Love of Country

(17 March 1993) after Walter Scott

What does it mean, accustomed to disapprove of what one doesn’t understand and unaware of one’s own smell, to love one’s country? If one chooses, can one govern? Can even abuse void one’s love for one’s own, or only flip the coin, turning love to hate, hate to love? The innocent child does not choose but is tied by religious force to its parents, and the family is tied to its community, the community tied, the region tied, the culture tied, the race, the form and substance of life, gazing into the eyes of the dog, the fish, cannot divorce itself from itself.