And what is it, besides the feel-good word for nationalism?
Every other ‘ism’ is bad, isn’t it? Racism, ethnocentrism, sexism… Religion is blamed for the wars in Northern Ireland and Palestine, and for the crusades. But if you added up the killings from WWI and II alone, surely they’d dwarf the killings done in the name of every other ism every coined, wouldn’t they?
I mean, religion at least incorporates a world-view. You did, at some point, make a choice to believe… or not. Race/ethnicity are arbitrary in the sense you didn’t choose them. But they did choose you. I mean, who would you be, but for the genes that made you?
But ‘nation’ is even more arbitrary than that. It refers strictly to an accident of birth - the accident of which geographic territory you happen to have been born in.
Take Texas, for example. The bit of land I happen to be living on was, in succession -
Spain
France
Spain, again
Mexico
Texas (The Republic)
USA
CSA
And then USA again.
Why so much reverence for patriotism, when so many other isms (at least for some people) have gone by the wayside?
Patriotism is remembering the people who fought and died so you can post here and speak your mind. I don’t think you would understand any more so I will stop there.
I can’t say much about patriotism other than that i still just don’t get it, but:
Surely not. Many, perhaps most ‘isms’ seem to have negative connotations, but by no means all. Whether some are good or bad is also dependent on your viewpoint, or is otherwise arguable, but some are beyond that - humanitarianism, for example.
What are patriotism and nationalism good for? Good question.
Many things in your life help shape what you are, your values, your culture, etc. Your family and friends do it. Your teachers do it, the city in which you live/in which you were raised also do it. The country and nation you belong to also do it, and in many cases they are the entity that “defines” you the most, for lack of a better word.
This is what nationalism and patriotism mean to me. I am a nationalist, and by this what I mean is that among the groups I belong to, my nation is probably the one I feel the most attached to. Yes, I also feel a sense of belonging towards other groups (for example, in my case, the region I come from, and my country), but even this isn’t quite what I feel for my nation. And yes, I feel some pride for my nation’s accomplishments. This, in itself, may sound stupid, since they aren’t my accomplishments, but what it means is that people “like me” (in some ways) are able to do great things.
Now, what’s it good for? Well, it makes a lot of people my peers, which may be a good thing in may situations, and you could say that feeling that I belong to a nation has the effect of encouraging me to work to make this nation even better than it is now. At the same time, it could make me blind to my nation’s failures. So it has positive and negative effects. I think patriotism and nationalism are just normal ways to fulfill the very human need to belong. They may have good and bad effects.
And if you don’t “get” nationalism and patriotism, I will ask you this: what do you feel that you belong to? Which groups do you look up to?
I would say that patriotism is loving the ideals upon which your country is based. Nationalism is feeling that your country is better than other countries.
So saying “I love America because we’re a democracy where everyone is equal before the law” is patriotism. Saying “I love America because we’re better than Canada” is nationalism.
I serve on the boards of the BAC of St. Andrews Episcopal Church and the OSFCI, and am a moderator on this board-all because, at this time, their goals and mine are somewhat the same. I “look up” to individuals both within and without those groups because, while groups of any size can be subverted on the whim of a buyout and/or a vote, people are made of sterner stuff.
Severus, when you say you’re nationalist, do you mean that you’re attached to Quebec, or to Canada? Is the difference still important? (Sorry, I should probably know the answer to that question.) When you say you feel pride in the accomplishments of people “like you,” do you mean French Canadians, Anglos, or both?
I realize the geographical boundaries of the country where you’re born often define you - specifically, whether or not you were born within those boundaries - but what I’m asking is - is that rational? Is it more or less rational than defining yourself by your race? Your religion? Your ethnicity? If I’m born on this side of the Rio Grande, but my brother is born on that side, why should I let that particular accident of birth define me? Why should he?
No doubt. In fact, I’ve no doubt if you put a group of virtually identical human beings on an island together, they’d find some way of splitting up into rival camps within a month. IOW, I’ve no doubt it’s a human need. I’m just asking whether patriotism is a contrived method of manipulating it.
Well, I’m not patriotic, if that helps any. I think the USA’s a pretty good country, but I don’t think it’s any better than Australia, or the UK, or Canada (for example). (I mean, Canada’s pretty gdamn cold, isn’t it? …and I don’t think much of England’s slander-laws… and, well, I actually can’t think of anything bad to say about Australia… but anyway, the point is the differences are ultmately pretty insignificant.)
In fact, I’d say that thinking that - that America is the ‘best’ country in the world - is only a half-step up from thinking that people have fought wars over whether or not I could post on the internet.
That’s not how I define the word, and that’s also not how most academics define it. I believe what you’re thinking about is chauvinism (or, specifically, nationalist chauvinism). Nationalism in itself can mean a lot more than this. The Wikipedia article presents in a few words the main types of nationalism that are usually recognized, but for interested people there are many books that discuss nationalism. One I read, and which as an interested layman I think is rather good, would be Ray Taras’s Liberal and Illiberal Nationalisms. It discusses some of the main flavours of nationalisms, liberal and illiberal (as the title implies); ethnic and civic; the nationalism of multicultural states and empires and the nationalism of secessionist movements, etc.
Of course I’m not blaming you for using this definition of “nationalism”, since the word has acquired a negative meaning in many places.
Fair enough. It’s certainly possible for people to identify with some groups they belong to more strongly than they identify with their nation or country. That’s especially true if they don’t really share the values that are often seen in their country (and I’m not saying that’s your case, in fact I don’t think it is, I’m just offering an example).
By the way, do you feel some links, cultural or otherwise, with your country of “Earth Prime, Pre-Crisis”, Czarcasm?
I’m not saying I don’t look up to certain aspects and ideals of this country, but I find these aspects and ideals to be less vague when found in local and/or smaller groups.
What do I feel about Earth-Prime, pre-Crisis? Sentimentality.
Quebec is my nation, Canada is my country. I’m attached to both, but my attachment to Quebec is more visceral. And “my people” are Quebecers (who I will define below); I don’t think about people from, say, British Columbia as very much more of “my people” than, say, citizens of Washington State.
No, you don’t have to know the answer, I don’t know 10% of these kinds of debates that happen in foreign countries. I’ll try to make it as brief as possible: my definition of the Quebec nation is inclusive. In my mind (and of course not everyone has the same opinion as mine, but I believe most people in Quebec are not too far from me) anyone who lives in Quebec, whether they were born here or came from elsewhere in Canada or in the world, is part of our nation, as long as they support our values. These values for the most part aren’t all that different from the ones you find in the rest of Canada, although they do differ in some ways (in the same way that Canadian values differ from American values), and among them we find the fact that French will be the lingua franca of Quebec. In other words, business in Quebec, with few exceptions, will take place in French. I’m certain a large majority of Quebecers would agree with me about this.
So those I consider “like me” are people who live in Quebec, support these values, whether their primary language is English, French, a native language or a language from elsewhere in the world. I don’t identify nearly as much with someone who lives elsewhere in the country, whatever language they speak. Having lived in the Outaouais region (north of the Ottawa River in Western Quebec) all my life until last December, I met a decent number of Franco-Ontarians, and while I can certainly identify with them somewhat due to shared history, it’s also clear that they differ culturally from Quebecers. Since the 60s at least we have drifted from the “French-Canadian” community, and I think it was inevitable and probably a good thing. I do have sympathy for French-Canadians’ struggle to keep their language, but in a sense it’s not my struggle. When Louis Riel was executed in the 1880s there was an uproar in Quebec; today you wouldn’t see this.
Well, nations have been described as “imagined communities”, so there is a fair part of arbitrariness in the whole thing. But there’s no doubt that once a nation exists, it often develops common institutions and “meeting ground”: social, cultural, even political, so imagined doesn’t imply imaginary here. It probably isn’t any more rational than defining oneself by one’s race, religion or ethnicity, since all these also carry a lot of shared experiences. I don’t define myself entirely through my nation either, I’m just saying that it’s one of the largest parts of my identity.
If you both stay on your particular side of the border, you will diverge (different social, political and cultural institutions and all). If you start living in the same place in your formative years, well, you’re part of the same nation after all, you’ll just have been born in different countries.
Countries in the modern sense are a recent invention. So are nations. So maybe. But say you’re a caveman. Is your sense of belonging to your tribe any more natural? I mean, it is culturally quite different from that other tribe, after all, but its origins are just as arbitrary.
Neither do I think that Canada/Quebec is better than another country/nation; it’s just mine.
What, don’t you watch The Simpsons?
I think thinking your country is the “best” in the world is quite pointless. Canadians do that too you know. Be proud of your country/nation, but work to improve it and stay aware.
I don’t see how my love for my my country forces me to hate anyone else. The fact that I love my wife doesn’t make me despise other women. The fact that I love my family doesn’t mean I think your family sucks. The way people choose to express their love can often be problematic, even dangerous, but love in and of itself is always a good thing.
Or so I believe. But then, I’m a bit of a romantic.
Besides, there’s a practical side to patriotism, one you denziens of big, satiated nations don’t often think of. United we stand, divided we fall… all for one, one for all… live together, die alone… the list of cliches is endless, and like most cliches, they bear a kernal of truth. The fact of the matter is, that despite it all, my country - its government and its people - look after me. They care whether I live or die, which is more than I can say about the rest of the world. So in return, I care about them. I obey the law, I pay my taxes, I do what I can to help the common good, because the stronger the group, the safer the individual.
Like every other healthy human relationship, it’s all a matter of self-interest.
Why can’t we seperate it out? Why can’t we remember those people who fought and died, without having to generalise it to a love of one’s country? This is the thing I don’t get about patriotism; aside from the loonies, people are quite willing to admit that there are some things about their country that are bad. So why not just remember and admire all those good things, and remember and castigate the bad? If the flag stands for freedom but also for slavery, why not just put freedom on a pedestal and not involve such a general symbol? It seems entirely crazy to me.
I’d say patriotism is a tribal survival instinct that has outlived its usefulness. Not long ago at all, in the evolutionary timeframe, putting the needs of your tribe ahead of your own, when the survival of the tribe was threatened, surely increased the likelihood of the survival of your genetic heritage.
Nowadays, though, this instinct, as applied to nations rather than smaller tribes, is only occasionally useful for something close to its original purposes, and is routinely used by mendacious leaders to manipulate those who still feel the strong tug of that instinct.
It can also be problematic when significant subgroups of a nation’s citizenry identify their subgroup, with its values and mores, with the nation as a whole, and identify other significant subgroups of the citizenry as inherently outside the national tribe. This can work out in different ways: the rejected subgroup can be suppressed or annihilated, leading to a more unified nation but at a substantial moral cost, or it can lead to internal strife that weakens the nation, to no one’s particular advantage, excepting of course the demagogues that thrive on division.
I won’t echo Edwin Starr and answer the question, “Patriotism… What Is It Good For?” with “Absolutely nothing!” but I’d say changing circumstances have clearly turned this instinct into a liability.
Another problem with patriotism is that the world faces problems that are much bigger than any one nation: global warming, nuclear proliferation, international terrorism, to name a few. Excessive identification of one’s interests with those of one’s nation (or smaller tribe) can easily interfere with a nation’s willingness to cooperate with other nations in dealing with problems that require such cooperation to be successful.
I’ll try to make it as brief as possible: my definition of the Quebec nation is inclusive. In my mind (and of course not everyone has the same opinion as mine, but I believe most people in Quebec are not too far from me) anyone who lives in Quebec, whether they were born here or came from elsewhere in Canada or in the world, is part of our nation, as long as they support our values. These values for the most part aren’t all that different from the ones you find in the rest of Canada, although they do differ in some ways (in the same way that Canadian values differ from American values), and among them we find the fact that French will be the lingua franca of Quebec. In other words, business in Quebec, with few exceptions, will take place in French. I’m certain a large majority of Quebecers would agree with me about this.