For the Fourth of July, a peek back at one of the more talked-about arti­cles in recent Friends Jour­nal his­tory, Tony White’s The Immor­tal­ity of Patri­o­tism. A sample:

Patri­o­tism clouds our judg­ment; it hin­ders objec­tiv­ity and detracts from our abil­ity to assess polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions ratio­nally. Patri­o­tism biases us toward our country’s per­spec­tive, encum­ber­ing our desire and abil­ity to con­sider out­side per­spec­tives. Put briefly, patri­o­tism breeds con­for­mity and closed-mindedness. Fur­ther­more, patri­o­tism makes us overly trust­ing of those in power over us, and sus­cep­ti­ble to abuses of that power.

This was pub­lished before I came as the Journal’s edi­tor. The let­ters forum and Google searches will pull up some very insight­ful cri­tiques that basi­cally points out the dis­crep­an­cies between the sec­u­lar lefty cri­tique of the arti­cle and the his­toric Friends peace tes­ti­mony. Over on the Friends Jour­nal Face­book page, there’s a lively dis­cus­sion cur­rently hap­pen­ing about patri­o­tism and the Fourth.

(H/T to Danny Cole­man for the reminder link to White’s article)