love of country

conservatives and repubs are always questioning those who don't agree with them as to whether they love their country. while i don't usually give conservatives and repubs the time of day, i find this idea of 'love of country' (particularly loving the usa) somewhat interesting.

what does it mean, to 'love your country'? what does loving a country entail? what does 'your country' or 'my country' mean?

as far as i know, i 'have' no country, in the sense that: i own a country, i command a country, i am in some sense more important than others in some country, or i have some particular stake in the ongoing existence of some country. it seems i was simply born into a particular country (usa) by accident. the tibetan 'book of the dead' doesn't mention the
enlightened bhikkhu choosing a 'country' to be reborn into.

what is a country anyway?

first, a country is (for our purpose of political discussion):

2 a: the land of a person's birth, residence, or citizenship
b: a political state or nation or its territory
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/country)


but, what is a ‘state’ or 'nation'? from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation we have:

a nation is a body of people who share a real or imagined common history, culture, language or ethnic origin, who typically inhabit a particular country or territory.[1] The development and conceptualisation of the nation is closely related to the development of modern industrial states and nationalist movements in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries,[2] although nationalists would trace nations into the past along an uninterrupted lines of historical narrative.

but then there's also the idea of Benedict Anderson that

nations were "imagined communities" because "the members of even the smallest nation
will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion", and traced their origins back to vernacular print journalism, which by its very nature was limited with linguistic zones and addressed a common audience.[4]


ok, what we have so far is "a real or imagined common history, culture, language or ethnic origin" or "imagined communities" or "conceptualisation...closely related to the development of modern industrial states and nationalist movements in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries". thus, the idea of ‘nation’ seems to be somewhat of an abstraction of historical coincidence. what's to love in such abstractions?

also from wiki/Nation we have that:

Though "nation" is also commonly used in informal discourse as a synonym for state or country, a nation is not identical to a state. Countries where the social concept of "nation" coincides with the political concept of "state" are called nation states.

so, what then is a 'nation state'? from wiki/Nation:

The nation-state is a certain form of state that derives its legitimacy from serving as a sovereign entity for a nation as a sovereign territorial unit. The state is a political and geopolitical entity; the nation is a cultural and/or ethnic entity. The term "nation-state" implies that the two geographically coincide, and this distinguishes the nation state from the other types of state, which historically preceded it.


what is my relation to “a sovereign entity for a nation as a sovereign territorial unit”?

going back to wiki/Nation we have that:

The cultural nation and the State

A state which identifies itself explicitly as the home of a cultural nation is a nation-state. Many of the modern states are in this category or try to legitimize their existence in this way, although there might be disputes and contradictions as to the appropriateness of this. Because so many of the states are nation-states, the words "nation", "country", and "state" are often used synonymously.

If the cultural nation is conceptualized as exclusively ethnically, and not as requiring a territory, a number of nations without land can be found. A prominent example would be the "gypsy nation". This example shows that cultural nations can exist without having an independent state, and not all independent states are cultural nations. Many independent states are simply administrative unions of different cultural nations or peoples.

Another example of cultural nation without a State of its own are the Jews before the creation of the state of Israel. Furthermore the are peoples like the Kurds, which see themselves as nations without a state. On the other end, one can analyze states like Belgium as consisting of several cultural nations, most prominently Flemish and Walloons. The question of whether the state of Canada harbours one cultural nation or two (English Canadian and Québécois) has been object of political debate as well.

Liberalism and the nation

Liberalism, starting in the 17th century with authors like John Locke was the main philosophical current which alimented systematic theories of nationhood and its political implementations. Opposing the theoretical principles of the Ancien Régime, the 17th century liberals called into question the bases of absolute monarchism, and especally the sovereignty of the monarch. They introduced the concept of "citizen", to replace the older notion of "subject". Furthermore, the sovereignty passed from the hands of the absolute monarch into the hands of the nation. The criteria for nationhood were based on rationalism, individual liberty and equality before the law, largely ignoring ethnical or cultural considerations. Thus, the concept of nation employed was the political nation, and not the cultural nation.

(although, it would seem that conservatives want it the other way around!)--blogger

In the American Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of Human Rights, the requirements for nation formation were the same for everybody. The will of the individuals to constitute a political community was sufficient to form a nation.


this is where the difficulty of loving a nation-state (in particular, the u.s.) begins.


we 'born in the usa' are not a nation-state like denmark as we are not a 'folk' like 'the danes'. Further, the requirements for nation formation were never the same for everybody! Clearly they were different for the three main founding communities: native americans, blacks, and the ruling whites. although we never had 'the Ancien Régime' or 'absolute monarchism' or 'the sovereignty of the monarch' we do have our rulers--the rich--old boy networks from: St. John’s, Andover, Exeter, Choate, Milton, Phillips, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Brown. (do you think grads from these schools start in the mailroom or as gs 5's? do you think kids from households earning less than $250K/yr usually get into these schools?) the poeple from these schools really 'have' a country (the usa), in the sense of owning large parts of the best territory, commanding industry and politics, and having a REALLY BIG STAKE in the furtherance of their hegemony!

so, am i supposed to 'love' these people or make the ultimate sacrifice for these people? i am not a part of their community and i feel as much for them as they do for me. no, let THEM die for THEIR country!


now, perhaps i could love a "nation...conceptualized...exclusively ethnically", for example, 'the hippie nation' of the late 1960's in the usa. clearly an entity like the "gypsy nation" or even "the Jews before the creation of the state of Israel." i can also see making the ultimate sacrifice for an ethnic group i closely identify with. for me, that would be scientific non-dualists organized around the principal of 'non-interference' (see david loy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Loy] 'nonduality' [http://www.amazon.com/Nonduality-Comparative-Philosophy-David-Loy/dp/1573923591]) in a 'green' high-tech society. but, this is not the situation i find myself in.

i am simply a person who finds himself in this particular country by accident of birth. i have no great wealth or particular stake in the place. i am just passing through. i find this place built on territory 'ripped off' from a relatively defensless peoples, built and grown and maintained by black slaves (up to their recent replacement by latinos), and polluted by a bullshit madison avenue industrial consumer culture.

now, don't get me wrong. i like my laptop, flat screen tv, 200 channels, ipod, utrasones, vintage wines, accela, $200/pers dinners, $500/nite hotel rooms, avery-fisher hall, moma, the met, the gugie, soho, the village, lofts, miami, fort lauderdale, s.f., monterey, carmel, big sur, vermont, new hampshire, florida, and utah. --the middle class-- lifestyle. (don't even think this is close to the lifestyle of --the rich and famous--.) but I do not believe these things require corrupt corporations, a corrupt government, and a corrupt church of lies. these ‘thing’ can be had without f22's (that have no competitors in the sky); billion dollar subs; sdi-star wars (which can't shoot down a real mix of fakes and nukes); useless wars like vietnam and iraq; and bubble-capitalism.

now, am i supposed to ignore all of this and put forth the myth that this is THE BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD? i can't and i won't.

this is just another country on its own particular journey through history. it is neither the best nor worst of nations in the world at the moment. but, it has a blighted history and a dim future (see http://4brevard.com/choice/international-test-scores.htm and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/04/AR2007120400730.html and http://www.whitehouseforsale.org/documents/102804offshoring.pdf).

my advice to you, my good reader, is: don't get caught up in jingoism and sent off to some place, only to come back with no legs, arms, feet, eyes, mind, or in a bag. live as much of 'the good life' as you can. do good work. do no harm. do more with that MS than BS! and, party on 'dude'!

more later...