Eileen Gu and what we owe to our country

Last Tuesday, Sinead Kiley argued in the Daily that we should not criticize American-born skier Eileen Gu for representing China at the Olympics because the Olympics “can mean different things to different people.” She wrote that financial considerations and opportunism are everywhere in sports, so Eileen Gu is no different from any other athlete. If $14 million from the Beijing Municipal Sport Bureau is an offer the U.S. would not match, Eileen Gu is within her rights to go to the highest bidder. Chinese government enticements and corporate sponsorships are undoubtedly important motivations, but not necessarily the whole story; Eileen Gu has stated that she wanted to build “her own pond,” and I do not doubt that a larger, more enthusiastic fan base in China appealed to her.

When approaching a complex issue like this one, I aim to extricate myself from the extraneous details of the case — names, sides, places — and identify the fundamental tensions that underlie the debate. This way, I can ground my stance in my fundamental, general principles, ensuring that my worldview is coherent. In Kiley’s piece, I observe an individualist argument, in contrast to my communitarian ethics.

Whatever your position on the Eileen Gu controversy, I hope to persuade you that a laissez-faire outlook is a slippery slope. Its open-minded tolerance is intuitively compelling, but its treatment of patriotism and duty as voluntary turns individual choice into a carte blanche for self-centeredness. All of us, including Eileen Gu, are called by basic morality to serve something greater than ourselves, and we should not hesitate to call each other out when any one of us denies this imperative. We live in a capitalist, individualist world that does not make these values bind, as Kiley correctly notes. Yet we must fight to preserve them, because a world without mutual obligation is a world in which we can make very few moral claims on others, and a world with a shallow sense of personal morality beyond do-no-harm is an anti-social world, one that treats people as atomic.

In light of the Eileen Gu case, I put forward four essential principles that I consider essential to my cause, the progressive cause, the pro-social cause.

First, authenticity. We must be committed to our identities because we violate our own dignity when we allow circumstantial considerations to dominate our true selves. We should strive for a world in which we are not rewarded or punished for a certain expression of identity, so that we can express our most authentic selves, not the version that society will most accept. Yet, as that goal remains far away, we owe it to ourselves to be our own best advocates and, whenever reasonably possible, choose authenticity over convenience. 

Second, civicism. We all hold multiple overlapping identities, but we subscribe to one common community of fate — the nation-state. For better or worse, this form of political organization defines the modern world. Its strength is its contractual clarity. In contrast to co-ethnics or co-religionists, nationals are connected by rights and duties, both enumerated and unenumerated. Some radical cosmopolitans argue that civic identity is just as exclusive and arbitrary as cultural identity, but civic identity has served as a force for democracy, unity and progress in diverse societies, while cultural identity, when not conjoined with civic identity, has served as a force for division. There is a clear hierarchy between these two. 

Third, contribution. We owe gratitude to the communities that formed us, and we are called to give back. As John Donne wrote, “No man is an island entire of itself.” Or as Kamala Harris said, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” In the individualist’s view, we might be able to assess the pecuniary value of the education and public goods society has provided, pay that back and call it even. By contrast, in the communitarian’s view, our ambition and creativity are formed in society, and our successes rely on the substantive freedoms to invest and explore that society alone can grant. Our debt to others is literally immeasurable. How, then, can we be okay with someone who chooses Palantir over public service? We must have a clear sense of whose service we work on behalf of, founded in reasoned gratitude.

Fourth, transparency. We must open ourselves up to public comment and even criticism because public debate is a critical mechanism for accountability. If our actions cannot be held up to any external bar and we may pursue our self-interest, however defined, then this sometimes hurtful accountability is not of vital significance. Yet as I have argued, there are morally binding claims on our actions, and only deliberation can enforce them. We may not brush our critics off without engaging with them seriously, so long as they are genuine participants in discourse.

Given these criteria, I would not fault Gu merely for sincere devotion to another nation, even though I consider its government authoritarian, but I am disappointed that she appears to give civic identity and loyalty to either nation little intrinsic weight in her pursuit of individual fortune and fame.

I object to Kiley’s argument that Americans celebrate global mobility fueled by self-interest so long as it benefits us. I celebrate immigrants to the U.S., but I celebrate their belief in the American dream and their testament to this country’s commitment to inclusion and change, not simply their talent. When President Trump turns this beautiful process into a transactional, commercial one with his “Gold Card,” a pathway to citizenship that can be bought for $1 million, I cringe at the insult to all other immigrants. We should not normalize such practices but be disgusted by them because they denigrate and commodify civic identity. 

I take no great joy in criticizing Eileen Gu. I condemn attacks on her physical safety and comments that violate the basic norms of civility. Yet, I must defend the principle of national duty as opposed to uninhibited individualism. Ideas have a life of their own, and I see no way to demand that billionaires put their self-interest aside for the common good if I am unwilling to demand the same of Eileen Gu, or to ask my fellow citizens to fight for a nation that is cohesive and inclusive if I think it is acceptable to treat membership as opt-in, where we can pick and choose when we would like to belong. 

I hope that America is a country where we ask, in the words of President Kennedy, “not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” where we embrace our duties, not only our privileges. I hope that we are not hands-off about the choices others make, but exhort one another to put all hands on deck. I hope we as a people seek not only money and medals, but also the honor of sharing them with our neighbors.

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