I was sitting in a Mexican restaurant the other day, and the song “God Bless America” came on. The owner, a former Mexican who came here illegally, was deported several times, and was finally granted citizenship, has a picture of himself and “God Bless America” prominently on his wall, along with this story.
As I listened, the word “Idolatry” popped in my head, and after pondering it, it made sense. Idolatry is reducing the infinite to the finite. God cannot be contained in an image. God cannot be confined to granting very selfish and local wishes. He is not the subject of banquets and special favors.
Patriotism, likewise, is granting special favor to specific lands and people, rather than the ideals to which they in theory aspire. Patriotism, in the time of the French Revolution, led to tremendous death and destruction, despite the supposed attachment to “liberte”, which of course meant tyranny.
America has been a great nation, a great experiment in genuine idealism. That is what makes us great. We are not great simply because we happen to have been born here. There is nothing sacred about our land, our language, or our culture, EXCEPT to the extent it supports the infinite, of which every worthwhile ideal is an example.