http://knowledgenews.net/moxie/samples/portrait-patriot-2.shtml
What Is a Patriot?
Get the spirit of '76
Does the name William Livingston ring a bell? Probably not. But in 1753,
Livingston--a lawyer who led the New Jersey militia during the American
Revolution and who became the state's first governor--masterfully articulated
the 18th-century ideal of patriotism.
We First (Or at Least Second)
Livingston put his patriotic pen to work in a series of essays called The
Independent Reflector. He wrote:
He is a Patriot who prefers the Happiness of the Whole, to his own private
Advantage. . . . He is a Patriot, the ruling Object of whose Ambition, is the
public Welfare: whose Zeal, chastised by Reflection, is calm, steady and
undaunted . . . Whom no partial Ties can prevail on to act traitorously to the
Community, and sacrifice the Interest of the Whole to that of a Part.
The patriot, in other words, is no narrow partisan, no party propagandist, no
pursuer of pork. On the contrary, the patriot pursues nothing less than the
good of the community as a whole, setting aside personal and "local" interests.
For the patriot, duty to country is the highest calling--"next to the Duty we
owe the Supreme Being."
Of course, no one thought such selfless nonpartisanship would be easy to come
by. Livingston and his contemporaries were well aware that overweening ambition
and factional strife come naturally to human beings (that's why they designed a
government full of checks and balances). Yet they were also firm believers in
the idea that we are by nature socially interested as well as self-interested
people.
"Zeal, Chastised by Reflection"
Just about everyone today defines patriotism as "love of country." But for
Livingston:
Merely to love the Public, to wish it well, to feel for it, in all its
Vicissitudes, is not sufficient. . . . To exemplify our Love for the Public, as
far as our Ability and Sphere of Action will extend, is true Patriotism. . . . I
go still farther. Whoever is unstudious of the public Emolument, who denies it a
Share of his thinking Hours, and refuses to exert his Head, his Heart, and his
Hands in its Behalf, is a Foe to Society.
Love without action, says Livingston, isn't enough. Patriotism requires
service--love and labor. Mental labor, too. Serving the common good requires
deliberation, "thinking Hours" that lead to constructive efforts as opposed to
knee-jerk responses. The patriot's zeal is "chastised by reflection."
Disagreements are allowed. The "common good" is no monolithic truth. It is a
constant negotiation among the different and often conflicting ideas of the
community. Livingston even points to a patriotism of protest, noting that when
the country's leaders go wrong, the patriot "mourns for their Vices, and exerts
his Abilities to work a Reformation."
Fitting Service
Eventually, Livingston found himself in military service. But, as Thomas Paine
pointed out in 1777, the term "patriot" has never been restricted solely to
those who fight. Paine wrote:
Nature, in the arrangement of mankind, has fitted some for every service in
life: were all soldiers, all would starve and go naked, and were none soldiers,
all would be slaves. . . . All we want to know in America is simply this, who is
for independence, and who is not?
Those who are for independence, Paine says, will contribute to its cause in
various ways. During World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt called on women across
America to save cooking fat for the war effort. Why? Because cooking fat
contains glycerin, which is used to make gunpowder. Saving cooking fat was a
small thing, but it was no less patriotic for that.
For America's founders, acting deliberately, for the good of the whole
community, because you care about its well being, is patriotic--even if your
service seems small. But, they believed, you must serve somehow.
--Steve Sampson
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