Alchemy: The medieval chemical science, whose great object was the transmutation of baser metals into gold. – Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, 1914 edition

The debate over possible military intervention in Syria has put on display, for all who can see, the perverse alchemy that has been taking place in this country for at least the past 75 years or more.  Unlike medieval alchemy, which sought to convert base metals into valuable gold, the modern, perverse version is attempting, and unfortunately largely succeeding, in taking gold and converting it into a base metal, thus destroying its value.

The modern gold I am speaking of is patriotism.  As defined in my 1914 Webster’s dictionary, patriotism is:

Love of country; devotion to the welfare of one’s country; the virtues and actions of a patriot; the passion inspiring one to serve one’s country.

So a patriot is one who judges national action on the basis of the welfare of the nation.  It is a national equivalent of self-interest in an individual.  Thus if an action is not one that serves to protect the rights and property of a nation’s citizens, the only proper role of the government, then it is not an action that the nation should undertake.  Even less should the nation undertake an action if it is an actual sacrifice, meaning giving a value (money, resources, or the lives of citizens) for a lesser value or no value.

The two base metals that patriotism is being transmuted into which are on display in the response to President Obama’s proposed military action in Syria are isolationism and unilateralism.

Isolationism is the more visible of the two in this point.  By and large those who oppose military action in Syria do so because there is no direct threat (or indirect to my mind) to the rights and property of Americans.  Rather than being labeled as patriots though, as they properly speaking are, many in the media, both left and right leaning, refer to them as isolationists.

Isolationism is defined as, “the policy or doctrine of isolating one’s country from the affairs of other nations by declining to enter into alliances, foreign economic commitments, international agreements.”  You would be hard put to find anyone who opposes involvement in Syria who endorse or promote this type of policy.  No one is advocating breaking diplomatic relations with other nations, eliminating trade with foreign countries, and becoming a completely self-sufficient nation.  Yet this is label that is applied to those who essentially ask, as Wayne Rogers (actor from TVs MASH) did the other day, “Where is the American self-interest in this conflict?”

The second of the base metals, unilateralism, is not being pushed as hard in the Syrian conflict as it was in earlier conflicts such as Iraq.  Unilateralism refers to “a policy of taking unilateral action (as in international affairs) regardless of outside support or reciprocity.”  In the current situation, I have mainly seen this in the responses from my state’s two Senators to my letter opposing action in Syria.  (You can read their letters here and here)  In both responses part of their reason for “opposing” the action is the worry that it would be unilateral in nature.  In regards to the Iraq war under President Bush, the charge of unilateralism was much more visible, with claims that the President was acting unilaterally.

In the current proposed action against Syria the charge of unilateralism is largely true as there is little support for such an action among other nations, in the Iraq conflict it was not true as there were many nations that participated.  In both cases however, the true meaning of the label is that it is immoral to act in our nation’s self-interest unless other nations agree with us.  This entails submitting our national self-interests to the desires and wishes of other nations.  This was particularly obvious to me in the two responses from my Senators where at no time did they reference the interests of our country, but rather (among other concerns) that no other country was willing to act with us, so obviously we should not act, i.e. that our interests are unimportant without outside support.

While I described the concepts of isolationism and unilateralism as two base metals, they can be thought of as two sides of the same coin.  The isolationism side of the coin is the “inactive” mode, or rather the non-action side.  It is the side where we refuse to act without any self-interest.  The unilateralism side is the “active” side, where we act in defense of our self-interest regardless of any other nation agrees with us.  The base metal of the coin is the simple idea of a nation only acting in defense or pursuit of its self-interest, which is presented via its two faces as being evil and immoral.

I hope that someday I will live to see my nation only act out the golden sense of patriotism, of national self-interest.  When as a nation we chose not to spend the wealth and lives of our nation in ways that do not benefit us.  To do so is to sacrifice them and I can think of no more immoral action.