Say No to Patriotism

Last week we had Saint George’s day, apparently. It always seems to cause a lot of fuss. On one side, people saying it ought to be a national holiday to ‘celebrate’ being British; on the other, people complaining that the patriotic sentiment might upset ethnic minorities.

Me, I think both arguments are without merit.

I don’t believe there are many Asians (or Italians or Lithuanians) out there who could give a toss whether it’s a holiday or not. Why should they?

As to celebrating being British, well, hey, if anyone wants to do that—whatever. I see patriotism as a pointless and sometimes harmful mindset based on no fact other than: ‘This is my country, ergo it’s brilliant!’ I certainly don’t want to hear rubbish about how great the British Empire was—I mean, yeah, we invaded a lot of other countries and took them over. We won a few pissing contests. Whoopee doo.

Britain has given birth to a lot of great art. There’s a good argument. But so has every other significant culture in the world; the art comes from the individual, regardless of their culture/nationality. We aren’t a great country because we ‘produced’ Shakespeare or Milton or Tolkien or _____ [name of your choice]; that greatness belongs to the people named and no one else. We aren’t a great country because our language is the most widely used; that’s a result of our history of invasion proliferating the language, which is only great if you think military force is something to be proud of. We aren’t a great country because the person who invented football happened to be British. Etc.

Individuals are great. Great individuals are to be admired. Countries are just lumps of rock or contrived boundaries. Am I proud to be British? I’m indifferent. (I could add, of course, that the squalid Iraq affair was a wonderful case for shame rather than pride.) It’s a geographical fact. Where my original roots lie is anyone’s guess, and just as irrelevant as where I happened to be born. I think there are better things to celebrate than geographical location, and genuine self-esteem never came from embracing false values.

Pride in being British (or American or Asian or whatever) is a false value because it implies so many things that are patently untrue: there is nothing innately great about the British individual that comes simply from being British, just as there’s nothing innately evil about, say, the Austrian individual that comes simply from being Austrian. A sound equation can always be reversed. This one can’t. Hitler was a bad individual. His country needn’t think his example represents everyone from that particular location. And they don’t. A country that produces a noted force for evil seeks to transcend it (rightly); but a country that produces a noted force for greatness seeks to cover itself as a whole with that greatness (falsely).

The emphasis is only on the individual when it’s a bad thing, then. I believe the emphasis should remain on the individual whatever the case. I don’t have a desire to cover myself with someone else’s achievements—do you?