Politicians, like preachers, can make pompous speeches. Academics, God forgive me, have been known to do so as well, but politicians are particularly vulnerable since they must appeal to the people or at least the percentage of the people allowed to vote. Academics need only appeal to tenure committees and those are fellow travelers with the Spirit of our Age. That is our very selective electoral college.
Since politicians are eager for votes, clicks incarnate, they go big or end up going home. Every election is the most important in our lifetime and we are all, each four years, about to be crucified on a cross of gold. This is always a bit true and more than a bit false. There are no messiahs running and mostly no tyrants to reject. The Republic can endure a good bit. After all, we survived a second Wilson term and he was one of the greatest racist blowhards ever to hold office.
History keeps going, yet wisdom does not get dated. Plato lived in a sort-of-democracy, but one that had been and was built on slave labor with an educational system built on grift and exploitation. Yet Plato also knew that Athens, for all her faults, was the best place to do philosophy. Athens was very bad, untrue to her rhetoric, false to her citizens, and worse to the vast majority that she refused to count. Athens also was about the best there was (so far as he could know) at the time.
He had Socrates give a truly remarkably bad patriotic speech in Menexenus.
What does a really bad patriotic speech look like?
Before trying to answer this question, perhaps we must cut off the hard hearted who has no love for his fatherland and so cannot enjoy a good patriotic speech. We will all stand before the good God as part of a tribe or people.
I am not, as an American, sure of what tribe or people is mine, I would like to think I am a mere American, but who can be sure? We came to Jamestown, the lot of us, and then split our state to support Mr. Lincoln. Am I still Anglo-Saxon? Or am I a new thing, a citizen of the United States? I would like to think I am an American and so will stand before God as one. Whatever I am, the tribe, nation, or people will be very flawed. We will have sinned greatly. We will have been wrong many times.
How can I love my folks?
I can because I look at my own life and see how I have sinned, done what I should not have done, yet still hope that my children can love me. I have done the best I knew, mostly, and hope for mercy. So we look at our folks, past and present, and see what we would do differently, judge where they went wrong, and then have mercy. We celebrate the good without for a single instance condoning the bad or being silent about any evil.
Now what does a bad patriotic speech look like?
Plato suggests, and he is very wise, that the false patriot justifies anything in the name of the “homeland.” By jingo, Athens right or wrong! One need not say what is wrong with this, because what is wrong is this. The false patriot bloviates with meaningless phrases that mean nothing. The rights of Athenian citizens were great unless you were the half of the city that was enslaved. The humbug cannot admit defects, but puffs up. He cannot concede that other places, other lands, are also loved by God. He does not just love his homeland, he thinks his homeland is (actually) superior.
We all prefer the way our own houses are even to the very smell! Only a fool or a bigot believes this (natural) preference means our own homes are the best!
Plato has Socrates make a foolish speech and so shows how easy such foolishness is. He also is subtle enough to show how necessary love of the homeland is. The folly of the speech in Menexenus is n0t the love of Athens, but the inability to see the faults or the limits of Athens.
God help us all to love our homeland, her wrongs to right, her virtues to praise.
Devotion for the College program at The Saint Constantine School.
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