Where is George? Where is the Dragon?

Where would my FB morning be without your reassuringly banal post and thread?  I always feel I'm intruding on a meeting of the Mothers' Union or Women's Institute. They're patriotic too arn't they? Was the slow hand clap to Tony Blaire patriotic or not? The jury's still out on that one. 

It raises the question though, as to what constitutes 'patriotism'? Is it to conform or dissent?  Is it the government or opposition? Is it the majority or minority view? When does disagreement become treachery? When is it morally right to disobey the law? 

It was Churchill who said "The minority is always right," and Samuel Johnson who said, "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."  It was the Oxford Union that in 1933 famously voted 275:173 in favour of the motion, "In no circumstances will this house fight for King and Country", the members of which only six years later did so, many of them perishing in the process. Hopefully the effort was worth it. Hopefully defeating despotism was  worth the cost. 

But it was a much more realistic and rational patriotism than that which prevailed prior to the First WW, the memories of which had influenced the debate, best summed up in the closing phrase of Wilfred Owen's poem: "The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est. Pro patria mori." ("It is sweet and fitting to die for the homeland.") 

Are we better off with more or less patriotism and what are its constituents?  We are constantly being warned by government of 'Right Wing Extremism', the members of which proudly wave the national flag, yet those that have gathered in their thousands to protest the loss of basic freedoms, have been thuggishly attacked by agents of the state, for all the world indistinguishable from 'Right wing extremists'. It's all very confusing. 

St George was a 'saint'. The British Isles is suffused in the reminders of them. Yet, rather like the 'dragon' that he killed, they are both mythological and symbolic of the philosophical tension between good and evil - 'God' and the 'Devil' - that exists in every individual, and society in the round. 

Politicians are very fond of spouting 'Western Values'. It has virtually replaced 'Christian Values'. Christianity and the church, seem unable to defend themselves against materialism on the one hand and multi-culturalism on the other; of scientific rationalism on the one hand and dogmatic hypocrisy on the other. 

We might take the view in this age of environmental awareness and 'extinction rebellion', that killing the dragon, an obviously endangered species, was in fact a disreputable act, that should be disparaged and disowned, like so many controversial figures from the past. No statuary is safe it seems from the prevailing ethos. 

St George and the dragon is still a powerful metaphor and icon, more meaningful to some than others and essentially interpreted at a personal level in terms of self-image, in relation to community and nation. It flowers in the rituals and theatre of chivalry and monarchy. Appropriately the present Queen's birthday falls just two days before it.  

Meanwhile in the organised chaos of a teeming humanity and a spinning world, the true biblical meaning of 'Saint' is of course totally obscured and nobody even thinks to ask the question, what it might mean.