Why I’m disappointed in everyone. Especially my fellow American liberals.
We are just as guilty of mindlessly following policies and holding opinions we assume are superior as conservatives. Conservatives err on the side of tradition and arrogance. Liberals err on the side of novelty and self-deprecation. When can we start erring on the side of rationality?
I just received an email from my gun-toting grandfather regarding an article he read about the Irish Immigration boom. In the midst of a racist rant, he expressed his concern over the number of Muslims currently living in Dublin from the Middle East and felt that, as an American, I should be careful walking home at night and wary of speaking with my accent. Then he said that, if he could, he’d run all the Muslims out of the USA. I rolled my eyes and sighed. I used to credit this behavior to Fox News, his chain emails, or his incredibly biased book collection, but now I realize that - as irrational as his ranting may be, his just looking out for his family and his country. And he’s really too old to change his mind about any of this. On the opposite side of spectrum, I have a number of friends who do and believe feverishly in the left and are completely ignorant to the periphery. Yet they too want to see their country succeed and flourish in peace as well as crisis. It’s just irritating. And I’m tired of it. And my eyes are rolled out.
In studying history, one usually comes across a series of significant periods of nationalism and nation-building. I did, in fact, write a good bit of my final thesis on this subject. And from what I learned, nationalism is a fairly natural phenomenon. This is not to say that because it is “natural” it is Good. There’s nothing particularly wonderful about what nature has wrought. It’s just to point out that it is in keeping with human nature’s need for community. As communication among disparate groups exploded, those groups became less and less separated, and what began as the family unit expanded and formed a hierarchy within the individual’s sense of loyalty. There’s no moral reason that a man should choose to save his drowning child over another man’s drowning child. There’s equally little moral basis for a human to choose saving a drowning human over saving a drowning spider monkey. The fact is that in any given situation we have finite resources and if we choose to share those resources, we are most likely to share them with those who belong to our community. Be it family, friends, or countrymen. It’s become popular among liberals to despair of America and moan about moving to Canada or Europe. To which I say, that’s perfectly fine. Leave. Go find a community with which you identify. The community shapes the individual at least as much as the individuals compose the community.
Blind patriotism is intellectually pathetic and morally abhorrent. However, the answer is not self-loathing. Like my grandfather, my own father votes republican. He voted for Bush. Twice. He’s a member of my family, so these conservative opinions of his make me feel ashamed. Not embarrassed. Ashamed. Embarrassment is the emotion one feels when one’s behavior is not in keeping with the Other’s code. Shame, on the other hand, is experienced when one’s behavior is not in keeping with one’s own moral/behavioral code. Which is to say that my sense of shame for an action performed by my father demonstrates that I perceive the two of us as a unit. We are to a certain extent the same subject because we belong to the same family community.
The same applies to larger communities like cities, states, countries, ethnic groups, religious groups, etc. Treason is the only offense listed in the US Constitution and receives the death penalty for a reason. The individual cannot be extracted from her community. So a betrayal to the community is a betrayal to each individual. It’s fine to decide that loyalty to the national community is arbitrary. But. If you’re going to follow that impulse to the conclusion that said loyalty should be withheld, don’t half-ass it. The next time a friend asks for a favor, or a sister needs some money, or a gay organization needs a donation, politely refuse and tell them that you wish you could, but there are starving children in Africa.
