Long before the burgeoning hype around presidential candidate Mike Huckabee among Catholic bloggers, I expressed early, provisional support for his candidacy. Friendly on immigration, supportive of the right to bear arms, staunchly apposed to abortion, in favor of government aid for prescription drugs for the elderly, experience in a centralized political position. However, in light of the more recent months during which he has remained ambivalent on torture, defensive of the Iraq War both in its commencement and in its current state, and strongly supportive of the use of the death penalty in America, I have since withdrawn my support for Huckabee. If Romney or Giuliani were to win the Republican nomination, I would not be surprised if Huckabee were tapped to be a running mate in order to balance out the ticket and maintain support from the base.
At a recent Republican candidate debate, Huckabee made a curious statement, which he directed at fellow candidate Ron Paul, that I think is indicative of the sort of confused thinking that occurs in certain American circles when criticism of political moves and officials is translated into anti-Americanism. I saw this sort of thing from Catholic bloggers and journalists with regard to Cardinal Martino’s criticism of political policy in the United States, and I find several contributors of Vox Nova unfairly singled out as being “anti-American” when they have been critical of U.S. foreign or domestic policy. I say this sort of thinking is confused, yes, but it is also reductionistic, for it reduces “America” to public policy and political expression. Huckabee proffered us a symptom of this confusion and reductionism:
“Congressman, whether or not we should have gone to Iraq is a discussion for historians, but we’re there. We bought it because we broke it,” he said. “We’ve got a responsibility to the honor of this country and the honor of every man and woman who has served in Iraq and our military to not leave them with anything less than the honor they deserve.”
Amid loud cheers, Paul responded, “The American people didn’t go in. A few people advising this administration, a small number of people called the neoconservatives, hijacked our foreign policy. They are responsible, not the American people.”
Huckabee quickly fired back: “Congressman, we are one nation. We can’t be divided. We have to be one nation under God. That means if we make a mistake, we make it as a single country.”
Notwithstanding that Huckabee inexplicably passes off historians as the moral and political arbiters of our future age, he seems to adhere to a common conflation made between public policy and country. This vital distinction between the State and country is not lost on those who really ponder and consider what constitutes the entity of country. Public life in America, or in any country for that matter, is not primarily political.
Political life–and the policy that it shapes–operates at a secondary level in social reality. The guiding principles of thought and social organization precede both chronologically and logically our political expression: biology, historical consciousness, ethics, logic, religion and family. Politics is a natural feature of social organization, and its instantiations occur–and here I refer to the contemporary United States–from the gravitation of a simple majority of the masses toward a transiently preferred option of governance. More often than not, unfortunately, this gravitation is not informed by those guiding principles which precede political features, which leads to a likely absurdity and a certain inconsistency in the superficial action that is supposed to be grounded first in the guiding principles. It is little wonder, then, that “conservatives” and “liberals,” whose perspectives are tainted by appeal to the masses, tend to have far more in common than they admit, operating in an uncritically accepted political matrix that rarely considers from whence it has arisen.
We must understand that while the political make-up of the United States is always related in some measure to the guiding principles of its people, the political expression is not in itself the underlying fabric of the country. This is why one can love the United States, as I do, but recoil at many of its political actions. Indeed, to criticise the ever-fluctuating political expression is not anti-American, which is why I am always puzzled when such an accusation of anti-Americanism is tossed around when I or anyone else may criticise certain laws and policies of the United States. The “love it or leave it” motto may have some remotely romantic appeal to it, especially to the sort of people who think as murkily as Huckabee does, but I find it to be the victim of misapplication and unsightly nationalism.
I like to point to Pope John Paul II as a sort of exemplar in patriotism or love of country. Pope John Paul II understood the distinction between the State and the country, between polis and patria. He loved Poland–its people, its history, its landscapes, its language, its literature, its culture. He despised its political face from the 1940’s to the 1990’s, which ran the sickening political gauntlets of Nazism and Soviet Communism. Was he confused? If he was criticising Polish laws, Polish politics and Polish military moves, wasn’t he being anti-Polish? So it would seem according to the “love it or leave it” crowd. But Pope John Paul II always recognized that the guiding principles of the people of Poland were not political. Indeed, the ebb and flow of politics by its very nature cannot be a lasting, consistent and buttressing identity of a people. Rather, the culture, history, language and landscapes of Poland were the object of the Pope’s affections. And, parenthetically, such a recognition always prevents a robust patriotism from deteriorating and rotting into a rabid nationalism.
Consider the late Pope’s perspective:
Patriotism is a love for everything to do with our native land: its history, its traditions, its language, its natural features. It is a love which extends also to the works of our compatriots and the fruits of their genius. Every danger that threatens the overall good of our native land becomes an occasion to demonstrate this love…I belive that the same could be said of every country and every nation in Europe and throughout the world. (Memory and Identity, 65-66)
The cultural and historical identity of any society is preserved and nourished by all that is contained within this concept of nation. Clearly, one thing must be avoided at all costs: the risk of allowing the essential function of the nation to lead to an unhealthy nationalism. (Memory and Identity, 67)
This distinction (but not divorce!) ought to be born in mind among those of us who are citizens of the United States. I love my country, my patria. And the patrimony of my patria consists of the language, religion (Christianity), art, literature, philosophy (pragmatism) and many other elements. The politics–the State–is a secondary reality, a surface reality that floats, as it were, above the guiding principles of the American identity. I am sharply critical of many of the laws and public policy of my State, especially when I see these political expressions as detached from the guiding principles of American life. I am patriotic. But I am not a slave to the State.
And so returning to Huckabee’s assertion that the war in Iraq is the war of the entire country amounts to confused and turbid idea of country. No, the war is not a feature of “one nation under God.” The war was the decision of a sharp minority of American politicians. It was not born and bred from the cultural womb of our country. I am an American, but this is not my war. The war is the State’s war, not the country’s. Ron Paul’s got it right.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In