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Why Democracy Needs Patriotism
Charles Taylor
I agree with so much in Martha Nussbaum's well-argued and moving piece, but
I would like to enter one caveat. Nussbaum sometimes seems to be proposing cosmopolitan
identity as an alternative to patriotism. If so, then I think this is a mistake.
And that is because we cannot do without patriotism in the modern world.
This necessity can be seen from two angles. The most important is this: the
societies that we are striving to create -- free, democratic, willing to some
degree to share equally -- require strong identification on the part of their
citizens. It has always been noted in the civic humanist tradition that free
societies, relying as they must on the spontaneous supportive action of their
members, need that strong sense of allegiance that Montesquieu called "vertu."
This is if anything even truer of modern representative democracies, even though
they integrate "the liberty of the moderns" with the values of political
liberty. Indeed, the requirement is stronger just because they are also "liberal"
societies, which cherish negative liberty and individual rights. A citizen democracy
can only work if most of its members are convinced that their political society
is a common venture of considerable moment, and believe it to be of vital importance
that they participate in the ways they must to keep it functioning as a democracy.
This means not only a commitment to the common project, but also a special sense
of bonding among people working together in this project. This is perhaps the
point at which most contemporary democracies threaten to fall apart. A citizen
democracy is highly vulnerable to the alienation which arises from deep inequalities,
and the sense of neglect and indifference that easily arises among abandoned
minorities. That is why democratic societies cannot be too inegalitarian. But
this means that they must be capable of adopting policies with redistributive
effect (and to some extent also with redistributive intent). And such policies
require a high degree of mutual commitment. If an outsider can be permitted
to comment, the widespread opposition to the extremely modest proposal for a
health plan in the United States doesn't seem to indicate that contemporary
Americans suffer from too great a mutual commitment.
In short, the reason why we need patriotism as well as cosmopolitanism is that
modern democratic states are extremely exigent common enterprises in self-rule.
They require a great deal of their members, demanding much greater solidarity
towards compatriots than towards humanity in general. We cannot make a success
of these enterprises without strong common identification. And considering the
alternatives to democracy in our world, it is not in the interest of humanity
that we fail in these enterprises.
We can look at this from another angle. Modern states in general, not just democratic
states, having broken away from the traditional hierarchical models, require
a high degree of mobilization of their members. Mobilization occurs around common
identities. In most cases, our choice is not whether or not people will respond
to mobilization around a common identity -- as against, say, being recruitable
only for universal causes -- but which of two or more possible identities will
claim their allegiance. Some of these will be wider than others, some more open
and hospitable to cosmopolitan solidarities. It is between these that the battle
for civilized cosmopolitanism must frequently be fought, and not in an impossible
(and if successful, self-defeating) attempt to set aside all such patriotic
identities.
Take the example of India that Martha Nussbaum raises. The present drive towards
Hindu chauvinism of the BJP comes as an alternative definition of Indian national
identity to the Nehru-Gandhi secular definition of India. And what in the end
can defeat this chauvinism but some reinvention of India as a secular republic
with which people can identify? I shudder to think of the consequences of abandoning
the issue of Indian identity altogether to the perpetrators of the Ayodhya disaster.
In sum, what I am saying is that we have no choice but to be cosmopolitans and
patriots; which means to fight for the kind of patriotism which is open to universal
solidarities against other, more closed kinds. I don't really know if I'm disagreeing
with Martha Nussbaum on this, just putting her profound and moving plea in a
somewhat different context. But this nuance is, I think, important.