I have always thought that loving a thing, particularly an abstraction, is a strange concept. Therefore, I find it difficult to resonate with those who talk about their love for a workplace or an institution. Even more difficult for me is talking about love for a nation. This language seemed nearly idolatrous to me, and frankly uncomfortable theologically and politically. Patriotism as a form of love has its own dangers and has never seemed appealing. Patriotic love demands a radical investment of emotions as the foundational orientation to transformative futures for everyone.
Increasingly, in an age when the leadership of this nation betrays the essential values that define it, we are called upon even more to love our nation. But we are also witnessing the slow growth of undemocratic and illiberal ideas built upon a disdain for the weak, the dependent, and anyone outside of certain identities. To love an imperfect nation requires more than blind allegiance. Rather, this is a love manifested as critical engagement. As James Baldwin wrote, “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” In a crucial election year, love becomes a primary motivator to save a democracy. The rescue mission here is not simply to shore up democratic institutions or to preserve traditions for their own sake. Instead, when love functions as a commitment to democracy, it demonstrates concern for people and values that bind us as fellow citizens. When I think about patriotism in this way, I find it not only more appealing but also more difficult as I rationalize my attachment to politics and political activities.
The transformative love needed to power patriotism comes from a commitment to the shared space of the nation. Philosophers as far back as Plato and Aristotle have thought about the value of patriotic love, which Martha Nussbaum, in Political Emotions, regards as a political emotion. Nussbaum prefers Aristotle’s ideas to Plato’s because Aristotle understood that attachment to an idea as conceptual as a nation involves growing connections to the ideals of the nation until the nation feels like ours. In other words, patriotic love does not build from a generic love for all humans, it comes because of the love of the nation. For love to catalyze social change and bring about the ideal nation, we must first love the nation.
The nation is real, yet we cannot touch it. Benedict Anderson described the nation as “an imagined political community – imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” Anderson’s definition of the nation places people at its foundations, most of those people we can only imagine. Indeed, Martin Luther King, Jr. reminds us that living in a nation means that we are in an “inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” To exist in a nation is to belong to a common cause with strangers who are our fellow citizens: strangers who look like us and others who do not; strangers with whom we agree and with whom we disagree. Because we are tied by that single garment, patriotic love shapes our duty to those strangers. Even more, patriotic love equips us with a fierce spirit to protect the values that shape the nation. Among these high values is the idea that everyone belongs. Even if the nation cannot accommodate the entire world, at least those we count as “us” should find an equal place in our nation. Patriotic love, then is neither sentimental nor cloying but critical enough to demand justice for those who are disadvantaged and to call the nation to its high ideals.
Love in all its forms requires cultivation. The places where patriotism rolls easily off the tongue cultivate a form of exclusionary love built upon fragmented narratives of the nation. Such places regard with suspicion anyone whose patriotism is too capacious and welcoming. We can teach capacious patriotism through myths, symbols, legends, songs, and other rituals that celebrate the breadth and the best of the nation. I grew up in a country whose national pledge taught me the value of cooperative engagement. I learned that I needed to work with others for the common good: “I will strive, in everything I do, to work together with my fellowmen of every creed and race for the greater happiness of all, and the honour and glory of my country.” These rituals exist within the United States but can be easily muted by the clanging cymbals of nativists. These noisy neighbors undermine rather than support democracy because they are more interested in corralling the nation into smaller pens under the mistaken notion that this is a path to success. Democracy involves a commitment to the full thriving of all people. Patriotic love is a profound political act that dares to use the institutions of the nation to ensure that everyone thrives. To serve all people, we are required to love the nation.
The politics of division can mean that shared symbols are no longer shared. Patriotism has often excluded many people who feel they cannot love the nation with the same fervor as others. To love the least, the last, the lost, as Jesus might have called them, requires us to love the nations where they live. Patriotic love calls us to vote in elections, to serve in civic organizations, to advocate with elected officials, to engage in noisy protests, to call out wrongdoing, and even to run for elective office. Patriotic love is not only a feeling, but a disposition cultivated in solidarity with fellow citizens and alongside the structures that enable us all to thrive.