By Mitchell Chan, Deputy Director of Public Relations
The latest Polybian symposium brought another sizable crowd to Baltimore Avenue on Thursday. The question of the hour revolved around patriotism, long a polarizing and complex subject for political thinkers and social commentators alike. Predictably, it didn’t take much to get the discussion off the ground.
A significant block of discussion focused on actually defining the word “patriotism.” To some, patriotism is simply acknowledgment one’s country of birth. To others, patriotism involves a deeper emotional investment in the affairs and values of that country. Still others believe that patriotism has more to do with loyalty to a living community of individuals than to any geographic location. The picture becomes even more complicated when ethnicity, immigration and emigration, partisanship, and sports teams (2014 World Cup, anyone?) enter the equation.
In typical Polybian fashion, much debate centered on an analogy. At least six people reiterated the comparison between patriotism and loyalty to one’s family, an idea first introduced by Questor Kyle Tebo. Granted, it’s not the most clean-cut parallel, it’s probably not a coincidence that it often doesn’t take much to identify Americans traveling in foreign lands as such. Culturally speaking, Americans kind of are one big (if slightly dysfunctional) family.
It therefore wasn’t surprising that American exceptionalism came up repeatedly, especially in the later stages of the debate. American history is sprinkled with highly-memorable examples of patriotic expression, from the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima to images of George W. Bush standing courageously atop collapsed skyscrapers with his megaphone after 9/11. As one Polybian aptly pointed out, even the soldiers who first fought for independence during the Revolution referred to themselves not as “Americans” or “The Anti-Brits,” but as “Patriots.” Being patriotic has often been seen as a central tenet of what it means to be an American.
By the end of the evening, only one concept seemed universally accepted—patriotism is as sensitive, multi-faceted, and brain-energizing a subject as politics itself. Nobody broke out into a loud “Helan Går” rendition, but I’d say it was a productive Polybian evening indeed.
The latest Polybian symposium brought another sizable crowd to Baltimore Avenue on Thursday. The question of the hour revolved around patriotism, long a polarizing and complex subject for political thinkers and social commentators alike. Predictably, it didn’t take much to get the discussion off the ground.
A significant block of discussion focused on actually defining the word “patriotism.” To some, patriotism is simply acknowledgment one’s country of birth. To others, patriotism involves a deeper emotional investment in the affairs and values of that country. Still others believe that patriotism has more to do with loyalty to a living community of individuals than to any geographic location. The picture becomes even more complicated when ethnicity, immigration and emigration, partisanship, and sports teams (2014 World Cup, anyone?) enter the equation.
In typical Polybian fashion, much debate centered on an analogy. At least six people reiterated the comparison between patriotism and loyalty to one’s family, an idea first introduced by Questor Kyle Tebo. Granted, it’s not the most clean-cut parallel, it’s probably not a coincidence that it often doesn’t take much to identify Americans traveling in foreign lands as such. Culturally speaking, Americans kind of are one big (if slightly dysfunctional) family.
It therefore wasn’t surprising that American exceptionalism came up repeatedly, especially in the later stages of the debate. American history is sprinkled with highly-memorable examples of patriotic expression, from the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima to images of George W. Bush standing courageously atop collapsed skyscrapers with his megaphone after 9/11. As one Polybian aptly pointed out, even the soldiers who first fought for independence during the Revolution referred to themselves not as “Americans” or “The Anti-Brits,” but as “Patriots.” Being patriotic has often been seen as a central tenet of what it means to be an American.
By the end of the evening, only one concept seemed universally accepted—patriotism is as sensitive, multi-faceted, and brain-energizing a subject as politics itself. Nobody broke out into a loud “Helan Går” rendition, but I’d say it was a productive Polybian evening indeed.
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