I would say that the current “crop” of people wishing to secede are as patriotic (or not) as the poster on this MB who advocated for same in 2004. AFAICT, there are maybe one or two posters here who are advocating secession now. If I have time over the weekend, I’ll try and get an estimate of how man posters we had doing this in 2004. We can then see how many of them are still active members.
It’s much more fruitful debating the motive of people who can actually defend themselves than the motives of some unidentified people not here to defend their own position.
Yeah, seconded. You can be patriotic to your conception of a country before some recent drastic changes. If a part of Germany in the 1930s wanted to secede in an attempt to keep the Weimar Republic and resist Nazism, that would count as patriotic to Germany (or, the Weimar version of Germany) in my book.
More to the point, does it really matter? Whether it’s patriotic or not doesn’t change the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of a secession movement.
Is it supposed to be? If you secede then you obviously have a major problem with the country you are planning to secede from…otherwise, why secede?? So, if that’s the question, then no…it’s not patriotic to the country you are seceding from. The British certainly took umbrage over those damned rebels, and hanged quite a few of them. But the rebels didn’t want to be part of the empire anymore, so to themselves they were patriots…and, since they won, they get to call themselves whatever they like. While the Scots during the '45 lost…so, they got the axe, and were branded as traitors. C’est la vie…fortunes of war (and it helps that we had the French helping us and all that ocean in-between us and the Brits ;)).
You mention WWII, and it’s a good example to show that people can come to different conclusions on this issue. For instance, the king of Denmark stayed in his country while the king of Norway went into exike. Neither has been accused of not being a patriot. At the contrary, both have been considered as symbols of national resistance against Nazism.
No, if a true patriot thinks the government of his or her country has been taken over by people who are out to harm the country, the proper response is not to secede (not permanently, anyway) but to seek to overthrow the false rulers and restore the country to its proper state of rule. If you actually love the United States, you will not act so as to destroy it, no matter how badly or illegitimately you think it is being ruled.
I suppose, in a US context, advocating secession would be consistent with being a patriot of your state, but you would not be acting patriotically towards the USA.
Mind you, personally I do not think patriotism is much of a virtue anyway. The world would be a better place if there were no patriots anywhere.