Ouch. Brain on holiday. Did not want to think and I have commenters Naomi and Patricia calling me on my gushy attitude about patriotism a couple of posts ago.
OK.
I am not quite ready to go as far as "my mother drunk or sober". That was our standard retort to the flag wavers when we protested the Viet Nam war. Not everybody who loves their country is blind to, or even tolerant of, the failures of character or of policy in the nation's conduct.
It is true that patriotism is a very loaded word. It is probable that it gets heavily misused when politicians want to use
our emotions to blur the vital distinction between feeling like a good citizen and acting like one. Emotion is not a trustworthy mechanism, but it is all we have when you get down to it. Logic and politics only pretend to have much to do with each other.
It may sound like I am making a case that there is good patriotism and bad...not quite. Perhaps in agreement with the reservations people have about patriotism, I see one inescapable flaw in it: it gets touted for
uniting the country but by exactly that same means, it
divides the world.
Nu?
Is there a good patriotism? You
could love your country
and your world but that is much easier said than done...starting with knowing all the people in your world.