ROBYN E.BLUMNER
To cut to the chase and answer the question in the title; yes, patriotism is a humanist value – if you are an American.
America is a nation built on the ideals of the Enlightenment, a movement that had its beginnings in seventeenth – century Europe. That movement rejected religious dogmatism and instead looked to critical thinking, reason, and rationalism to understand the world and guide human affairs. The Enlightenment embraced science and the scientific method. It imbued individuals with personal dignity and agency, meaning that government was circumscribed, and tolerance was the watchword. Inexorably, it led to an embrace of democracy and self-determination with no monarchs, emperors, or Popes at the helm.
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That is humanism at its core.
America was the first nation founded on these principles, though others thankfully followed to one degree or another. People like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine were thoroughly familiar with Enlightenment writers and set out to create a republic reflecting the secular and humanist values that previously had been more matters for philosophers than statesmen. Religious freedom and the separation of church and state were radical notions in the eighteenth century (that tip to Roger Williams for being its earliest proponent and practitioner) as full-on self government and individual rights to due process, equal protection of law, and freedom of speech and conscience.
Notoriously, not everyone was originally covered by this magnificent inheritance. We all are now. I recently took a trip to Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. It was a stark reminder of the contrasts of a man and visionary who was so ahead of his time yet so much stuck in the mire of his day. The degradation of slavery is apparent everywhere as it was largely enslaved people who built the house and tended the estate that Jefferson designed. Yet we can tour this extraordinary home today due to the efforts of Uriah Levy, a Jewish naval commodore, who bought the home soon after Jefferson’s death to salvage it from ruin and who began the efforts at restoration. He did so, he said, to honor the man who established religious freedom and allowed the Levy family to flourish largely without the persecutions of old Europe.
Jefferson was deeply sceptical of religion, knew well of its pernicious history of persecution, and was disgusted by the poison it inflicted on society. He wrote in an 1816 letter :
On the dogmas of religion as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarrelling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind. He was also notably proudest of his achievements to excise religion from government. Jefferson famously directed that his tombstone note only three accomplishments: as author of the Declaration of Independence, the statute of Virginia for religious freedom (the forerunner to the First Amendment’s religion clause), and the founder of the University of Virginia, the first non demominational institution of higher learning and one with no chaplain and no place of worship in Jefferson’s designs.
These were essential building blocks of a secular society.
America’s founding principles are a realignment of the relationship between the people and government, granting each person’s individuality a sphere of autonomy. That transformation was revolution in thinking. It presumes people are rational actors and that enlightened self-interest will spur a virtuous circle that enhances society as a whole. It presumes that freedom will lead to progress, not chaos, and that people can be largely trusted to set their own course. We would no longer be subjects but citizens:
Again, humanism at its core
For those Christian nationalists who now claim that America was founded as a Christian nation, Thomas Jefferson and the Founders like him stand as impregnable rebuttal.
For those who claim America is nothing more than an experiment in racism, colonialism, patriarchy, and the genocide of native peoples, I say those were not the aspirations, of the men who draw upon the best ideas ever laid down in writing as their blueprint for a new nation. It would take another fifty-one years after the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment granted the franchise to African American men before women would get the vote. Yet we don’t dismiss that human advancement because it was not everything for all people all at once. We celebrate victories, partial as they are, and the people behind them, rather than molder in resentment because some were still left behind. In other words, we should celebrate our nation’s Founders for what they accomplished rather than abjure them for not going far enough.
America is a great nation, worthy of pride and even love. It is not perfect, nor will it ever be. But by expanding the circle of people for whom its founders’ ideals- humanist ideals- apply. It is a more perfect union now than at any time in the past.
Humanists need to remember that. Because if patriotism becomes solely the province of the extreme political Right, if those on the political Left only see America as irredeemably racist and sexist from its inception to now, we will give up our ability to assert the Enlightenment values for which this country truly stands. We will have given away our precious inheritance- and for what in return?
The ability to sneer at old White men – men who built a new form of government with democracy and liberty as its foundation?
The ability to performatively claim that slavery was a monstrous wrong and everyone should have known better – even as it was routinely practiced across the globe from time immemorial? The ability to loudly denounce the inequalities of modern American life- a life where nearly everyone enjoys a standard of living far above that of their forebears?
How about a little perspective?
Humanists should be patriots because expressing pride and love of America is a way to protect the best parts of this nation. It is a way to declare a shared stake in this democratic enterprise. It is a way to see each other as fellow citizens and not warring tribes. It is a way to advance the humanists ideals, established by humanist men who gave us a fighting chance to live as we each would choose. To my mind, there was no greater gift in history. Humanists should cherish it.
Courtesy : Free Inquiry – Aug-Sep.2023
