patriotism

81:6.35No na­tional civ­i­liza­tion long en­dures un­less its ed­u­ca­tional meth­ods and re­li­gious ide­als in­spire a high type of in­tel­li­gent pa­tri­o­tism and na­tional de­vo­tion. With­out this sort of in­tel­li­gent pa­tri­o­tism and cul­tural sol­i­dar­ity, all na­tions tend to dis­in­te­grate as a re­sult of provin­cial jeal­ousies and lo­cal self-in­ter­ests.

127:2.6Je­sus, then scarcely sev­en­teen years of age, was con­fronted with one of the most del­i­cate and dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions of his early life. Pa­tri­otic is­sues, es­pe­cially when com­pli­cated by tax-gath­er­ing for­eign op­pres­sors, are al­ways dif­fi­cult for spir­i­tual lead­ers to re­late them­selves to, and it was dou­bly so in this case since the Jew­ish re­li­gion was in­volved in all this ag­i­ta­tion against Rome.

98:3.5This for­mal and un­emo­tional form of pseu­dore­li­gious pa­tri­o­tism was doomed to col­lapse, even as the highly in­tel­lec­tual and artis­tic wor­ship of the Greeks had gone down be­fore the fer­vid and deeply emo­tional wor­ship of the mys­tery cults. The great­est of these dev­as­tat­ing cults was the mys­tery re­li­gion of the Mother of God sect, which had its head­quar­ters, in those days, on the ex­act site of the pres­ent church of St. Pe­ter’s in Rome.

128:6.7The morn­ing fol­low­ing their sec­ond day in prison Je­sus ap­peared be­fore the mil­i­tary mag­is­trate in be­half of Jude. By mak­ing apolo­gies for his brother’s youth and by a fur­ther ex­plana­tory but ju­di­cious state­ment with ref­er­ence to the provoca­tive na­ture of the episode which had led up to the ar­rest of his brother, Je­sus so han­dled the case that the mag­is­trate ex­pressed the opin­ion that the young Jew might have had some pos­si­ble ex­cuse for his vi­o­lent out­burst. Af­ter warn­ing Jude not to al­low him­self again to be guilty of such rash­ness, he said to Je­sus in dis­miss­ing them: “You had bet­ter keep your eye on the lad; he’s li­able to make a lot of trou­ble for all of you.” And the Ro­man judge spoke the truth. Jude did make con­sid­er­able trou­ble for Je­sus, and al­ways was the trou­ble of this same na­ture—clashes with the civil au­thor­i­ties be­cause of his thought­less and un­wise pa­tri­otic out­bursts.

128:7.4Je­sus was a man of peace, and ever and anon was he em­bar­rassed by Jude’s bel­liger­ent ex­ploits and nu­mer­ous pa­tri­otic out­bursts. James and Joseph were in fa­vor of cast­ing him out, but Je­sus would not con­sent. When their pa­tience would be severely tried, Je­sus would only coun­sel: “Be pa­tient. Be wise in your coun­sel and elo­quent in your lives, that your young brother may first know the bet­ter way and then be con­strained to fol­low you in it.” The wise and lov­ing coun­sel of Je­sus pre­vented a break in the fam­ily; they re­mained to­gether. But Jude never was brought to his sober senses un­til af­ter his mar­riage.

134:5.8The dif­fi­culty in the evo­lu­tion of po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty from the fam­ily to all man­kind, lies in the in­er­tia-re­sis­tance ex­hib­ited on all in­ter­ven­ing lev­els. Fam­i­lies have, on oc­ca­sion, de­fied their clan, while clans and tribes have of­ten been sub­ver­sive of the sov­er­eignty of the ter­ri­to­rial state. Each new and for­ward evo­lu­tion of po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty is (and has al­ways been) em­bar­rassed and ham­pered by the “scaf­fold­ing stages” of the pre­vi­ous de­vel­op­ments in po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tion. And this is true be­cause hu­man loy­al­ties, once mo­bi­lized, are hard to change. The same loy­alty which makes pos­si­ble the evo­lu­tion of the tribe, makes dif­fi­cult the evo­lu­tion of the super­tribe—the ter­ri­to­rial state. And the same loy­alty (pa­tri­o­tism) which makes pos­si­ble the evo­lu­tion of the ter­ri­to­rial state, vastly com­pli­cates the evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment of the gov­ern­ment of all man­kind.

139:11.9The Mas­ter had many talks with Si­mon, but he never fully suc­ceeded in mak­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al­ist out of this ar­dent Jew­ish na­tion­al­ist. Je­sus of­ten told Si­mon that it was proper to want to see the so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal or­ders im­proved, but he would al­ways add: “That is not the busi­ness of the king­dom of heaven. We must be ded­i­cated to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will. Our busi­ness is to be am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual gov­ern­ment on high, and we must not im­me­di­ately con­cern our­selves with aught but the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the will and char­ac­ter of the di­vine Fa­ther who stands at the head of the gov­ern­ment whose cre­den­tials we bear.” It was all dif­fi­cult for Si­mon to com­pre­hend, but grad­u­ally he be­gan to grasp some­thing of the mean­ing of the Mas­ter’s teach­ing.