In explaining his recent open letter to Vladimir Putin (reproduced below), Sergei Karjakin tweeted:
"My answer is simple. I am on the side of Russia and my President . . . . No matter what happens, I will support my country in any situation without thinking for a second!"
This is a guy who can spend up to an hour thinking about the right move in a championship level chess game. He became a grandmaster at age 12 (a record at the time), and played Magnus Carlsen for the World Championship in 2018. (He self- destructed, as everyone who plays Magnus seems to do; I felt sorry for him at the time, but I no longer do).
This should stand as one more reminder of how dangerous "patriotism" can be. "Patriotism" is essentially an unthinking devotion to one's country, with the implicit premise that one's country is better than any other country. In extreme cases, it becomes "my country can do no wrong," or else "my country -- right or wrong." Sometimes, as in the case of the January 6 attacks, it can be invoked by those who are attacking the government itself -- e.g. "I'm a patriot because I happen to think that Donald Trump is good for America and that the election was stolen."
The MAGA movement demonstrates that you get to call yourself a patriot even if you don't like what the country is currently doing, but still love the country and hope to restore what you consider to have been its past glory.
Less blatantly stupid but more perniciously, nobody can be elected to any U.S. office unless they call themselves a "patriot" and talk about the greatness of our country.
But patriotism in all its forms is dangerous nonsense.
The "my country right or wrong" catch-phrase, which was Tom Cruise's mantra in Born on the Fourth of July, apparently stems from a drunken toast given by Stephen Decatur at a Democratic-Republican party dinner back in 1816 after our "victory" in the war of 1812 and his own victory over the Barbary pirates in 1815. Here's what Decatur said:
"Our country -- In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, and always successful, right or wrong."
The Hampton Roads Naval Museum blog contends that
In this context, Decatur's toast is not a call for undying, blind patriotic devotion to one's country as the expression is often used in modern political discourse. It is rather a prayer for guidance, wisdom, and temperance in foreign relations.
I can't say that I read it that way -- to me it ends by wishing for his country's success, whether his country is right or wrong -- regardless of the cost in human lives and suffering -- which is pretty much what Karjakin is doing. Be that as it may, here are a bunch of quotes about patriotism that are worth pondering:
The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause. (Eric Hoffer)
Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them! (Einstein)
One would expect the harmfulness and irrationality of patriotism to be evident to everybody. (Tolstoy)
It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind (Voltaire).
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons. (Bertrand Russell)
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it. (George Bernard Shaw)
One of the great attractions of patriotism -- it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous. (Aldous Huxley)
Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched. (Guy de Maupassant)
Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it. (Denis Diderot)
What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends. (Ambrose Bierce)
Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. (Ambrose Bierce)
The final five make the point I've been making -- that we need to come together as a world sometime real soon, and mindless "patriotism" is a barrier to that:
I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world. (Eugene V. Debs)
Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism. (George Orwell)
The most tragic paradox of our time is to be found in the failure of nation-states to recognize the imperatives of internationalism. (Earl Warren)
It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars. (Arthur C. Clarke)
You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race. (George Bernard Shaw)
If you search for quotes about patriotism, these are in the minority. Many in the majority are well-intentioned -- they try to draw lines between patriotism and nationalism, and they claim that dissent in one's own country can be a form of patriotism, since it demonstrates how much one loves one's country. But all of that seems pretty empty and pointless to me. Patriotism qua patriotism is just as pernicious and useless as the quotes above make it out to be. Anything that might seem "justified" as a matter of "patriotism" can readily be justified on better grounds. Yes, the Ukrainians fighting for Ukraine are loyal to Ukraine and the Ukrainian way of life, and thus can be said to be "patriots." But there must be a better term for the willingness to fight against an invading authoritarian army. What's the sense in having a term that only really makes sense in wartime, as Diderot points out?
Back to Karjakin, which appears to be an example of blind patriotism at its very worst:
On the other hand, it could equally be (1) evidence of how effective the Russian propaganda machine is, or (2) political propaganda itself. It might be worth pointing out that this was first reported on February 27, only a few days after the war had begun, and before it was clear just how much suffering Putin was willing to inflict on the Ukrainian people.
But let's not let Sergei off the hook so easily. He possesses an extremely rare skill of being able to analyze situations from both sides and come to the most rational conclusion. He could have waited for more data to come in, and he could have questioned his sources of information. But he seems to have thrown that away for the sake of patriotism, which again makes my point of how harmful patriotism can be.
