The New Oxford American dictionary defines “allegiance” as
al·le·giance| əˈlējəns | noun
loyalty or commitment of a subordinate to a superior or of an individual to a group or cause.
The word comes from feudalism—from the concept of one’s liege lord—but like most words in English (and many relationships) it’s complicated. And yet most people understand what the word means, and if you ask them where their most important allegiances lie, they will have an answer. For example, the ‘typical’ patriotic American conservative might say:
“God, family, country…in that order.”
The points I am about to make are directed at everyone, but let us use that hypothetical conservative’s reply as our jumping-off point. I am going to argue, in part, that the placement of God and family make a lot of sense, but that there are a great deal more things that lie in between those and country.
Let us first look at the concept of patriotism in its modern form to find an answer as to why country receives such high placement.
Without a doubt, American patriots have reason to be proud. I would argue, however, that the source of that pride is, or ought to be, the transcendent principles that animated America’s Founders far more than the system they instantiated to actuate those principles. The national government that has grown up around that system has even more of a mixed record—some of which is hardly cause for celebration.
Unfortunately, all these things—principles, system, government, and record—tend to get wrapped up into one thing, and it becomes difficult to express pride in (or allegiance to) one without the others.
Some of this is rooted in ancient—and, as it turns out, biologically necessary—tribalism. We continually widened our circles—from bands to clans to tribes to villages and beyond—but at each step along the way, tribalism helped keep us safe from dangerous ‘outsiders.’ Indeed, the ‘love hormone’ oxytocin actually plays a role in this: when oxytocin flows, we experience positive emotions towards our loved ones, but it also causes us to feel increased wariness of the out-group. We are wired to have our in-group bonds and our resistance to the out-group strengthened at the same time. Patriotism, nationalism, tribalism are thus, in part, biologically instantiated. They cause problems that we must address, but we should be careful not to critique them in a vacuum, or from some holier-than-thou place. Tribalism is us.
The French Revolution and the rise of the modern state further complicated matters. In many ways, revolutionary France was the birthplace of modern nationalism in the form we later came to know (and fear):
The spiritual amalgamation of people and state is what we call a nation: a number of individuals who affiliate with one another as a political community centered around a state (or a would-be state). Devotion to one’s state-centered political community is nationalism.
The people’s state (whether actual or prospective) gives rise to nationalism, because nothing inspires more devotion to a state-centered community than a state that the individual feels is his creation (government by the people), that serves him (for the people), and that he’s a part of (of the people). Allegiance to a crown just can’t compare. This explains why the French Revolution burned so brightly with nationalism, especially as compared to the ancien regime. […]
The Revolution transferred the military capacity of France from the crown to “the people” (or so the people felt). The intoxication of military power infected the French people with avarice for national conquest and glory. No longer was war a private affair of the king, which the masses paid for and suffered grudgingly. Now war was an affair of the people, an enterprise to be embraced wholeheartedly as one’s own.1
The American and French revolutions can rightly be described as a fork in the road—the moment when the Enlightenment era came to a close and the modern right and left were born. The modern right hearkens back to the American Revolution and the left to the French, but both share an idea in common: that their respective revolutions put “the people” in charge. As a result, subsequent generations of Americans have been susceptible to the same general type of nationalism that grew from revolutionary France: the idea that the state is us. This is how wars went from being an activity for the king and his retainers to a totalizing phenomenon: the holistic body of state and people against another such body.
All of this is a long way of saying that it is understandable that country is given a place in many people’s list of allegiances. That said, I believe that there are many other things that we actually place well above country, and that country may not deserve to be in the list at all—at least not in the nationalistic sense that has developed since 1789.
Let us first look at some higher allegiances than country;
God
For believers, God’s top billing goes without saying. If there is a supreme, timeless, eternal God, then He must be one’s first concern. Everything else is temporal and transient.
Family
One’s closest allegiance here on Earth begins with family, and likely remains so throughout life. One could craft scenarios in which somehow God and family conflict in some particular circumstance, and such conflicts have certainly arisen and posed challenges for people over the ages. But on a day-to-day basis, believers will argue, there is no conflict: showing proper fidelity to one’s family is showing proper fidelity to God. He expects you to do just that.
And there are yet more things that come before country…
Natural Law, Reality, and the State of Nature
Whether you consciously think about natural law or not, it influences everything you do. You are bound by the laws of physics. You have intuitively known the laws of morality since you were a toddler. The “Laws of Nature and of Nature's God” are universal and eternal. They are reality.
One might object here that one does not have any “allegiance” to reality; one is simply bound by it. I would argue that one can and does show a kind of fealty to natural law in everything we do. There are plenty of circumstances we can envision, and that do crop up in real life, where we see this play out…
If your child were in imminent danger and you had to take some action you knew to be illegal in order to save him, you would take that action without hesitation. Your first allegiance is clearly to reality, the facts of nature, and the moral law, which you know—in your heart if not explicitly—supersedes any manmade laws.
Virtually no person would say, “My country says that in this circumstance, my child should die; therefore he must die.” Even if you knew that you would be found guilty by an uncaring justice system, you would still save your child. This is not just allegiance to your child. It is allegiance to reality, and reality is far greater than any country.
Indeed, one day several years ago, I suddenly realized that we are always in a state of nature, even under a government. This, of course, runs contrary to Enlightenment philosophers’ familiar use of the “state of nature” as a construct to understand man’s nature in the absence of government. My argument is that human nature is what it is, with or without government. The state of nature IS existence; it is government that is the artificial construct.
Finally, of course, we also have the salient fact that every form of involuntary governance (yes, even ours) violates natural law by its very existence. The implications of that must ultimately remove country, as we understand it, from the list entirely. We can address that provocative conclusion more thoroughly at a later date.
Your self-interest
In a conflict between your country and your own self interest, what comes first? There are a lot of things that your country asks you to do that are stupid, immoral, pointless, or in some other way run counter to your own interests. You country threatens you with violence if you do not do what it says, and those threats obviously must be calculated into any assessment of your self-interest. But when you can safely dismiss such concerns, where does your first allegiance lie—with yourself or your country? I think you know the answer.
I know that many people have made many sacrifices out of a sense of patriotism and duty. But even in such circumstances, what are they actually sacrificing for? Is it really for the government and some abstract notion of “country”? Or is it for their family and friends, their land and their freedom, their principles and their rights?
We have been told, and convinced, that those things are all wrapped up into a single holistic phenomenon of “country,” but are they really? Your rights come from Nature and Nature’s God. Your freedom is a natural phenomenon—it is something that you are born with. Yet the instant you draw your first breath, you are under the overlordship of a state that claims to protect your freedom by violating it.
Your land and property are a direct outgrowth of your self-ownership, which is naturally inalienable. Thus your claim to your land should be allodial—meaning that you hold title to it with no “superior landlord.” And yet your country claims to be that landlord. Are people who sacrifice for ‘country’ sacrificing for the things that matter, or for the government that fraudulently claims to be the source, and the overlord, of those things?
Finally, what if your very survival is at stake? What comes first, you or “country”? Once again, I think you know the answer.
Friends and social circles.
We can, of course, concoct any number of hypotheticals to test whether friends or country come first, and we will find scenarios on both sides of the ledger. A friend might do something that you find genuinely repugnant, leading you to report him to the authorities (and to wish no longer to be his friend). A friend might do something the state considers criminal, but you feel was justified. In such circumstances, you will only report him if you are genuinely convinced that it is in your overriding self-interest to do so, and even if you could convince yourself of that, you would not be happy about it. And the allegiance to ‘country’ just continues to decline from there.
What is that expression—the most important things in your life are all within a few feet of you? That is, in general, how we live our lives. If you were asked, “Where is your first allegiance—to your friends or your country,” your mind—and 200 years of nationalist programming—might give you pause before answering. Hmm, what am I supposed to say here? Is this a trick question? A test? But your heart would already know the right answer.
Close vs. Far Away
As a general rule, people in your local community matter more to you than strangers in a far-off capital. Your job, your kids’ sports teams, the organizations of which you are a member, the plight of a next-door neighbor—these are the real things in your life. The real, the actual, the close, the concrete—these mean more than the abstract. And when we remove all the mythology about what government is, whatever is left is pretty darned abstract. God, family, country. What is it, exactly, that one is declaring allegiance to?
Your government claims to be the source of your rights. It isn’t. It is not the source of our principles. Indeed, it violates natural law by what it does, and by what it is.
It claims to be your protector, but it guarantees no actual protection—just a vague promise to investigate crime and make the perpetrator pay his “debt to society.” No debt is ever paid to victims. To the contrary, victims are forced to pay for the perpetrator’s incarceration while he “pays” for his crimes—as if some abstract ‘society,’ rather than the victim, was the one harmed.
Government promises to save you from foreign invaders, but governments (fueled by exactly the sort of monistic people-state nationalism we are talking about) are the cause of all major wars. The intelligence agencies have long turned their warped gaze inward to look at you. The Department of Justice increasingly enforces the ideological and political objectives of the state.
Government isn’t God. It isn’t your family or friends. It is an artificial imposition—an irritant to work around to the greatest degree possible. Give my allegiance to that? I’m just not feeling it.
In the way…
Think about all the things that come before any abstract notion of ‘country.’ Now ask yourself—does government make it easier or harder for you to connect with those things?
Government shut down churches and arrested clergy during covid. They locked us down. They keep us from each other. Government interferes with family life in all sorts of inappropriate ways. It stands between you and your interests, takes your money, claims overlordship of your land, and will even lay claim to your property after your death.
Government subsists entirely on your belief that the violence it uses against you is needed to prevent even worse violence—a belief that virtually no one even spends a split-second questioning.
Government claims to be the source and overlord of all things. The inevitable, necessary first cause—the thing to whose authority you consented just by being born. The thing that you should feel proud to be a part of, because—Hey, the government is you.
Except it isn’t. Not even close.
It isn’t you. It isn’t your family. It isn’t natural at all.
So what exactly is this thing—this “country”—to which one swears allegiance? What is this overlord that demands our fealty?
I really don’t know anymore.
I strongly recommend the whole article! https://fee.org/articles/how-nationalism-and-socialism-arose-from-the-french-revolution/
Bravo! A great and meaningful read. Your honest courage is commendable. I couldn't agree more.
Cheers!