​Écosse

Patriotism generally has a bad reputation at Harvard. Many of us are members of what Ross Douthat derisively calls the cosmopolitan class: we feel no special attachment to the United States or wherever we’re from, preferring instead to see ourselves as citizens of a globalized, multicultural world. Why, we ask, do people get worked up so much about something that’s an accident of birth? Patriots are deluded; the results of patriotism are generally bad.

I am not ashamed to be cosmopolitan. An American who has lived abroad for a third of my life, I look at the U.S. somewhat dispassionately. I celebrated the Fourth of July this year by working on my thesis. When I look at U.S. or world events, I say somberly, with the sage wisdom of a 21-year-old not-even-economics concentrator: "Well, our leaders should make decisions based solely on the consequences for the economy."

But.

When I was eleven-and-a-half, I returned to the place where I was born. It was a winding three-hour ride from the Glasgow airport on a sunny day, and we came to the road along the beach, the medieval town jutting into the ocean. I began to cry.

The next year changed me: It made me more introspective and nostalgic-for-the-present, braver and wilder, more adult, yet more childishly joyful. I made friends along the banks of the North Sea; I learned history, pop songs from the eighties; Doctor Who, and all the words to Flower of Scotland. I met people who’d been in daycare with me; I met my parents as they were when they were young, and when I walked past the thistles and cattle, my only worry was that my time there would end.

Four years later, my project on Scottish devolution brought me to the National History Day finals, and during the Scottish independence referendum last year, I walked into a room full of English students with a saltire flag, caring not of economics, but of freedom.

This summer, I was able to go back to Europe on a thesis grant. I loved Switzerland because it reminded me of Scotland; because I could walk through its wee bit hills and glens without a care; because when I wrote English, I could spell colour with a u, or say aubergine or zed.

My English friend snarkily introduced me to his parents as, “Siobhan, who likes to say she's Scottish."

He’s right—the only true Chinese Scot we know is Cho Chang. It’s absurd that I am in love with Scotland, when Massachusetts made me who I am. It’s surely the delusions of a 12-year-old, raised on Celtic longing-for-the-homeland-that-never-existed ballads—but even more absurd is the that so many of my friends, like me, love places they’ve never been, simply because of ancestry. Patriotism is national memory, both the profane and the sublime, which irrevocably binds even a transplant to the past. It represents an intangibly lovely transcendence of time and place.

My grandfather played in an Irish band for 50 years, singing songs about how he missed a country he’d never visited. My popo is learning Mandarin, even though her family is Cantonese and she’s lived her whole life in a U.S.-territory-then-state. In fact, this is a beautiful thing about the United States: We can hold onto these things, and still be wholly American. When we talk about homelands, I can almost believe in the American dream.

The desire to be part of something bigger than oneself is not misplaced. Though we often think of wonder as between only a person and nature, humans are communal creatures, and humans are emotional creatures. What is wonderful of patriotism is that which is based on human connection and memory. To be attached to our homelands, however flawed they are, is of the better angels of our nature.

While in Lausanne, I went to a televised football game—the lake and French Alps to the left, and the setting sun ahead. As "La Marseillaise" played, the French spectators around me began to sing, and the song filled the space until we were all swept away. It’s a revolutionary poem—a violent song—and for that minute, the crowd was steeped in centuries of history, drenched in years of blood and sweat.

Does patriotism gone wrong foment horrible things? Of course it does. One needs only to hear a rousing song about the greatness of fields watered with impure blood to see this. Lincoln, when he talked of our better angels, refused to condemn slavery. I am not here as an apologist for any awful thing done by any nation-state, nor the blind acceptance (or worse, praise) of a nation’s historical evils.

Patriotism done correctly should come with the recognition of the imperfection of all governments and the desire to change what is broken. Disregarding the delusions of the poets, if you think your loved one is perfect, it’s not love. But despite—or, perhaps, because of—this, there’s still something naively beautiful in thinking of and treating the thing as if it’s something wholly worthy of love. Perhaps the only way to improve something is to already see what it could be. Perhaps the only way to get through the pain of life is to run rampant through and embrace its absurdity. Scotland doesn’t deserve me, and I don’t deserve Scotland. Yet here we are.

This all might just be longing for what I cannot have. Perhaps if I were to live in Scotland for an extended period of time, I would wax poetic about endless apple orchards and cranberry bogs, think misty eyed thoughts about the swan boat rides of my youth, and tearfully celebrate the Fourth of July. None of this would be bad, but it’s all just speculation.

My patriotism doesn’t match my passport. I may be cosmopolitan, but above that: I’m Scottish.

Siobhan McDonough ’17, a social studies concentrator, lives in Kirkland House. Her Summer column appears on alternate Mondays.