The Value of Patriotism
- I don't actually like the direction this wikia is heading. It's simply becoming a political discussion forum rather than a resource on candidates. But I'm confident that this will change. In the meantime, I'd like to take advantage of this chaos to ask a question for the masses that has long plagued me: I've never understood why patriotism is considered a good trait. For something that so many politicians find themselves claiming and defending, and something that comes up as a topic so often, it seems this question is not often enough asked. What is good about patriotism? Why do nations deserve our love and respect, and especially why more than cities or provinces or the continents or the world in general? I'm not really interested in discussing how much patriotism is good or how much patriotism is too much, or why the PATRIOT act is or is not patriotism, flag-waving, flag-burning, etc. I just want to break out the core question: what could possibly justify the notion of patriotism? Of course others will have other things to discuss about patriotism, but I'll thank you to start your own section 2 header on it. Jun-Dai 17:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
versus Nationalism
- Is there any difference between patriotism and nationalism, other than a positive and negative connotation, respectively? Jun-Dai 22:46, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
- Earlier this year on a conference on ethnic conflict in Marburg, Germany I had a discussion with a Social-Psycologist who did some studies on this matter. Following his definition nationalism is a national identity based on ethnicity (like for example Germany used to be 1871-1945, or also Italy, Denmark, and many other european countries). While patriotism is refering to an national identity that is based on a political idea, like in France 1789-now or the USA 1776-now. Therefore you could say that nationalism has a more negative connotation. Which is by the way one of my constant concerns about German immigration policies. Many people in my home country really need to get over that idea that citizenship is based on ethnicity. But afterall I never felt really comfortable with the idea of patriotism or nationalism. That is probally just the legacy of beeing German, but I do thing that it is very dangerous if a society comes in a situation where people are judged by how patrioitc they are. If this state is reached and it becomes unpatriotic to critize your current political order the possibilities of a democrazy collapsing are significant. Thorben 15:01, 14 July (WET)
what makes a nation
I would like to think that rather then being patriotic to a nation, I'm patriotic to the ideas that build the nation; forexample, the Constitution verses the United States. This may be a factor of the ralative young age of my county compaired to other countries around the world. But the fact remains that I would defend the Constitution even if that meant defending it against the United States.
If I were a nationalist, I would fight to protect the United States interests over the constitution. Or the ideas that make up the United States. The US revolutionary war is a good example to me personally. There were those who fought for an idea of the declaration of independence, and others who fought to protect the unity of the existing nation (as colonies of Britian). I would like to think I would have done my part to create a nation that held fast to the ideas that came out of that declaration. Toonces