Regime, Polity And Country
I’m less clear, though, that one can be a patriot while radically critiquing the very definition of one’s country’s polity. ~Noah Millman
Noah has a serious and worthwhile reply to my earlier post on this subject (Noah’s original post is here, and James Poulos’ comments are here). The several cases he mentions are worth pondering, and he has hit upon the part of my argument that is most vulnerable. After all, there is a difference between the polity and its regime at any given time. For example, France has been an identifiable polity under numerous different regimes over the last 220 years, even if it has come into being at the expense of regions that were once countries in their own right, and one might argue that there have been significant revisions in our government in our history such that the same can be said of the United States.
However, I would maintain that before there is a regime, and before there is a polity, there is a country to which we have obligations that come first and which may come into conflict with our duties as citizens of a polity and as subjects of a regime. That is, patriotism is among our pre-political obligations, and one in which we initially have the least choice. Constitutional patriotism is slightly different, in that it takes into account the nature of the regime and the regime’s effect on the polity’s well-being. Constitutional patriotism permits dissent and even resistance against a regime when it begins to threaten the established constitutional order, because it tends to assume that the country and its formal political constitution are closely tied together. Behind even constitutional patriotism, though, is a recognition that it is the country, and not even the political constitution, that is most deserving of love and loyalty. As I wrote about Bolingbroke the last time we were debating patriotism at the Scene:
…Bolingbroke understands patriotism to be essentially the desire and work for the good of one’s country. Now when it comes to how to bring about that good, his constitutionalism comes to the fore, because he assumes that there is the possibility of having either a good, well-ordered and constitutional government or one of many degrees of corruption of that government and that this affects the good of the country. But the devotion to the constitution or the practices of the regime are incidental and secondary. His country would never become undeserving of love, even if the government were to overthrow the constitution. It is not the state that the patriot serves; it is not even the constitution, except insofar as the constitution protects and serves the country.
Noah at one point mentions Petain. Collaborationist regimes, it seems to me, are a product and a good example of what Lukacs has called anti-patriotic nationalism. In practice, beyond sparing their countries some of the direct ravages of occupation (though, obviously, in the Greek experience, the occupation grew worse precisely during the period of active anticommunist collaboration under Rallis because the main resistance group had been organized by communists), collaborationist regimes aligned themselves during the war with invaders out of fear of socialist, communist and Western imperialist menaces. Petain may have been a patriot before the surrender, and even as the head of a collaborationist regime he may have believed he was doing what was best for his country, but if there is a red line that must separate patriots from traitors it is whether or not one collaborates with an invader. It really makes no difference why the invader is there. I might go so far as to say that even if one lived under a monstrous regime that cruelly misruled one’s own country, it would not be a patriotic act to aid its foreign enemies.
My final point would be that it seems to me that all patriotism, properly speaking, is local or at most regional. One of the frauds of nationalism is the idea that one can feel real loyalty and attachment to a part of a nation-state that is hundreds or even thousands of miles away. This is not natural, but to the extent that it is even possible it is the product of conditioning and constant indoctrination. It is often remarked that in the antebellum Republic most people identified with their states as their countries, and their patriotism obliged them to side with their states. Their natural attachments had not yet been so vitiated that they could imagine identifying with a continental empire simply as their country. One of the great problems with a consolidated regime and a large nation-state for a polity is that loyalty, while broad and superficial, is also remarkably shallow, because it is far too abstract for people to maintain loyalty to a regime or to a polity that is so large.
So I was going to say that I agreed with Noah, but having got to the end of this I think I agree with both of you but also that you don’t don’t really disagree with one another – except, perhaps, about whether patriotic love for a nation-state as large as ours is really possible. But his central point – that love for a country isn’t compatible with wishing an end to its existence – isn’t really one that you’re contesting, is it? Noah will allow – as he should – that there can be patriotic love for states or localities that are proper parts of one’s nation, and perhaps that those instances of patriotism could be given privilege over the love one might have for one’s nation as a whole, but none of that seems to me to stand in the way of what he really wants to argue.
Mencius Moldbug recommends France: The Tragic Years, an apologia for Petain and the Vichy regime. I have to admit I’m not familiar with many other works with a perspective.
I’ve been listening to Pat Buchanan’s Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War. In it he is often critical of the military junta that ruled Poland, but at one point he praises them for continuing to resist Hitler. Not long before that he said that the Czechs were much better off for their leaders capitulating without a shot than the Poles were for fighting. Recently I had been thinking similar thoughts about the benefits of surrender in war. It may be tragic yet the best of options to collaborate rather than engage in the treason of the hawks. A realist can accept that life is often accompanied with tragedy.
If it becomes apparent that a defensive war can no longer be won and any continuation is unjust, what do those who are in authority do? If they can work for an arrangement in which natives share in the ruling and do not have to formally cooperate in evil actions, then is that not better than them having no share in the ruling?
(A related question is whether continued resistance by partisans is morally licit or not, especially if it is not apparent that they can be successful.)
Tedschan, I think there are situations where “patriotism” and “better” are different things, which is the point I was arguing in the last post on the subject. Both the ruling/surrendering regime, or the partisans, can be considered patriotic, and they can also be considered good, or moral, but the two aren’t necessarily linked.
It could be possible to define patriotism up to a certain point – love of and defense of one’s country (even using Daniel’s definition which can exclude polity) until one reaches the point where one kills or tortures civilians of that country. Patriotism, under that definition, would have an inherent moral quality.
If people can be loyal to an abstraction like religion (and a distant, non-local God), why not a nation-state? In fact, if one looks at the rise of the nation-state, it has come into existence as a form of quasi-religion, complete with its own myths, theology, Gods and saviors. It’s not mistake that the modern nation-state evolved in predominantly Christian coutnries, in which God was already conceived of as a distant, universal Being presiding over the whole world, rather than a local deity presiding only over one’s own community. This naturally led to the notion of a political empire that would be universal as well. So we get not only nation-states, but world-wide empires, like the British and American, that try to universalize political loyalties the same way that Christianity tries to universalize religious fidelity. It’s hard to imagine polytheistic Hinduism creating a nation-state on its own, much less a world-wide empire. Christian monotheism, expanding the local theism of Judaism into a universal force, is much better sutied for the politics of the nation state and universal empire. And that is of course why it is that much of the strongest support for empire-building in America comes from the most aggressively Christian of its polity.
There are definitely similarities between universalizing religion and universalizing empires, but the latter predate Christianity, so I wouldn’t say the latter come from the former. The rise of universal Christianity was itself parasitic on the Roman Empire, and outlived its collapse.
“I might go so far as to say that even if one lived under a monstrous regime that cruelly misruled one’s own country, it would not be a patriotic act to aid its foreign enemies.”
This comment gives me pause in an argument I am otherwise supportive of because it would seem to mean that a figure like von Stauffenberg could not be a patriot. To what extent do you allow for the competing patriotisms that Noah suggests? If your solution to this difficulty is your concept of a higher loyalty to country before state then I agree but I must admit to some concerns about the nebulousness of this concept. It strikes me as the kind of loyalty claim that can be easily manipulated. Whereas in the case of a state it is reasonably easy to say whether an act is or is not supportive, for a country you must first define what is meant. This would seem to allow a terroristic anarchist to define himself as a patriot. Equally it would allow Cheney to define the actions of say, Ali Soufan as unpatriotic in that they betray what he regards as the essence of the country. This might sound specious but I am interested in how you would resolve the problem of defining what a country is in its essence.
That’s why I said “might,” because as I was writing it I wasn’t sure that I wanted to push it that far. It seems to me that Stauffenberg clearly was acting to preserve his country from further destruction, and that it was not really an aid to the enemies of Germany (esp. the Soviets) to try to kill Hitler. Someone mounting a coup or plot against a monstrous ruler in wartime would not necessarily have to be the sort of collaboration I was referring to. That would be a legitimate internal rebellion against an illegitimate ruler. What I had in mind was someone who actively joined with an invader in attacking his own country, or who sided with the occupier directly against his own people after the invader had won.
“There are definitely similarities between universalizing religion and universalizing empires, but the latter predate Christianity, so I wouldn’t say the latter come from the former. The rise of universal Christianity was itself parasitic on the Roman Empire, and outlived its collapse.”
I don’t mean to suggest that Christianity is the only model upon which to build an Empire. It just builds a different kind of Empire, one that values uniformity throughout, and tends to destroy and “convert” native cultures to the Empire’s model. The Roman Empire succeeded for so long in large part due to its laissez faire attitude towards local culture and religion, and even local politics, so long as they did not advocate breaking with Rome. This allowed local cultures to flourish even while feeding the Roman Imperium, and provided a stable situation in which various political trade-offs did not come at the expense of local cultural life.
The Christian/universalist model of empire, which we still see today in the aggressive promotion of “democracy” and “free trade” around the world, insists on converting all nations to a single political/economic model, which tends to erode and destroy local cultures, hence breeding instability, rebellion, and war. Isn’t that the basic Paleo criticism of modern economics/politics? That our economic/political model is inherently unstable and destructive, and does not produce lasting peace in the world, but pursues instead a homogeneity that is unnatural to man, and to which he naturally rebels? Correct me if I’ve gotten the wrong idea about Paleo ideals.
Uniformity may have been the thing that certain canonists approved of in theory, but in practice the Christian empire in reality had a variety of liturgies, languages and local adaptations of catholic/orthodox Christianity. In matters of doctrine, of course, agreement with certain minimal standards of orthodoxy was essential, but practice tended to gravitate towards accommodation with local language and customs up to a point and the translation of liturgical and scriptural works into the native languages was the norm rather than the exception. Processes of Christianization and Hellenization did have destructive effects on pagan cults and older Anatolian languages and cultures, but it was only the former that were sought out for elimination. I think we would acknowledge that there are real trade-offs between the spread of Christianity and the decline of earlier local cultures and, obviously, religions. What paleos would say, or more specifically what I would say in response is that we see the trade-offs, we nonetheless prize Christianity because we believe it is true and because it is an integral part of our civilization, and we are otherwise concerned to minimize the homogenizing and uniforming effects of abstract universal models that ultimately erode and destroy the remaining religious identities that still do exist.
Would I have been more sympathetic to Symmachus’ arguments in the late 4th century than I would have been to the monks tearing down the temple of Serapis? Not necessarily, but I am sure that because Symmachus and his fellows failed to resist the transformation of their world their traditional religious cults were very soon extinct. Once we are reduced to arguing, as Symmachus did, that we should co-exist with the forces that are destroying the things we value, we will find ourselves in the same predicament that pagans were in before too much longer (assuming we’re not already well on our way by now).
It’s certainly true that many elements of Christianity refrained from “universalizing” their evangelical message to some degree. But the essential evangelical message “we are better and truer than the rest of them, and perhaps the only truly good and true religion” established a cultural and political atmosphere in which it became a defacto policy, taken for granted, that in spreading Christianity one should also destroy, transform, and usurp local religions and traditions. This was probably less so in the early church years, and in Byzantium, but in the Roman western Church this became a virtual obligation. The “savior of civilzation”, Charlemagne, was most reknowned for his brutal conquests of pagan Saxons and his forced and bloody “conversions” of them to Christianity over many campaigns. This became something of the model for Christian civilization, especially during the colonial expansion of Europes’ various colonial empires. One can certainly argue, as you do, that Christianity is indeed “better and truer”, and thus its expansion by through destruction of native cultures, and its homogenization of them in a “Catholic” manner (meaning, of course, universal) was a good thing, but it remains what it is as a cultural model. And it’s responsible in large part for the general civilizational model of the modern west, which seeks to conquer and convert the rest of the world to its “better and truer” way of life, even when others may not quite agree that it is better and truer and worth the brutality of conversion and universalization/homogenization.
In other words, there’s something inherently contradictory about the paleo message if it is tied to this kind of universalized, evangelical Christianity that assumes its own moral and political superiority over others as a given (meaning outside its own local church and community). A different kind of Christianity could be compatible with paleoconservatism, but it’s hard to see how that kind of live-and-let live attitude is compatible with actual conservative Christians in this modern world.
The modern secular society that threatens to usurp Christianity is in many ways still very “Christian” in its modelling, in that it also assumes it own inherent superiority, and thinks it is obliged to destroy and usurp local religions and local cutlures, converting them all to basically the same interconnected, democratic, free-trade capticalist liberal model, which over time tears down all local cutlrue and makes it a one-world culture. This universalizing impulse is in many respects borrowed from Christianity, and made even more effective for the modern world, not relying on ancient myths and religious symbols for its success, but modern myths and symbols, especially that of “prosperity”. And it seeks to supplant Christianity as a better, more effective version of the same universalizing spirit. Where it is compatible with Christianity’s own universalizing force, it makes a pact with it, as in the neocon alliance with Christian conservatives. But where it is not compatible with Christianity, it has no problem bulldozing it under and building a high-tech parking structure on top of it.
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