For most Americans, patriotism is one of those good things. Some years ago, while flying high above a quiet church office, that very subject was discussed. I fluttered down to the windowsill and listened, as I often do. Do you know, I do this so often that someone once commemorated it in a poem.

A wise old owl sat on an oak.

The more he listened, the less he spoke.

The less he spoke, the more he heard.

Try to be like that wise old bird.

Patriotism, the wise speaker said, was where you love your country. You love its place in a wonderful world. If your fellow countrymen have something to offer to make the world happier, healthier, or better, they need to have the means to develop such ideas into reality. They need a good education, a healthy body, and a conscience to try to do what’s right. And a country where that can happen. A patriot cares about others, respects them, and learns from them, no matter where they come from, whether here or abroad. Ideas that join together to draw out the best each of us can offer make for wonderful inventions, good government, and helpful, caring societies. Here’s an example. Four young Finnish sports enthusiasts shared their ideas about energy after a hearty soccer match. They worked together and developed an engine using sand! It currently heats 100 homes and a swimming pool, in freezing Finland during the winter! An American patriot would rejoice in such a good idea and try to learn more. A patriot wants all his fellows to receive the same chances to succeed. Don’t we all want honest government, a good business environment, a safe and healthy education, and a social system with equal treatment under just laws?

“Not so the nationalist,” the wise man I heard from the window continued. A nationalist sees his country as better than others. You fear and hate your enemies, who are many and changing. This happens because, to keep their fellow nationalists in power, nationalists are forever finding new “enemies.” You scare your fellow citizens with your invented fears, and offer yourself as the savior. You, the mighty nationalist, will rescue them, and deliver them from the bogus evil you created in the first place.

What if we thought about this for a minute, patriotism and nationalism? Erich Maria Remarque was a German. He fought in dread combat, was wounded five times, and endured slaughters through all of World War 1. He lived to write “All Quiet on the Western Front,” one of the greatest stories of war ever created. For this he was hated by German nationalists. Remarque’s books were burned by zealous Nazis who denounced his work as “un-German,” insulting, and filled with “degenerate” lies. Nazis publicly burned his books along with those of Ernest Hemingway, Sigmund Freund, and many others. In fact, a Nazi “blood oath” was read out which said Remarque’s books were hurled into the flames because of his “literary betrayal of the soldiers of the World War and his denunciation of the education of the nation in the spirit of standing to battle.”

When I fly around our little county, I wonder what we’ll be reading this cold winter. What will our own kids be reading? Will we live like patriots, and seek out the good in anyone’s philosophy, the better to make our world a more understandable and welcoming place? Or will we encourage fear, burning, or censoring what we won’t even read about?

I’ve always liked an observation made by an English writer, Dinah Maria Craik. She said some years ago, “A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one’s heart, the chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keeping what is worth keeping and, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.” When we read or listen to understand others, are we like the wise man I listened to through his window? We might, in the end, not agree with everything someone writes or says, but we know we’ve given it thought. I hope all our Limestone neighbors read and listen with a desire to learn, and not to be afraid. The wise man at the window knew how being open to a world of thought is patriotism. The fearful nationalist wants to keep you afraid.