Bonniedundee

Patriotism is a stupid and artificial thing, usually about creating obedience to gov't.

I can understand common feeling and pride for your local area and people but not for a nation state.

Mark

I define patriotism and nationalism as two different things:

Patriotism is a feeling toward a community (for example, a nation) and people have a desire to seek the best for it; people who advocated improved healthcare for the country, for example, are patriotic in my book, as they're concerned for the common weal.

Nationalism is a more vulgar expression which sees that community as superior to others, and leads to bigoted expectations abroad. This is the undesirable one.

Bonniedundee

I can understand this and have this feeling towards Cornwall and the Western highlands but I can't understand patriotism to an abstract large entity like Britain or even England, let alone the USA.

Mark

Well everyone's different. I don't have much of an affinity for my home county Essex (cos it's mostly chavvy ) but have an affinity for the UK over and above England. I also associate myself loosely with Europe, although I consider my Britishness to be my strongest association.

Bonniedundee

I personally think that kind of patriotism is mainly artificial. It is an allegience to an ideal and absraction rather than to a landscape and people you know from everyday experience.

JamesBannon

Who was it that said "nationalism and patriotism are the abode of fools"? That said, I'm proud to be a Scot. However, I am a human first, a left libertarian second and being a Scot comes a long way behind those two.

Malcolm Kirkpatrick

"Man is the political animal."--Aristotle.

As a definition, this doesn't work very well, since many animals form groups and dominance hierarchies, but there is at least the correct observation that humans are social animals. Patriotism is one form of group identity. Religion, race, class, and occupation are others. To say that the human appetite for group membership is bad is like saying that the human appetite for protein is bad, seems to me.

Socialists who disdain patriotism but who exalt class identity assert, in effect: "My group's group identity is better than your group's group identity".

DBT

Perhaps an affinity or a love of ones homeland can be seperated from nationalism and patriotism?

Ephemerid

I could have been born anywhere: the US, Zimbabwe, India, France, Chile, you name it. That puts a big dent in my being 'patriotic' regardless of where I was born. It was by an accident of the universe I happened to be born American.

As far as being an American, I am 'proud' of a few certain things & a few notable figures in history, but not the country as a whole. I know too much history to jump on that bandwagon.

AthenaAwakened

What exactly are we loving when we love our homeland? The place? The people? The culture? The idea?

We claim certain virtues as patriotic. Liberty, freedom, duty, loyalty, honor. But are these virtues (or any others) nation specific? And what of vices? Do they always belong to the "other guy?"

Patriotism is one of those words that everybody uses, but never thinks about. That's what makes it dangerous.