{"id":1754,"date":"2017-10-12T21:05:06","date_gmt":"2017-10-13T01:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1754"},"modified":"2017-10-12T21:05:06","modified_gmt":"2017-10-13T01:05:06","slug":"kaepernickism-and-patriotism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/10\/kaepernickism-and-patriotism.html","title":{"rendered":"Kaepernickism and Patriotism"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the present controversy over the NFL, there are basically two sides.<\/p>\n

On the one side are the Kaepernickists<\/a>, those professional players and their apologists who insist that in refusing to stand for the national anthem and acknowledge the American flag, they do not intend any anti-Americanism but, rather, wish only to draw the nation\u2019s attention to \u201cpolice brutality\u201d toward blacks.<\/p>\n

On the other side are millions of Americans\u2014about two-thirds of the country\u2014who agree with President Trump that Kaepernickism is indeed anti-American.<\/p>\n

If genuine thinking was as valued as moral showboating, we could use this occasion to explore a much underexplored concept: patriotism.\u00a0 At bottom, whether the Kaepernickists or their detractors are correct turns upon the meaning of patriotism.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll put my cards on the table at the outset: Both Republican conservatives and leftist Democrats, inasmuch as they have made America into an Idea, an abstract and universal Principle or Proposition that anyone at any time and in any place can affirm, have not only mired the concept of patriotism in a swamp of confusion.\u00a0 In transforming patriotism into devotion to a Principle, these proponents of America-as-Idea have implied that it is not a virtue, but a vice.<\/p>\n

Edmund Burke, traditional conservatism\u2019s \u201cpatron saint,\u201d famously referenced our \u201clittle platoons,\u201d those local, particular associations that comprise the stuff of which the individual\u2019s identity is made.\u00a0 Our families, neighborhoods, churches, clubs, schools\u2014comprehensively, our local communities\u2014serve as a buffer between the individual and the government, and the means by which we come to love our country. The little platoons elicit affections and command allegiance while investing our lives with meaning and direction.<\/p>\n

Yet my <\/em>friends, family, parish, neighborhood, town, and country are mine; <\/em>as such, they are concrete<\/em> and particular<\/em>\u2014not abstract<\/em> and universal<\/em>.\u00a0 As such, I am more partial to them than I am to your <\/em>friends, family, and so forth.<\/p>\n

Patriotism is partiality to one\u2019s own country over that of others.\u00a0 If, as we commonly hear, patriotism\u2014or at least American patriotism\u2014is commitment to or love for a universal principle, then anyone anywhere becomes an American patriot as soon as they affirm that principle.\u00a0 If the object of the \u201cpatriot\u2019s\u201d devotion is a bloodless, lifeless, timeless abstraction, then it isn\u2019t partiality, but impartiality, that is the proper attitude.<\/p>\n

The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre puts the point well when he notes that patriotism \u201cis defined in terms of a kind of loyalty to a particular nation which only those possessing that particular nationality can exhibit.\u201d<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s true that the patriot\u2019s loyalty is not \u201cmindless,\u201d that it involves \u201ca peculiar regard\u2026for the particular characteristics and merits and achievements of\u201d his nation, these are valued precisely as merits and achievements of his <\/em>nation.<\/p>\n

In other words, \u201cthe particularity\u201d of the patriot\u2019s relationship to his country is \u201cessential and ineliminable.\u201d<\/p>\n

MacIntyre continues in explaining that the patriot\u2019s morality is \u201ca morality of particularist ties and solidarities,\u201d of \u201ca class of loyalty-exhibiting virtues\u201d like \u201cmarital fidelity, the love of one\u2019s own family and kin, friendship, and loyalty to such institutions as schools and cricket or baseball clubs.\u201d\u00a0 The morality of patriotism demands of the patriot \u201ca peculiar devotion\u201d to his country.\u00a0 It demands that he \u201cregard such contingent social facts as where I was born and what government ruled over that place at that time, who my parents were, who my great-great-grandparents were, and so on, as deciding for me the question of what virtuous action is [.]\u201d<\/p>\n

Notice, this vision of patriotism is, as MacIntrye says, \u201csystematically incompatible\u201d with any view that conceives patriotism in terms of commitment to a universal principle.\u00a0 Those who subscribe to the latter view believe that to make moral judgments is \u201cto judge as any rational person would judge, independently of his or her interests, affections, and social position.\u201d\u00a0 Persons\u2014in this case, American patriots\u2014must abstract \u201cfrom all social particularity and partiality.\u201d<\/p>\n

MacIntrye rightfully concludes that whether those who hold it realize this or not, their perspective, the perspective of those who see America as an Idea, Principle, or Proposition, \u201crequires that patriotism\u2014at least in any substantial version\u2014be treated as a vice.\u201d<\/p>\n

In point of fact, the American patriot is not in love with \u201cnatural rights\u201d or \u201chuman rights.\u201d\u00a0 He is not devoted to an Ideal of Freedom or of Liberty or any other ideal.<\/p>\n

The American patriot is devoted to his country. <\/em><\/p>\n

In the real world, as opposed to the airy ideal world of the ideologue\u2019s imaginings, there is no Freedom<\/em> and Liberty<\/em>.\u00a0 In any event, for the American patriot, his love is oriented toward only the many historically and culturally-specific freedoms<\/em> and liberties<\/em> that he enjoys as his inheritance as the citizen of America, an inheritance that was centuries in the making and that was bequeathed to him by generations and generations of his compatriots.\u00a0 As Burke remarked, the patriot sees his country as a covenant, a compact between the past, the present, and the future; the dead, the living, and those not yet born.<\/p>\n

Patriotism, then, is a sentiment, an affection not unlike that which is shared by spouses and that which parents have for their children.\u00a0 This being so, the patriot does not live by Reason alone. Between the virtue of patriotism and the moral imagination there is a particularly powerful, indeed, an inseparable, bond: Symbols, like the country\u2019s flag and its national anthem, are sacramental.<\/p>\n

So, in returning to the NFL controversy, we\u2019re now able to reach a decisive verdict:<\/p>\n

Their insistence to the contrary aside, Kaepernickists most definitely have been engaging in anti-Americanism.<\/p>\n

The flag for which they refuse to stand represents to the American patriot, not just his government and certainly not some ideal or policy; the flag represents his country, that spiritual unity that reaches from centuries past to the present and, he hopes, well into the future.<\/p>\n

The flag stands for, not just his country, but that of his ancestors and that of his posterity.<\/p>\n

It stands for the achievements, sacrifices, hardships, tragedies, and joys, the blood, sweat, tears, and laughter of countless numbers of human beings who are united only insofar as they have been members of one and the same country whose flag it is.<\/p>\n

Kaepernickists, thus, repudiate not some specific aspect<\/em> or other of America when they refuse to honor its flag.\u00a0 They repudiate America itself<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Kaepernickists, the players and all of their defenders, partake of anti-Americanism.<\/p>\n

American patriots must now resolutely repudiate them. <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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