Extreme far-leftists will naturally invite extreme far-rightists. Hence, it is not strange if radical cosmopolitanism invites ethnic nationalism. This is the phenomenon that we have observed everywhere over the past three decades, from the USA to the UK’s modern liberal democracy, to India and Thailand’s developing liberal democracy. Such extremism badly impacts the ivory tower, as it is not knowledge, but rather an unexamined ideology, that is generated following such a divide, producing at best jingoistic intellectuals on the one hand and radical liberal cosmopolites on the other.
In his response to such issues, Smith explains that patriotism is the most fundamental political virtue. He asserted that “Patriotism, in the most rudimentary sense, is a form of loyalty to one’s own, one’s people, one’s community, but especially to one’s constitution or political regime.” In the spirit of finding the middle ground, Steven B Smith reclaimed the very tenets of patriotism, in which both radical cosmopolitanism and nationalism miss the point of loyalty and respect among mankind.
Smith is surely more than aware of the most commonly read works related to one of the great authors of anti-patriotism, Leo Tolstoy, who saw in patriotism nothing more than a form of collective egoism that leads only to war and death. In his defense of what he calls enlightened patriotism, what worries him are the ongoings at the ivory tower, whereby educated circles seem to view it as morally questionable. However, patriotism is not at all on the verge of disappearing; far from it, the author explains.
In Chapter one (on Patriotism and Loyalty), he makes a case for the importance of patriotism, stressing the importance of loyalty and respect (two essential virtues). He claims that the project of cosmopolitanism negates the sentiment of loyalty towards the nationhood (thus, at best dystopia). Additionally, ethnic nationalism negates the importance of respect toward mankind, hence succumbing itself to the hatred of jingoism and xenophobia. There is nothing to be curious about when it comes to the universalistic nature of cosmopolitanism. After all, it is just a secular version of the Christian Commonwealth, and nothing is universalistic about it because it is the religious version of the Roman Empire.
In his attempt to unravel the dystopian cosmopolitanism argument in Chapter two (on Patriotism and Its Critics), Smith examines and criticizes some of the thinkers such as Martha Nussbaum and George Kateb, together with a few others. The strength of George Kateb’s idea against patriotism lies especially in his arguments for intellectual freedom, anti-fanaticism and a rejection of all forms of group thinking. Therefore, to him, patriotism is both incompatible and misleading. An advocate of cosmopolitan citizenship, Martha Nussbaum, invokes the model of ancient Stoicism to defend her views on cosmopolitan citizenship, referring to the Greek philosopher Diogenes, who called himself “a citizen of the world.” An important message that Smith intends to share with readers is that, although both nationalism and cosmopolitanism can arguably be a natural inclination, patriotism is something that has to be taught, or I take it to be understood as nationally constructed.
In Chapter three (on Patriotism, Ancient and Modern), he resurrects the enemy of Athens, the Spartans. According to him, the classics of patriotism can be found and learned. He argues that there are no other modern philosophers except Rousseau, who seriously brought the Spartan spirit to the surface, hence the spirit of patriotism. While the ideas of patriotism were discussed by others such as Montesquieu and Adam Smith, they are by large – according to Smith – and heavily influenced by the spirit of commercialism.
If there is a main thesis to be expected, it is in Chapter Four (on Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism) of his book, wherein he borrows Aristotle’s model of excess and deficiency. For him, patriotism is the right balance between these two extremes, in which excess love for one’s nation can succumb people to xenophobia and jingoism and deficient love for one’s nation but attraction to philosophical debate on human nature can succumb them to cosmopolitanism. It is in this balance that loyalty to one’s country and respect for mankind can be developed. However, this virtue is not in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and is an added value in the philosophy and ethics’ discourse.
Chapter Five (on Enlightened Patriotism) is about the enlightened patriot. This chapter can be understood as a case study. From among the many renowned people, in both political and religious spheres, the author seems to favor Abraham Lincoln more than the others. According to him, Lincoln married both politics and religion, signaling the idea of loving one’s country as analogous to loving one’s religion. It was Abraham Lincoln who said, “I love this country partly because it is my country and mainly because this is a free country.”
As indicated earlier, patriotism is a nationally constructed business. No one is born in this world with a patriotic inclination; hence, Smith argues that it has to be taught. However, he is also in a sense lamenting as to who can teach patriotism in a world so nationalistic or cosmopolitanistic, mimicking what Karl Marx once said, “Who should educate the educators?” With this core in mind, Smith asks us to look at the magna opera that guides humans toward civilization, from the books by Plato, to the speech of Abraham Lincoln, to the current works by contemporary philosophers.
Commenting on Smith’s work, I have three points to make:
There is a lot to be said about his claim that America is a creedal nation, perhaps the first in history. No one can deny that Americans subscribe to the principles set out in their founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. However, Americans cannot deny that the English Logos and Ethos are pervasive in that land, known as the Lockean Children. To claim it is a creedal nation is already an issue and to say that it is the first nation in the world is far-fetched, especially when there are many newly developed countries that are also creedal nations, except that they were not founded following liberalism such as communism and Islam.
His comments on Macintyre’s work with regards to MacIntyre’s distinction between the morality of patriotism and the morality of rational principle suggest that there is something irrational about patriotism, that it belongs to a lower level of morality – a morality of folk tales and communal ties, which implies that to be patriotic, one must always be rational. Why can it not be good with rationality? After all, what matters most is that higher rationality tames lower rationality. If one desires all citizens to be patriotic, they should include all dimensions of Eros and Tumos.
Similar to many products of the West, it is historically North American and European. It is difficult to bring these discussions to other lands to make us understand how it works in countries such as China or Iran, for example. An international addition is required to make sense of the idea. With that being said, such a book is more than needed in universities, or, to be more precise, among the educated who argue that patriotism is at best morally questionable. Such a book becomes urgent when choice and power are the only syllabus in political science. This book can be useful to guide not only elites but also the university masses. Nationalism, which is too often becoming exclusionary of others and cosmopolitanism, which can easily become dystopian and unrealistic, has to be both revisited and recalibrated to give more space to patriotism.
