Country First

As we approach the election of 2008, an unprecedented election in many ways, it is good to consider what we mean by “land” or “country” or “nation,” or “homeland”or “patriotism.”

The word “country” comes, surprisingly to me, from Latin. The original term seems to have been “terra contrata” or “contra(ta) terra,” meaning, roughly “that land over yonder” or “the land opposite where one is standing.” This came into old French as “cuntree” or “contree” and is recorded in English from about 1300, which would put it right in line with the avalanche of words that came into Anglo-Saxon with the Norman Conquest (see “History of English” on my website at emturnerenglish.com) and culminated about 1300 with the language we now know as English. The “u” of “country” really ought not to be in this word. Who knows where it drifted from?

But “country” feels like an English word, as does “land.” And in fact, “Land” is a German word, too, meaning exactly the same thing. We have an emotional attachment to the land of our birth, more I think than to the political boundary that encloses our “country.” For example, to me the most beautiful place in the world is one of the middle Tennessee valleys lying in the arms of the tableland (plateau) where I was born. This is the rich valley land below Green’s View, in Sewanee, Tennessee (Google it and you will see). Although I own none of the land there, I would take up arms to defend it if I were called upon to do so, it is that valuable to me. Perhaps I associate my own genetic heritage with the land. I don’t know. But it is precious to me.

The word “nation,” unlike its related word “native,”is a concept more of the head than the heart.
A “nation” is an agreement, first of all, among people to live together and adhere to certain rules of conduct. The rules governing our co-existence as Americans are called the Constitution, and while the Constitution is a very, very important document, I think most people in America today do not have a deep emotional understanding of how important it is. Not having experienced unfreedom, they do not understand freedom. Not having experienced torture, they are not bothered when their government engages in it (as long as the victim is out of sight). Not having known a servile and fettered press, they don’t understand the importance of a free journalism.

In this sense, I think some modern Americans have conflated the ideas of “native” and “nation.” They think that if you are a born citizen of this country, you must support every decision of its leaders regardless of whether that decision contravenes common sense, morality, or wisdom.

In the last eight years, the misguided US government has reacted in the worst possible ways to the trauma of 9/11. We have shunned any contact with our enemies beyond simply killing them. We have tortured (a thing never practiced as a policy by our country or advocated by its leaders until now). We have had stolen elections and voter suppression. We have invaded the wrong country and torn it apart, neglecting the country that was most responsible for the 9/11 attacks. We have witnessed the rise of spittle-flecked hate talk radio as some form of acceptable political discourse. We have dawdled and delayed rebuilding one of our most beautiful cities, destroyed after Hurricane Katrina. We have tolerated the placement of political partisans throughout the apparatus of government. And we have become a small, fearful, shrunken version of the ideals embodied in the Constitution, our national blueprint.

A symptom of this is the recent use of the term “homeland,” which is not a term common in English. Indeed, it suggests the German “Heimland,” and thus it does not have happy associations for Americans who fought against the Third Reich in World War II. Yet here we have a Department of Homeland Security,” a vast bureaucracy intent on data-mining information about us all. In this “homeland,” thingie, we all are supposed to show our patriotism (father-land-love) by wearing little flag lapel pins and putting our hands over our hearts and mouthing words in chorus and going off to fight in other countries that we just happen to be occupying for no discernible reason and dying quietly if we are so inferior as not to have health-care insurance. That is the patriotism of the Bush years: submission, conformity, sacrifice, and silence.

But all isn’t lost. Yet. I think the tide is turning. I think that the idea of a nation’s being fundamentally an agreement among people to live in peace with each other--as opposed to a series of warring little groups intent on telling the other groups what to do--is coming back into fashion. And the person who is bringing that idea back is the Democratic candidate for the presidency. That’s why Barack Obama’s campaign logo is at the top of this page.

My hope is that we learn again to abide by our national agreement to live together like civilized people. We have to relearn tolerance. We have to relearn a respect for intelligence and knowledge as opposed to this pervasive prejudice for ignorance that has poisoned the common well. We have to tune out the screaming spitters, starve them with our inattention, meet our neighbors and learn their concerns, care about each other. These are only some of the things we must do to regain our soul as a country and to be worthy of this beautiful land. But they are a beginning, and power-hungry natalists like Sarah Palin and shape-changers like John McCain cannot help us begin. They can only take us back into this terrible dark age we have suffered in the past eight years.

So--all two of you who read this: please vote! I have.