Patriotism Vs. Nationalism Is A Distinction Without A Difference

Since President Biden was forced out of the campaign, he’s gone from a failing, stubborn old man to a selfless, patriotic statesman in a single day.

Now praised as “a patriot of the highest order,” the commendations from the commentariat have an elegiac ring to them. For Joe Biden, this is as close as a person can come to attending one’s own funeral.

Fear, dread and despair have been instantaneously replaced by hope, optimism and excitement in Democrats. Yesterday’s morose commentators are saying things like: “From the crumbling ruins of Biden’s presidency, a new leader may arise, a new champion for American values, the antidote and cure for Trump and Trumpism. Come January next year, it’s possible a new, younger morning in the US may dawn.” Hold your hoss there, partner.

Whether Kamala Harris can beat back Trumpism remains to be seen. At least now we have a real choice and a real race, and the American people will have no one to blame but themselves if they elect Trump again. For serious people outside the United States, there are larger, deeper and more urgent questions.

Being of philosophical bent (take that either way), I have philosophical questions. Is there a difference between patriotism and nationalism? Can you love your country without identifying with it? When does love of one’s country become hatred of humanity?

The British social historian David Kynaston recently wrote an op-ed entitled, “Can Britain really keep the rise of the populist right at bay? History tells us it can.” Looking beyond his focus on little England, it’s actually a piece about whether patriotism can still be a positive force in the world.

Patriotism is defined as “devotion to and vigorous support for one's country,” while nationalism is defined as “identification with one's own nation and support for its interests.”

With all due respect to Kynaston, he’s mistaken in extolling patriotism while decrying nationalism. Patriotism vs. nationalism is a distinction without a difference.

He’s not just mistaken however; it’s harmful to the human prospect to speak of “a quiet, modest patriotism…as the necessary antidote to abhorrent and dangerous nationalism.” The stirrings of war may be latent in the quiet patriot and overt in the abhorrent nationalist, but both are roused to war when “my country” faces perceived threats.

The nation-state system has become as anachronistic as feudalism in a global society beset with collective crises, beginning with the diversity and viability of the planet itself. Kynaston neglects to mention that sovereign nations demand immense “defense” resources at incalculable economic and ecological cost to develop ever more lethal and expensive weapons of war. That’s no abstraction.

Character, Kynaston correctly writes, is the “most methodologically fraught of concepts.” However that doesn’t stop him from trying to have things both ways as an intellectual extolling English traits such as “a deeply ingrained suspicion of abstract ideas and of intellectuals.”

Allow me to point out as an American that both traits – anti-intellectualism and having things both ways – are characteristic of Yanks as well as Brits.

Indeed, it appears after embracing the “abstract ideas” of the French Enlightenment that infused the American Revolution, newfound Americans reverted to British form.

In any case, appealing to the academic difference between quiet patriotism and dangerous nationalism will not stem the swelling tide of Trumpist and Faragist atavism.

Given our global reality and challenges, people need new insights, which always seem like “abstract ideas” to the over-educated deigning to speak for the under-educated.

Humans remain tribal creatures. And tribalism essentially entails identifying with a particular group, in modern times most commonly “my country.” Organized religions, on the other hand, have lost most of its coercive and cohesive power, and become empty shells of what they were even a century ago, havens only for fundamentalists and extremists.

Are there still quiet Christians who try to live according to the teachings of Jesus? Perhaps, but they have nothing to do with the litany of Christian nationalists seeking power and whining about their perceived persecution.

Is there such a thing as a patriot who does not put the identification with “my country” over his or her love of humanity as a whole? Perhaps, but if so it’s a new phenomenon.

Put simply, a human being does not identify with any nation or religion, having realized that identification with particular groups is the root of the tribalism that’s tearing humankind apart.

Martin LeFevre

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