Hugo Schwyzer

Sudy recently returned from a long working trip to the Philippines. (I visited, very briefly, in January.)

She reflects on her love for America:

In my years as a social justice and human rights advocate, I have never uttered the phrase out loud: “I love my country.” There are too many things I’ve seen to be able to say that phrase out aloud without qualifying what exactly it is that I love when there are so many things I can’t stand. But, inside, I have a deep love for my country despite all the tragedy, sin, mistakes, and horrible history of slavery, war, and cowboy politics…

In my work with other social justice advocates, they remain hostile to their citizenship and the stars and stripes. They balk at the soaring bald eagle and roll their eyes at the fireworks on the 4th of July. I remain silent, wondering how to both love and resist your citizenship.

Sudy notes that in other countries, far more self-described progressives seem to have an easier time expressing patriotic feeling, presumably because their nations wield less might.

Her post had me thinking about my own mixed feelings about America. Like Sudy, I am torn. When I watched the Republican convention last night, and heard the crowd burst into a spontaneous chant of “USA! USA! USA!”, I did indeed roll my eyes. I didn’t watch the Democratic convention (I was out of the country), but would have had the same response. It’s not just my presumption about the politics of those chanting it, it’s the implication of superiority I hear in the chant itself.

I realize I’m a bit of a caricature. A forty-something Berkeley-educated, Volvo-driving, NPR-listening, Pilates-doing, vegan gender studies professor on his fourth marriage is the sort of person easy for conservatives to ridicule. (Actually, I’m pretty easy for people across the political spectrum to ridicule, but let that pass.) I also have something most Americans don’t have, which is a second passport. Though on my mother’s side I’m a sixth-generation Californian and a thirteenth-generation American, my father was an Austrian war refugee raised in England. I have, as a result, two citizenships and two passports. (I travel on both, following the “shortest line” rule.) And in a real sense, it means multiple allegiances.

When I first went to DC many years ago, I ran the mall at dawn. Alone except for park security, I jogged up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at sunrise to gaze at that most magnificent of statues. I turned to look at the capitol, and felt goosebumps (not just from the morning chill). At that moment, my thought was “This is my country, and I love it.” I was seduced, as it is so easy to be seduced in Washington, by the grandeur of the architecture. But I was also connecting to hundreds of years of family history. (My mother, should she want to, could be in the Colonial Dames or the Daughters of the American Revolution. I can’t think of many things that would appeal to her less.)

I was just in London last week, and did my dutiful run through the parks of the west part of town, including Green and St. James. I ran by Buckingham Palace and the houses of Parliament again at dawn. And not for the first time, I felt the same thrill I felt at the Lincoln Memorial — especially when I’m filled with endorphins, grand architecture easily moves me. And though my ties to the UK are more tenuous, in both a legal and an emotional sense it is my country as well. Elizabeth is my Queen, I suppose, just as George is (for just a few months more), my president. I didn’t vote for either, but I honor the offices they hold and feel a very mild and limited sense of duty to both.

Of course, in the final analysis I’m not patriotic for either the United States or the United Kingdom. It’s not because I hold two citizenships, and it’s not because I’m filled with a reflexive hatred of Anglo-American global hegemony. It’s because in the end, my faith as a Christian tells me that my first loyalty is to Christ, not Caesar, to all of Creation and not to Rome. Presidents and Queens are modern-day Caesars; large nation-states like the ones in which I hold citizenship are the successors to Rome. Scripture tells me that I owe obedience to the state only insofar as the demands of the civil authority do not conflict with my higher duty to Christ and to Creation. I am, in Stanley Hauerwas’ felicitous phrase, a “resident alien” wherever I am.

But recognizing that loyalty to Christ and conscience trumps loyalty to state doesn’t mean I can’t love America. I do love America, and have been fortunate to see many parts of it. Many things which are uniquely American bring me great delight (starting, say, with a tremendous fondness for peanut butter and college football.) But the primary love I feel is for place rather than for country. When I walk the hills of my family’s ranch in Northern California, I feel something that I don’t feel in D.C. or in London or anywhere else — a deep sentimental sense that this is my truest home, at least in this world. I’ve been on six continents in my life, traveled to at least two dozen other countries, but when I come down the dusty ranch road again, I say to myself, “Home, Hugo, home.”

Devotion to the familiar is my form of patriotism. Patriotism comes from “patria” — land of the fathers. The word “familiar”, of course, comes from “family.” I have a special affection for what is part of my heritage, what is familiar to me. It’s an emotional response based on personal history, not an objective conclusion about which nation is the finest in the world. I don’t love Northern California because it is objectively the best place in the world — I love it because I feel at home there. I don’t love America because I think we’re a better nation than, say, Austria or Argentina or the Philippines. It’s like my marriage: I love my wife more than I love any other woman, but I don’t claim that my wife is objectively the best woman in the entire world. It is enough that I think that she is, and like to think the sentiment is returned. It is not unreasonable to assume that many peeple all over the world feel that same way about their countries. But in the end, Christ comes before even my wife, just as He does before my nation(s).

I’ve written many times of my love for sports. I always have mixed feelings about country vs. country competitions, even though I enjoy the World Cup and the Olympics. My favorite football (soccer) tournaments in the world are the club cups. When Manchester United plays, say, Real Madrid, the squads are multi-racial as can be. There’s far less opportunity in those matches for ugly nationalism than there is, say, when Spain plays England. Players can play for different countries, true, but it’s much easier to shift clubs. I like that flexibility, and the chance to shift allegiances that it symbolizes. I’d never wear a USA or England soccer jersey. I’d happily wear a Galaxy or a Newcastle United replica kit, however. Somehow the latter seems less political, less confrontational, less tinged with the potential for ugliness.

I’m dissatisfied with this post, as it seems to be rambling. I’ll let it draw to a close, then, with a quote from Edward Abbey which has long been my maxim in these matters:

My loyalties will not be bound by national borders, or confined in time by one nation’s history, or limited in the spiritual dimension by one language or culture. I pledge my allegiance to the damned human race, and my everlasting love to the green hills of Earth, and my intimations of glory to the singing stars, to the very end of space and time.

If we want to transform the world, placing a great deal of faith in individual nation states seems to be a particularly lousy way to do it. Saving the environment, protecting the poor and vulnerable (both human and otherwise) is something individual countries can do less effectively, in the end, then trans-national institutions and global communities of committed activists. Countries, by their very nature, have borders. Those borders say: “What’s inside matters more to us than what is outside.” In a world so inter-connected, that’s an ultimately irresponsible position to take.