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The death of patriotism
Peter Kopa, 26.5.2023 in Prague
Our article is based on the document produced by The Epoch Times, below. Our references are primarily to the USA because it is the leading country in almost every field, also in the sense that other countries are highly receptive to how something is thought and done in this country, which has done so much good in the fight against communism and Nazism. While the death of patriotism is manifest in all leading countries – even in Russia – it can be better observed in the USA thanks to greater media transparency.
Wars are often decided by patriots so dedicated to a cause that they are willing to kill or die for it. Indeed, this is of strategic value to governments. In history, threats of war and the drumbeat of combat have often been rallying calls that unify a nation behind a patriotic idea. Sometimes, merely talking about a war and showing that we must prepare for it has been enough to unite the people behind a common patriotic cause.
But now it seems that threats of war, and increasing threats from enemy nations, no longer unite Americans. What does this mean for the country, and what will be the deeper implications of the death of patriotism?
The damage of cultural materialism
After World War II, most intellectuals bought into the prophecy of political and cultural rationalism, with its underlying materialism, that had finally succeeded in bringing peace, at least among the most powerful countries. However, the cold war from 1945 to 1989 showed us that the inexorable law of history would once again shake us out of this self-delusion.
Many years ago, in a television interview, the then former Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Helmut Schmidt was asked a question about his six years of combat from 1939 to 1945. He replied that he joined the German army because he considered it his civic duty. This attitude can no longer be expected today because we are facing the death of patriotism.
The profound cause of the relapse into the present war environment is materialism, which has been sown centuries ago, silencing at the same time the voice of the Church. It consists in a vision of man as a mere product of a blind destiny, relegated to the chance of a cosmic chaos without beginning or end, without meaning or sufficient reason to be, without a God who awaits us in eternal life. This situation has excited greed and the lust for power, especially among the hegemonic nations: USA, Russia and China.
Thus, the very identity of man, his conception of himself, was relegated to a bad fate, becoming a free game animal for all kinds of ideological tyrannies. Thus, the main excogitations that have given birth to the bad conscience of certain intellectuals were communism, Nazism and fascism.
These patterns of thought and political action were not only overcome, but culturally condemned by the great majority of the Western world. However, the world fails to overcome its underlying materialistic poison, which continues to act on people like the delayed effects of a bad vaccine in the bloodstream. This fact points to a reality that is inexorably fulfilled in history: man cannot save himself, neither as an individual nor as a nation.
Faced with the offer of a false happiness, at auction price, in the supermarkets selling ephemeral pleasures, man tends to fall into the pit of these attractions that lead to a certain moral alienation. And if, together with this lowering, man ceases to believe in God, patriotism loses the ground that sustains it. The only way not to fall into the pit is to have a great self-esteem derived from a consciousness of transcendent personal identity, oriented to God as the ultimate goal. And this happy freedom can only be achieved by embracing the teachings revealed by God Himself in the Holy Scriptures. Other teachings can also help, provided they manifest a wisdom in accordance with truth.
Ideologies bring about the death of patriotism
Having said this, it is understood that today, most people are not patriotic because patriotism is a virtue derived from love of parents, country and God. But it is a love that is ready to make the ultimate sacrifice, as in the case of self-defense, when the ultimate value of life itself is protected. And such a disposition can only exist when a man has values and principles that are ultimately based on an absolute ultimate end to be achieved, which is God and the fulfillment of his will. And it is precisely this will that can demand in certain cases the willingness to risk even the extreme of death itself.
It is therefore understandable that today many cannot have any patriotic sentiment whatsoever. Thus, for example, in Germany only 5% of young people would be willing to go to war as a duty of conscience. Thus, in the USA the army has great problems in convincing young people to enlist in its ranks. This is a surprise, because it was taken for granted that there would never be a shortage of people to employ the most sophisticated armaments in the world, which swallow up many billions of USD contributed by the taxes of the people.
Immediate causes of the death of patriotism
In the last few years, a whole range of ideologies placed on the cultural market by the agents of globalism have sprouted in American society. The aim of this nefarious culture is to sweep away the Judeo-Christian culture, in order to introduce the new world order advocated by Paul Schwab at the World Economic Forum in Davos, at the beginning of this year. These are the well-known LGBT socio-political action programs, Woke. CRT and genderism. What is impressive is the speed with which they were disseminated in the media, then implemented through laws passed under strong pressure from globalist lobbying, ready not only to corrupt any official authority but even to threaten the family itself.
Enlisting in an army requires that it be a voluntary act based on unlimited identification and trust in the authority and decisions of one’s own country. But today, this trust is destroyed, after so many abuses of authority due to the pandemic, to inflation, to the growing corruption that continually demands an increase in the tax burden. A soldier who has been forced to go into combat behaves passively and is unwilling to take risky initiatives because he is not a patriot. And in the heat of the fight it has happened so many times in the history of warfare, that an oppressive superior ends up being hated and executed by his subjects from the anonymity of his own formation in battle. These cases have always been covered with the cloak of absolute silence.
