The Second Principle: Live for the greater whole

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LESSON 10: Love for One's Nation

A. The way of the patriot.

1. How can a single family prosper if its nation is in chaos or is plagued by violence and war? How can we raise pure children if the nation is decadent? The misfortunes of the nation will inevitably destroy the peace of even the most godly family.

• In the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville accurately predicted this crisis would come in America; a time when "a bloated central power [will] administer to the needs of an infantalized population." [Brian C. Anderson, "Tocqueville's Mirror," First Things, March, 1996, pp. 54-55.] This is the greatest challenge to America, calling for a response of love for our nation.
• True patriotism is not just to fight external attacks.
• True patriotism will prevent democracy from destroying itself through its tendency to gradually enforce external equality of conditions, and conformity of behavior and opinions.

2. True love, the vertical ethic, leads families to live for the prosperity, peace and development of the nation. This is also called civic virtue.

• We received protection, security and sustenance from our nation.
• Therefore, we have a debt to our nation.
• We should pay back this debt by serving our nation with gratitude and love.
• Paying back the debt creates a deeper bond of love with our nation. This makes the base for an ever-developing relationship, energy, prosperity and happiness.
• As a result, we gain much more, including good fortune in the future.
• Society prospers when its families get involved in public affairs.
• Volunteer associations and mediating organizations.
  • Churches, block associations, civic groups, charities, advocacy groups, support groups and so forth.
  • Local responsibility and control is much preferable to the intervention of the state.
  • Government service, military service, foreign service: a nation is represented by its leading families, those devoted to public service.
  • Private, sacrificial devotion to public service, and not careers as professional politicians, is the essence of self-government.
  • This is accomplished when people can govern themselves by the application of the vertical ethic (civic virtue and patriotism).

3. Societies in which families do not have a sense of civic duty are impoverished.

• Oligarchy: a few families or elite's control society and hoard its wealth.
  • In traditional Asian society, the Confucian ethic became inflexible when not tempered by Christian values.
  • In traditional western societies, Christian institutions combined with the state to dominate the people. Powerful families ran both church and state.
  • In Communist societies, the Party dominated the people.
  • In welfare liberalism, the machinery of government backed by laws dominates the people.
  • Without a populace practiced in civic virtue, creativity, flexible and responsive institutions and ultimately human happiness are suppressed.
  • If families do not live for the nation, then the nation will be dominated by people who live for themselves.
• Christian teaching is for each of us to live for God beyond the family, nation and cosmos.
  • Jesus called people to sell their possessions and give to the poor.
  • Jesus spoke of the lost sheep and ministered to society's outcasts, thus pointing out our responsibility to help the poor and weak.
  • American philanthropy is an expression of the Calvinist idea that wealth is a gift of God and that I can be justified in having it only if I invest it for the benefit of society.
  • Unlike traditional elite's, American Protestant elite's devoted most of their wealth to creating public institutions, in particular universities, which served to raise the level of all the people in America and overseas.

4. Patriotism does not mean narrow-minded nationalism.

• Exalting one's own nation at the expense of other nations is evil.
• All nations prosper together in God's world.
• Ultimately, the world is my nation. Yet, I can be proud of the good characteristics and contributions of my nation. All people are proud of what their nation contributed to the world. Therefore each nation boasts of its unique inventions which have been adopted by other nations.
• Every nation can compete to excel in serving the world.

5. Patriotism is the expansion of filial piety to the national level.

• Just as the child of filial piety serves the family by attending his parents, the patriot serves his nation by attending the king or president. Examples of this type of patriot:
  • Joseph in Egypt.
  • Joan of Arc.
  • Ulysses S. Grant.
• The patriot assumes leadership in times of great trial. Examples of this type of patriot are:
  • King David.
  • Abraham Lincoln.
  • Golda Meir.
  • Lech Walesa.

6. The patriot loves his country irrespective of the qualities of its present leadership.

• If the leadership is in error, patriotism includes responsible appeals to make the ruler see his error. This should be constructive, with the heart to participate in the ruler's responsibility. It should support and protect the position and heart of the ruler, rather than seeking to dislodge him.
• Finally, the patriot unites with the leader's will, just a good sons unite with their parents.
• The patriot shares the fate of the leader and the country.
• Thus the patriot becomes the hero on the national level.
• In the ideal, the way of the nation is to serve the world.

7. When parents are true, they will create true leaders. Therefore, the forces leading to the rejection of filial piety in the modern world will dissipate, and a restored, enlivening vertical order will be restored.

The next lesson draws upon the same vertical ethic to reveal what it means to be a saint and child of God.

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