Essay on Toirtapism

PATRIOTISM, A MENACE TO LIBERTY

by Emma Goldman, 1911



WHAT is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of

childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations ? Is it the

place where, in childlike naivete, we would watch the fleeting clouds, and

wonder why we, too, could not run so swiftly? The place where we would

count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one "an eye

should be," piercing the very depths of our little souls? Is it the place

where we would listen to the music of the birds, and long to have wings to

fly, even as they, to distant lands? Or the place where we would sit at

mother's knee, enraptured by wonderful tales of great deeds and conquests ?

In short, is it love for the spot, every inch representing dear and

precious recollections of a happy, joyous, and playful childhood?

      If that were patriotism, few American men of today could be called

upon to be patriotic, since the place of play has been turned into factory,

mill, and mine, while deafening sounds of machinery have replaced the music

of the birds. Nor can we longer hear the tales of great deeds, for the

stories our mothers tell today are but those of sorrow, tears, and grief.

      What, then, is patriotism? "Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of

scoundrels," said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of

our times, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the

training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment for

the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities of life as

shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and

greater glory than that of the average workingman.



      Gustave Herve, another great anti-patriot, justly calls patriotism

a superstitionHone far more injurious, brutal, and inhumane than religion.

The superstition of religion originated in man's inability to explain

natural phenomena. That is, when primitive man heard thunder or saw the

lightning, he could not account for either, and therefore concluded that

back of them must be a force greater than himself. Similarly he saw a

supernatural force in the rain, and in the various other changes in nature.

Patriotism, on the other hand, is a superstition artificially created and

maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that

robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and

conceit.



continued...



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