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MY COUNTRY 'TIS OF THEE

STEPHEN HUGH-JONES | ON LANGUAGE AND LIFE | February 9th 2008

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Stephen Hugh-Jones is a patriot--unashamedly so. So how could his son decide to become an American citizen, of all things? America is just so alien, so vast, so remote. And so irritatingly powerful ...

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One of my sons recently "renounced foreign princes" and took up American citizenship. I regret it.

You might well ask why. For a start, it's his life, not mine. Second, he has lived it in California for many years, having first moved there in the unlikely belief that he could make a living selling scripts to Hollywood (yes, there is one in Miramax's bottom drawer, but I don't doubt it will stay there). Third, he is happily married to an American wife and, fourth, he now does make a decent living at a trade that would barely put a crust in their mouths in Britain, as a yacht-broker. (Shameless paternal plug: if you want to buy or sell what I trust he will convince you are the finest boats between Long Beach and Santa Barbara, ring 310-658-0700 and ask for Tom.)

So, fifth, he has no intention of re-emigrating to Britain. And sixth, though born a British citizen, he was born, like me, outside Britain and so in British law is only a second-class one, without the right to transmit that citizenship to any child of his born elsewhere. Me, I wouldn't be mad keen to belong to a country so little keen on me.

And yet I still regret his switch, for crude, old-fashioned reasons of patriotism. I'm a patriot, unashamedly so. Not absurdly, I hope: I'm perfectly well aware that my country has done plenty of bad things in its time, as it has of good, and I see no reason to excuse them, nor even to hide them. In particular, I don't think its acquisition of an empire one of the great benign events of human history, though certainly it might have run that empire a lot more nastily than it did.

Nor yet do I think it the finest country in the world. Its version of electoral democracy is plainly inferior to that of several European countries; its politicians no abler, nor always (though we like to think so) vastly less corrupt; its government no better; its public services manifestly worse. Its famously beautiful countryside is, to me, no more so than that of France; its rather less famously beautiful women leagues behind those of, say, India. Its levels of hard work, of technology, of cookery, of sport must speak for themselves. Its tabloid press stinks, however well--as they do--those tabloids may write.

Yet, whatever its faults, its errors, its crimes, my country, right or wrong, it is. I don't mean its faults or crimes are to be glossed over. And even it had none, I find frankly absurd the words of a well-known poem--nay, hymn--of the early 20th century:

I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love.

Really? More so than to the writer's parents, spouse, children or others--indeed, you might almost think, leaving no room for them? A love, forsooth, "that asks no question." That's a blind sort of love, which can only be achieved by blindfolding oneself, and it's not for me.

But no more do I accept the dictum that patriotism is "the last refuge of a scoundrel". Of some scoundrels, sometimes, maybe; but as a generality Dr Johnson's epigram is nonsense. It's far truer to ask, with Walter Scott,

Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said
This is my own, my native land...

There are no doubt such men, but not in huge numbers: the sense of community is ingrained in the human species, as in many other animals, if only for the same reason: self-preservation. And in fact not only for that. I can think of many reasons to be fond of Britain.

So though I wish him the best of British luck, I'm sorry, however irrationally, to see a son of mine swear allegiance to another tribe, and one that is to me, however worthy of respect, deeply foreign.

There are Britons who find in the United States a natural second home. They speak its language, albeit with a funny accent. They already share large parts of its culture and smaller ones of its history. Some of them, and many of their forebears, have fought alongside its soldiers; not always with much mutual appreciation, but when you share an enemy you know damn well, who, love them or not, are your friends. We probably know from British media more about our cousins across the Atlantic than our European partners across the Channnel. And many of us have kin already there.

All that is true of me, yet I've never been one of those Britons. I've had American friends since I was at Oxford. I drove from New York to Los Angeles and back, via the South, 50 years ago and was always hospitably received. I've met the same welcome on several visits since (except once in a large San Francisco hotel, whose notions of "welcome", "customer" or "service" were--well, let's say almost British; I won't name it, since I imagine its then managers have since moved on to trades more suited to their skills, such as running a popcorn stand or the hair-cutting detail at a boot camp). Yet I remained consciously and self-consciously alien to America, and it to me. I'm more at home in any West European country whose language I can reasonably understand, or where most people can understand mine.

That doesn't mean I'd readily swap my citizenship for one of theirs. But I can imagine doing so. America, by contrast, is huge and, to my stranger's eyes, amorphous. I wouldn't know where I fitted in there. I'd feel lost (and would be: I can place Switzerland on the map, but where on earth is Montana?). America is also powerful. Britain has fought umpteen wars against other European states, and we still often quarrel with them like cats. But we do it as equals. Not so with the United States. Any British government is basically subordinate to the one in Washington, our leader, of whatever party, the viceroy of a foreign "prince". Tony Blair made that shamefully plain, and at times in ways--not just over Iraq--that harmed British interests. But it wasn't he who invented the relationship. The realities of power did.

So, unavoidably--though few Britons will publicly admit to such a feeling--with my respect for the United States (even if it were unqualified, which it is not) goes resentment. That's not being "anti-American": I'd vastly sooner bow the knee to George Bush than Vladimir Putin, and I'd feel much the same if Britain were reduced to being simply a region in the European Union. I just don't like my country being the offshore satrapy of a foreign power. And that power happens to be the United States. The sensible answer, you may think, is, if you can't beat them, join them. That, in effect, though he wouldn't think of it that way, is what my son has done. I prefer to be a Gaullist.

These thoughts came powerfully to my mind this week, as Britain's national television service offered four hours of a foreign sport that few Britons know or care a damn about: the Super Bowl. I thought I'd try it. After half-an-hour of adulatory gush, the game began. Twenty minutes later I switched off. There was action aplenty, but, brought up in utter ignorance of American football, I understood little and quite soon cared less. I'm told it was a most exciting game and the Patriots lost. To me, you might as well say the Martians.

From Super Bowl to Super Tuesday. America's primaries have had endless coverage in the British media, and they certainly matter to us: here are the first steps toward the reign of the next foreign prince. Yet, though I feel the natural distrust of any dynasty, let alone a Clinton one, the whole process, to me, has been strangely remote. One Martian Democrat, it seems, offered "change", the other "experience". What either, or their Republican rivals, would mean in the White House endless coverage in Britain's media had barely told us. Perhaps because none of its would-be occupants had told them, perhaps because none knew anyway. What it would mean to my own offshore island was even less clear; I doubt the average American voter has given that matter ten minutes' thought, so why should any candidate?

Still, my son cannot feel that way. As he is engulfed by the great melting-pot, I wish him the best of American luck. As for the British academics who last week made news by declaring that Britain's schools should not try to inculcate love of country, on the grounds that one should not love what is morally corrupt and--100% true, but 99% irrelevant--that any country's history is morally ambiguous...Well, I leave the poor ninnies to their ignorance. They manifestly don't know what patriotism is. Love neither.

(Stephen Hugh-Jones is a former writer and editor for The Economist, where he wrote the Johnson column from 1992-99. He lives now in West Sussex.)