Thoughts on This Fourth of July

Some of us are read­ing through C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves this sum­mer for the Chi Alpha Sum­mer Read­ing Project. Every oth­er week I’ll post some reflec­tions on the read­ings.

When I laid out the read­ing sched­ule for The Four Loves, I did­n’t real­ize that we would read Lewis’ remarks on patri­o­tism on the fourth of July. How delight­ful!

I’ve actu­al­ly writ­ten about this chap­ter of The Four Loves before, so I’ll take a slight­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion today.

Lewis cel­e­brates the love of coun­try as one of the most basic of loves. He points out that the love of your nation is an indis­pens­able part of lov­ing all of human­i­ty.

As the fam­i­ly offers us the first step beyond self-love, so this offers us the first step beyond fam­i­ly self­ish­ness.… those who do not love the fel­low-vil­lagers or the fel­low-towns­men whom they have seen are not like­ly to have got very far towards lov­ing ‘Man’ whom they have not.

This wor­ries some peo­ple, because does­n’t lov­ing your coun­try lead to a dis­like of oth­ers? Not at all! One of the virtues of healthy patri­o­tism is that it allows you to love and respect peo­ple from oth­er nations.

[This kind of patri­o­tism] becomes mil­i­tant only to pro­tect what it loves. In any mind which has a pen­ny­worth of imag­i­na­tion it pro­duces a good atti­tude towards for­eign­ers. How can I love my home with­out com­ing to realise that oth­er men, no less right­ly, love theirs? Once you have realised that the French­men like cafe com­plet just as we like bacon and eggs—why, good luck to them and let them have it. The last thing we want is to make every­where else just like our own home. It would not be home unless it were dif­fer­ent.

By con­trast, a dis­dain for your own nation will lead to dis­dain for oth­ers. Part of cel­e­brat­ing diver­si­ty is real­iz­ing that you con­tribute to it. Your cul­ture can enrich a for­eign­er just as much as their cul­ture can enrich you, and so to deny them by pre­tend­ing there is noth­ing good about your cul­ture is cru­el.

This does­n’t mean that you need to ignore the flaws of your nation. Lewis devotes sev­er­al pages in this chap­ter to help­ing peo­ple sort through the fact that “the actu­al his­to­ry of every coun­try is full of shab­by and even shame­ful things.” Much of what he says reminds me of the way G.K. Chester­ton talked about patri­o­tism in Ortho­doxy chap­ter 5, “The Flag of This World.” Chesterton’s point is that patri­ots see the flaws of their nation and grieve them. It is because peo­ple love their nation that they want to fix it.

The fol­low­ing from the afore­men­tioned Chester­ton chap­ter is one of my favorite quotes of all time — I beg you to read through it slow­ly.

Let us sup­pose we are con­front­ed with a des­per­ate thing—say Pim­li­co [Glen’s note: Pim­li­co is part of Lon­don]. If we think what is real­ly best for Pim­li­co we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mys­tic and the arbi­trary. It is not enough for a man to dis­ap­prove of Pim­li­co: in that case he will mere­ly cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, cer­tain­ly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pim­li­co: for then it will remain Pim­li­co, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for some­body to love Pim­li­co: to love it with a tran­scen­den­tal tie and with­out any earth­ly rea­son. If there arose a man who loved Pim­li­co, then Pim­li­co would rise into ivory tow­ers and gold­en pin­na­cles; Pim­li­co would attire her­self as a woman does when she is loved. For dec­o­ra­tion is not giv­en to hide hor­ri­ble things: but to dec­o­rate things already adorable. A moth­er does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly with­out it. A lover does not give a girl a neck­lace to hide her neck. If men loved Pim­li­co as moth­ers love chil­dren, arbi­trar­i­ly, because it is THEIRS, Pim­li­co in a year or two might be fair­er than Flo­rence. Some read­ers will say that this is a mere fan­ta­sy. I answer that this is the actu­al his­to­ry of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the dark­est roots of civ­i­liza­tion and you will find them knot­ted round some sacred stone or encir­cling some sacred well. Peo­ple first paid hon­our to a spot and after­wards gained glo­ry for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

When a lot of us tru­ly, sin­cere­ly, and earnest­ly love Amer­i­ca over time, our love (and the efforts that spring from it) will trans­form Amer­i­ca. That’s what has hap­pened in the past, and God will­ing it will con­tin­ue into the future.

Lewis writes about more than patri­o­tism in this chap­ter, and I com­mend the rest of it to you. But today is the Fourth of July, and love of nation seemed like the right theme to focus on. So from me, from C.S. Lewis, and from G.K. Chester­ton: hap­py Inde­pen­dence Day!