Patriotism: The Supreme Political Virtue

“Here, Smith steps in, and he admirably makes a case to both the Left and the Right that patriotism is a worthy political virtue in need of resuscitation here in the United States.”

“What is the American, this new man?”

J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur famously posed this question in 1782 in Letters from an American Farmer, and it lurks beneath the surface of much of the tension and discontent of modern American politics. This same pivotal question animates Yale political theorist Steven B. Smith’s splendid new book, Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes.

Smith wrote a book “for this moment” because what it means to be an American—and to be a loyal and patriotic American, in particular—is in a period of immense flux. The standard “American creed” of constitutional democracy, individual liberty, and economic opportunity—along with its heroes like Abraham Lincoln and its key moments like the Founding—is under fire from certain extremes. Many on the populist right are seeking to upend the American creed, a creed of principles, in favor of a sort of blood-and-soil nationalism. On the Left, there are Kantian cosmopolitans who reject the very concepts of the nation-state and borders as immoral, as well as others who are animated by matters of race and identity, and who frame American history as an unending train of oppression on these fronts. In this telling of the American story, neither America nor its principles are worthy of loyalty or praise. Patriotism is scoffed at. Here, Smith steps in, and he admirably makes a case to both the Left and the Right that patriotism is a worthy political virtue in need of resuscitation here in the United States.

To the Left, Smith explains that patriotism is “above all a form of loyalty,” namely, loyalty to one’s country. Patriotic loyalty, writes Smith, is akin to loyalty to one’s family. By loving and being loyal to one’s family, one does not think that his family is morally superior to other families somehow. One simply loves and esteems his family because it is his: “It is not that we believe our house is better than any other house, but it is ours and it makes us feel at home. Patriotism is like inhabiting such a place.” We are not wrong to love and care for our own—our own family members, our own homes, our fellow citizens, and our common country. This is natural. And, given the inescapable fact that we are limited, embodied beings, there is a strong case to be made that we have a moral duty to love and care for those closest to us first. After all, they are the ones that our limited physical, emotional, and mental resources have the best chances of positively impacting.