This epigram is reminiscent of one attributed to Samuel Johnson in 1775: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” The idea is that the notion that patriotism is a virtue is questionable.
And indeed, if patriotism is a virtue, it’s not clear exactly what kind of a virtue it might be. What good is promoted by patriotism? My Webster’s says that a patriot is “one who loves his country and supports its authority and interests.” And what is authority in this context? Webster’s again: “power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior.” To me, it’s not clear that my country’s power to command my thought, opinion, or behavior is something that needs to be promoted. It sounds like the suppression of dissent and enforcement of conformity to the will of the rulers. This is something, rather, which needs to be controlled and checked.
Certainly, patriotism has often been invoked to rationalize crime and vice. When Jack Ruby, a gangster, murdered Lee Harvey Oswald shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, he implied that he did it in a patriotic fervor (“You killed the president, you rat!”). In the 1980s, Oliver North engineered the sale of arms to Iran and the funneling of the proceeds to Nicaraguan rebels, breaking various American laws but for allegedly patriotic reasons. The idea would seem to be that a patriot, in his “love” for his country, is not bound by its laws, even though North, as an officer of the U.S. Marine Corps, had sworn to uphold the constitution of the United States. “Patriotism” had made him an oath-breaker as well as a criminal.
When I was growing up, the Vietnam War raged in Indochina, and gradually word got back to North America of the horrors and atrocities being committed there. The slogan “My country, right or wrong” became current among American patriots. The meaning was that justice and rights could be trampled, laws were broken, and every principle of decency violated if these seemed to be getting in the way of your country’s success in the war.
Indeed, patriotism may be the most powerfully coercive force there is. I remember an excellent cartoon in Playboy magazine (sorry, can’t remember the cartoonist!). It showed three little boys riding tricycles. Two of the boys had U.S. flags flying from the handlebars of their trikes. One of these boys was addressing the third boy: “A word to the wise, Hawkins: how come we don’t see Old Glory flying from your trike?” That little boy was a patriot.
Oscar Wilde, like Samuel Johnson before him, was putting his finger on the hypocrisy of patriotism
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