many references to Goethe.

Boris Grebenshikov, a frontman of a rock band Aquarium, which I adored since I was 15, released both a very successful folk-rock Russian album and an English-language album Radio Silence. The latter flopped and he sings in Russian ever since, his music is full of references to Russian history and Orthodox Christianity, but is it essentially Russian? No. His music is heavily inspired by David Bowie, Bob Dylan, reggae and Irish folk. He loves Russia, but says patriotism is a refuge for swindlers.

Constitutional patriotism is the last significant branch patriotism I'm aware of. This version claims, essentially, that a county is “not a fate but a project”. It regards the French Ancien Régime and subsequent French Republics—I believe the French are currently enjoying their fifth one—as different countries, to which one can be loyal or disloyal, by choice. This approach is most prominently exemplified in the US, where one's endorsement of The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution, perhaps, is enough to call oneself an American patriot. 

You don't need to be an American imperialist, either military or culturally. You don't need to read Twain or Updike or watch The Terminator II. Perhaps, you don't even need to speak English. Two and a half centuries after they were written the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence retain their capacity to provide a lot of meaning. “Equality before the Creator, life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”, that still sounds promising. Any takers? Does that look like it’s worth living and dying for? Good.

As with any moral-deontological approaches, you have to hold certain truths to be self-evident. If you don’t, it can’t be helped. Still, in my view this is the most defensible of all patriotisms. This, I presume, is what Nassim Taleb subscribes to. There are very few countries that have their own “projects” with solid philosophical foundations. What most have, unfortunately, is good old national-religious tribalism, inaccessible to the people born outside the culture.

I hope there will be more projects, both with “real countries” and virtual ones, like NSK and other micronations. I also hope that this time they are not going to wage a bloody war one against another. Yes, constitutional patriotism also has its detractors. Arguably, Jonetown can be cites as a bad example, and the late Senator McCarthy comes to mind as well.

UNESCO and ONE-WORLDISM! That’s a hell of an opposition. What do these guys stand for? We’ll get to that eventually. Next week I am planning to explore nationalism, its pervasive popularity needs to be explained. Can we borrow something there? Perhaps. Stay tuned.