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'Right or wrong, our country' is a popular but flawed expression of patriotism; a morally responsible patriot, on the other hand, tries to protect and improve her country’s moral character

Naval officer Stephen Decatur is said to have once exclaimed, during a toast: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!” 

While dinner toasts may fail to capture a speaker’s considered views, “right or wrong, our country!” has been repeated so often that we can safely assume it resonates widely, whether or not it reflects a position Decatur earnestly held. But is a true patriot someone who says, “right or wrong, our country!”? And is that what a patriot should say? These are the questions that interest me here.  

Iskra Fileva

There is a view of patriotism, perhaps the dominant view, on which the answer is “yes.” Patriotism on this view involves unquestioning loyalty to one’s country.  

This is not to suggest that loyalty is all there is to patriotism. There are varieties of blind allegiance that hardly anyone would recognize as patriotism. Consider the attitude of two soldiers described by Shakespeare in . At one point in the play, the king, in an attempt to boost the morale of his troops, disguises himself as an ordinary soldier. He approaches two men, Williams and Bates, and says, “Methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the King’s company, his cause being just and his quarrel honourable.” Williams replies, “That’s more than we know.” Bates goes further: “Ay, or more than we should seek after. For we know enough if we know we are the King’s subjects. If his cause be wrong, our obedience to the King wipes the crime of it out of us.”

Williams and Bates here see themselves as hitmen for the king, but without a moral burden. They are following the orders of an authority figure. Whether or not one can avoid responsibility by pleading this kind of defense is a question I leave to one side (the strategy didn’t work for Eichmann); more importantly for present purposes, patriots on the view under consideration are advocates for and champions of their country. They do not wash their hands of responsibility, as King Henry’s troops do. Rather, like advocates, they prefer that their country be in the right; but like champions, they are prepared to defend it come what may. They do this, presumably, because they love their country and care about its plight. Blindly carrying out orders, as Bates and Williams do, without consideration of the justice of the cause or a sense of responsibility for the outcome, is not yet patriotism on the view under discussion.

Patriotism thus understood is an improvement over Bates’s and Williams’s attitude, but is it a good thing?  

We may have sympathy with the (all too human) tendency to fight for one’s group. Still, to have a weak concern at best for what is right and just objectively speaking is irresponsible, morally so. A person who disregards morality for the sake of one’s own aims is an egoist. A person who disregards it for the sake of one’s nation is a tribalist and a jingoist.

To be sure, it is rare for a properly socialized person to openly flaunt moral imperatives, so a groupish person may be inclined, instead, try to persuade herself that her side always was and always will be in right. But to assert such a thing is irresponsible too, morally speaking, and not too different from maintaining that we, personally, like the biblical Jesus, can do no wrong. The flaw in this type of reasoning is much easier to recognize in the individual case compared to the collective one, but there is a flaw in both cases, and of a similar origin.  

Is it morally irresponsible, then, to be a patriot?

Some wish to argue that it is. It has been suggested that patriotism is not a good attitude to have or to teach to our children and that perhaps, many an unjust war would be prevented but for the idea that patriotism is commendable.

Though I, personally, consider myself a cosmopolitan humanist, I think the above conclusion is far too quick. There is a vision of patriotism that’s morally defensible and that may have advantages over my own cosmopolitan leanings. One can argue, and plausibly, that patriots care about their country’s moral standing. They would not want their country to get embroiled in unjust wars or the perpetration of atrocities for which history may judge it harshly, and for which future generations may bear national guilt.

It is something like this second idea of patriotism that general Schurz seems to have had in mind when, in , he admonishes readers to stick to true patriotism and amends the popular exclamation associated with Decatur’s after-dinner toast to: “Our country—if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.” The writer , perhaps more poignantly, writes in this regard, “‘My country, right or wrong’” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.”

The reason I think that patriotism—in this version—has advantages over my cosmopolitan stance is that in a world of rampant tribalism, patriots of the second kind are well positioned to provide an antidote to blind loyalty of the morally irresponsible variety.

This vision of patriotism, however, is far less popular than the first. Why?    

I think it is because we tend to suspect that the person who claims to be concerned with objective morality and impartial justice lacks loyalty; that she doesn’t see herself as “one of us.” Perhaps, she engages in a pseudo-intellectual attempt to demonstrate refined moral sensibilities by rejecting her roots. Maybe, she is even ashamed of the members of her group.

And it is true that one may criticize what one takes to be one’s country’s moral failings due not to a loving and patriotic concern for the nation’s “moral soul,” but for other reasons including not only a serious commitment to moral principles—which no morally serious person can oppose—but less honorable motives. There may well be people who seek to show that they, personally, are not narrow-minded xenophobes by disparaging their own country.

A default assumption to the effect that one’s own nation is in the wrong is not morally sound either, of course. A cause doesn’t become morally just because it is adopted by an adversary any more than it becomes morally right because it is adopted by our group. But the morally responsible patriot knows this and acts accordingly. She is not someone who tries to prove her own ethics credentials by denigrating her country but rather, someone who tries to protect and improve her country’s moral character.

Perhaps, patriotism à la Decatur is popular, because we feel certain that patriots of this kind, particularly among compatriots, have their hearts in the right place, and this is what we care about. Or maybe, we think it is morally permissible, objectively speaking, to side with one’s own group no matter what. Consider the old joke about loyal friends: A good friend, they say, would help you move a couch. A really good friend would help you move a body.

It is unclear that friendship is the analogy relevant here. Family relations may be a better analogy. It may be permissible for us—though why, precisely, is a separate question—to care more about the well-being and reputation of our friends than we do about their moral characters. Family members, on the other hand, bear at least some responsibility for each other, including for each other’s moral failings. Suppose, however, that friendship were the relevant analogy. The second and more important point is that the question is not whether a really good friend would help you move a body but whether she would help you commit murder and other offenses.

It is difficult to see how a true friend would do that. Same for a true patriot.  

Iskra Fileva is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado Boulder. This essay appeared originally in the .