Burke and Tocqueville: A Patriotism of Small Things, Part 2

AMERICA!

My country, ’tis of thee I sing!  Virgil sang of arms and a man, but I sing of a home, and a different kind of arms.

I have been studying abroad for the past five months, and am finally back in the good old US of A.  In my last post I talked about being gone from home for so long, and the odd sort of patriotism it has instilled with me: a “patriotism of small things” that comes despite–and sometimes because of–our nation’s flaws and idiosyncrasies, and especially its small ones.  Perhaps this “little patriotism” can be chalked up to homesickness, but I believe it goes further than that.

Although he calls it by a different name, Edmund Burke speaks of this “patriotism of small things” in his Reflections on the French Revolution. “To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind.”

This “little platoon” that Burke mentions is, I think, a much more eloquent stating of the beginning of a healthy patriotism that I have slowly discovered in being gone from the United States for so long.  Naturally, I have always loved my “little platoon”–my family, my city, my state–but in the past I think there was a certain amount of distance I placed between them and the America in my head. It took five months of being away for me to see how very american my city, my state, my family–and yes, especially myself–really are.

And that’s okay.  All these small things feed into the larger ones.  They are inextricably linked with one another, and influence each other more than I ever realized before being gone from them for so long.

Tocqueville, naturally, also speaks of the “patriotism of small things” in the early chapters of his Democracy in America; but for him, this patriotism is not enough. For Tocqueville, the greater kind of patriotism “is perhaps less generous and less ardent [than a patriotism of small things], but it is more fruitful and more lasting: it springs from knowledge; it is nurtured by the laws, it grows by the exercise of civil rights; and, in the end, it is confounded with the personal interests of the citizen.”

Tocqueville, like Burke, sees how patriotism grows from small things into greater ideals.  Tocqueville’s “greater patriotism” is grounded in the “patriotism of small things”–and I do not think it could exist without them.

Personally, I had (and still have) a tendency to separate my “patriotism of small things” from my “greater patriotism”–I ardently love the former, while sometimes squeamishly professing the second.  But the two are interconnected.  We must actively engage with the greater things in order to protect the small things–even if the small things are easier to wholeheartedly embrace.

I can’t say that being away has made me unreservedly pro-American.  I still don’t buy American Exceptionalism.  I have qualms and quibbles with our government, and hope that I always will.  But being gone from the United States for so long as given me a newfound appreciation for my own “little platoon,” and by extension has made me–I hope–a better citizen.