Patriotism is a fine hothouse for maggots
This is an except from The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett, first in The Lymond Chronicles. I was reading it a while ago and this part really struck me, so I copied it out. In light of the events to take place today and the events of the past eight years, I thought I would post it. It is one of the first times I’ve actually understood the concept of patriotism and my own struggle with its concept.
"If you can’t tell the difference between loyalty and treason, Mr. Crawford," said the Bishop, "then you are certainly safer hanged."
The Master’s eyes studied him. "Why, can you?"
"As long," said Orkney broadly, "as I know the difference between right and wrong."
"Yes. The position is very similar. Patriotism," said Lymond, "like honesty is a luxury with a very high face value which is quickly pricing itself out of the spiritual market altogether."
"Feeling for one’s country," said the Lord Advocate softly, "is not usually considered as a freestanding riddle in ethics…"
The easy voice lifted the comment and the topic, and carried them to deeper waters. "No. It is an emotion as well, and of course the emotion comes first. A child’s home and the ways of its life are sacrosanct, perfect, inviolate to the child. Add age, add security, add experience. In time we all admit our relatives and our neighbours, our fellow townsmen and even, perhaps, at last our fellow nationals to the threshold of tolerance. But the man living one inch beyond the boundary is an inveterate foe."
He laced his long fingers and raised them, his gaze resting on the exposed palms. "Patriotism is a fine hothouse for maggots. It breeds intolerance; it forces a spindle-legged, spurious riot of colour…. A man of only moderate powers enjoys the special sanction of purpose, the sense of ceremony; the echo of mysterious, lost and royal things; a trace ofthe broad, plain childish virtures of myth and legend and balland. He wants advancement-what simpler way is there? He’s tired of the little seasons and looks for movement and change and an edge of peril and excitment; he enjoys the flowering of small talents lost in the dry courses of daily life. For all these reasons, men at least once in their lives move the finger which will take them to battle for their country…..
"Patriotism," said Lymond again, "It’s an opulent word, a mighty key to a royal Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. Patriotism; loyalty; a true conviction that of all the troubled and striving world, the soil of one’s fathers is noblest and best. A celestial competition for the best breed of man; a vehicle for shedding boredom and exercising surplus power or surplus talents or surplus money; an immature and bigoted intolerance which becomes the coin of barter in the markets of power–"
Into the silence, the Master spoke gently. "These are not patriots but martyrs, dying in cheerful self-interest as the Christians died in the pleasant conviction of grace, leaving their example by chance to brood beneath the water and rise, miraculously, to refresh the centuries. The cry is raised: Our land is glorious under the sun. I have a need to believe it, they say. It is a virture to believe it; and therefore I shall wring from this unassuming clod a passion and a power and a selflessness that otherwise would be laid unquickened in the grave."
With the unfettered freedom of his voice, with the disciplined and freindly ardours of his mind, he made it plain where he was leading them.
"And who shall say they are wrong?" said Lymond. "There are those who will always cleave to the living country, and who with their uprooted imaginations might well make of it an instrument for good. Is it quite beyond us in this land? Is there no one will take up this priceless thing and say, Here is a nation, with such a soul; with such talents; with these failings and this native worth? In what fashion can this one people be brought to live in full vigour and serenity, and who, in their compassion and wisdom, will take it and lead it into the path?"