Some will question what the use is, when the world has gone global, of insisting on the preservation of such quaint values as patriotism or nationalism (in fact such words, for being politically charged, can at times automatically shut off listeners in a land where politics may be the last place a seeker instinctively looks to for hope). Politics aside, that question can be answered with another: Would your love for the beauties of far distant shores be true if it is but an extension of your cynicism about the beauty that may lie hidden within your own land and kindred?
As we approach the 111th and plod on towards the 112th anniversary of Philippine Independence it will be of help to many of us if we begin or put new vitality into deeds that counter dampers who no longer believe the Filipino is worth dying for (perhaps because they have not really discovered, that first of all, the Filipino is worth living for), that love of God is also love of country (perhaps because “idols” ignorant of bayanihan sit on their pedestals), that the youth is the hope of the fatherland (perhaps because midway through their lives they have sold away the ideals of their younger days).
Of course you cannot say that the Filipino is worth dying for, or worth living for, if you have not lived through (or died through), the process of getting registered as a voter (attention Cebu City residents of voting age: the Commission on Elections is no longer located in that inconspicuous location behind Gaisano Metro Colon, it has been holding office near the Basilica Minore del Santo Nino for aeons). You ought not to be the one to unceremoniously rant against “the system” when in between election years your leader turns out to be bad, especially if yours, along with that of many others, was the unexercised or unguarded right of suffrage that once led the said “leader” to victory at the polls (note: with less than a year to the next elections, C-CIMPEL is open to interested voter education and other program volunteers).
You cannot say that the Filipino is worth dying for, or worth living for, if you are reminded of your citizenship only when forms like passport or visa applications and similar paperwork prod you to such remembrance, and your reaching for your dreams with these documents ultimately benefit only you and a select few but is inimical to the good of so many more compatriots. Your achievements and the watersheds of your life cannot be weighed in isolation from the experience and reality of your countrymen. Fend for yourself and your immediate loved ones by all means, but do not stop there, for to do so (but for the taxes that perhaps you cannot help but pay by virtue of being withheld), is de facto secession from the rest of the nation, and contests the power of your love.
You cannot say that the Filipino is worth dying for, or worth living for, if in critiquing the phenomenon of corruption in the country you are so angry as to be momentarily worked up over it, only to admit too soon that, since that is the way it was, that is the way it is and always will be. Stop propagating the lie that to enter into politics and public service is to enter into and be part of the filth of the profession. The lie is so oft-repeated that many, unwittingly or otherwise, have taken it to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, thereby making false prophets of so many of us. It is time for a new prophecy to clear our air of that poisonous assertion. Do not conveniently forget that Philippine governance has also been the arena of Ninoy and Cory, Salonga, Yorac, Monsod, Roco, and the Davids, to name a few good men and women.
When the world has gone global and it has become all easier to appreciate the verdure and glitter of distant pastures, patriotism and nationalism is all the more necessary, the viable antidote to the balkanization of an entire people. As Cory once said: “We cannot afford to turn another generation of Filipinos into cynical folk who would eschew responsible citizenship in favor of playing the game of corruption and patronage politics and resigning themselves to the impossibility of fundamental change in government and society.” Not even the richest of the nations can afford that.
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