Blessed are the British for they live in the greatest nation on earth. Yes, yes it is. Tony Blair said so, therefore it must be true. Not only is Britain “the greatest nation on earth” but “the world knows it.” Well, if it didn’t know it before, it does now. And we also know that it is a “blessed” nation and that the Brits are “special”. Well hey, thanks Tony.
What is it about a certain brand of world leader — usually male, middle-aged, conservative and inflated with an ego the size of Third World debt — that pushes them into this frankly silly one-upmanship? Blair is hardly the first to claim to lead the greatest nation on earth. George W. Bush must surely have made the very same claim somewhere — loudly, proudly and with that particularly annoying grimace of his. And sure enough he has. At the 2004 Republican National Convention address, for instance, when he proclaimed that “now we go forward grateful for our freedom, faithful to our cause and confident in the greatest nation on earth”. Can’t quite see George W. Bush being grateful somehow, but it is a rousing little number his speechwriters wrote for him. Really is. Almost makes me want to sing the Marseillaise!
The French of course excel at pride in their country though they rarely need to be quite so blatant as to proclaim their greatness. That would be far too vulgar. True greatness, like beauty, lies in the eyes of the beholder. And only a fool could be blind to France’s beauty and greatness. But the new French president is perhaps cut from a different cloth to his predecessors as he was happy to rouse us American-style in his victory speech on the night of his election to the Elysee. Still, even Sarkozy held back from shouting at us that France was the greatest nation on earth and instead took the more Gallic road, impressing us with his passionate, personal plea, straight from his great big heart, that he loves France for all it has done for him.
In fact this little “greatest nation” contest feels rather Anglo-Saxon in nature. Oh yes look, here comes another contender into the ring: John Howard, the prime minister of Australia. Howard declares quite convincingly — listen up Messrs Blair and Bush — that Australia is the greatest nation on earth; yes in those very words: “It’s a wonderful nation, the greatest on Earth. We think we’re pretty good — and we are.” Well hey, whoopee. Though I am beginning to feel a little humbled, what with all this greatness and all. What about the billions of people on this planet who just happened to have been born elsewhere; are we not “blessed” and “special” too? Are we not even “pretty good”?
Patriotism is a concept I find difficult. It often falls too close to nationalism. Loving your country is something I understand and applaud. It is love after all, a positive and constructive force. Being proud to be American/British/Chinese or whichever citizenship you happen to have is another matter. For a start it is one short step — as we have just seen — from being proud of belonging to a great country to thinking this country is the greatest on Earth. Rare are those who do not leap from one to the other. Pride is to a large degree about making yourself feel good about who you are — which is fine — except when this entails a feeling of superiority over your neighbors and friends.
For another I feel uncomfortable with being proud of an accident of birth. I could, at a stretch, accept much more readily the national pride of the naturalized; after all they chose to be citizens of another country and probably had to jump through countless hoops to get there. It is an achievement, not an accident. Being proud that you are, to use a French expression “a Francais de souche” (roughly translated as of French stock) essentially means you are proud of your genetic heritage. It is akin to my saying I am proud of having brown eyes, something that strikes me as rather absurd.
I feel similarly uncomfortable with calling a group of people special or blessed because they happen to come from somewhere with a glorious history. I come from Madinah for instance, a town with a rich and wonderful history, and I do sometimes find myself falling into the trap of thinking myself special because of it.
Yes it is a kind of blessing to be able to associate myself with a place like Madinah but it does not make me better than someone who was born somewhere not on the map of history. It is a reason to be grateful certainly, but it is not a reason to boast and belittle like a kid on a playground as Messrs Blair, Bush and Howard felt the need to do. The greatest nation on earth? There aint no such thing Mr. Bush.
