By Nate Hochman
Tuesday, July 16, 2019
Oikophilia, Sir Roger Scruton writes, “is the love
of the oikos, which means not only the home but the people contained in
it, and the surrounding settlements that endow that home with lasting contours
and an enduring smile. The oikos is the place that is not just mine and
yours but ours. It is the stage-set for the first-person plural of
politics, the locus, both real and imagined, where ‘it all takes place.’”
Americans on the whole are feeling momentarily estranged
from our oikos, it seems; the national body politic is diseased,
suffering from a severe deficiency of oikophilia. Americans’ love of
their country is at an all-time low: Last year was the first time in recorded
history that less than half of us said we were “extremely proud” to be
American. This year, that number has dropped further. Democrats, in particular,
are afflicted. Though they have been consistent in reporting less national
pride to pollsters than Republicans, the deficit has become more dramatic in
recent years: Just 22 percent of Democrats now say that they are extremely
proud to be Americans, down ten points from last year and 21 points from 2017.
Much of this arises from a fundamental disagreement about
why and how we should love our country. Yuval Levin writes:
There has long been an argument,
roughly along the axis of conservatism and progressivism, about whether to love
America for what it has been or what it should be. The right inclines to
American exceptionalism, and the sense that our nation’s roots in self-evident
moral truths render it a unique force for good in the world and make its
politics distinctly elevated. The left inclines to a more redemptive hope in
America — the idea that our country has been working from its birth to overcome
its unique sins, and that it has made some progress but has much more to make.
The question of what makes America worthy of our love has
been a constant facet of our political discourse since the nation’s inception.
It is a vitally important debate and probably will never be truly resolved. But
our collective amor patriae must be more concrete than a flimsy belief
in “progress” if we hope to transcend the malaise of our current political
moment.
The patriotism of many contemporary progressives seems to
align with Levin’s description: a notion that America’s greatness is tied up in
its ability to become better than it was before. There is real value to this
form of oikophilia, to be sure. But it is also evanescent and
conditional. If one’s commitment to America is contingent on our society
continually evolving in the way one desires, then it is difficult to remain
attached to one’s country when the electorate produces undesirable political
outcomes or the culture is more resistant to one’s preferred changes than one
would like.
This is evident from the polling, which shows that the
number of Democrats who identified as proud to be American plummeted when Trump
was elected. Republicans, on the other hand, are relatively stable in their
reported patriotism, showing less concern for the partisan sympathies of any
given presidential administration. Significantly more worrying, however, is the
profound cultural shift that has accompanied this drop in liberal patriotism;
it now seems to be accepted fact in elite progressive circles that patriotism itself
is passé. The New York Times posts videos detailing
why “the myth of America as the greatest country on earth is at best outdated
and at worst wildly inaccurate,” while the paper’s Sunday magazine publishes
pieces on why “modern patriotism has become Kabuki citizenship.” Mic
waxes poetic about the dangers of “performative patriotism,” and our
intelligentsia informs us that “the
American dream is a myth.” New York governor Andrew Cuomo scoffs that “America was
never that great,” and former
cabinet members of the Obama administration agree. Professional athletes
continually remind us that they, too, find America unworthy of celebration.
One can understand how a patriotism conditioned on
political and cultural outcomes might falter in the current moment; indeed,
Americans of all partisan dispositions are rightly concerned for the civic
health of our nation. But I would urge my progressive friends to seek out a
richer, more robust understanding of what it means to love America, untethered
to the daily histrionics of Washington, D.C.
Patriotism in America has eminently rational
justification, for a multitude of reasons that need not be expounded upon; ours
is an exceptional nation, founded on a radical belief in human equality. The
nature of the American people is shaped by the that belief, and the other ideas
upon which the nation was founded. But patriotism is even more than the love of
our Constitution and the principles upon which it is founded, great as both
are. It is also a fond affection for all the inarticulable distinctions that
make our country ours: the quiet beauty of everyday American life,
incomprehensible to statistical measurement and invisible to the news cycle.
Regardless of partisanship and policy debate, our
political commitments should be manifestations of gratitude for our inheritance
rather than a rejection of it. A more tender politics begins with a deep
attachment to one’s little platoons, a love for one’s place and one’s people,
and an unerring affection for the shape of one’s society. This political
disposition does not mean perpetual resistance to change — a country without
the means to change is without the means of its own conservation — but it
transcends the desire for change as the sole determinant of one’s patriotism.
A desire to improve or better one’s country is admirable,
but it should not preclude one’s unreserved commitment to it. Humility is a
necessary antecedent to good governance. Our entire political class might do
well to remember as much.
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