In 1775 Dr Samuel Johnson opined, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel". I don't think much has occurred in the intervening 235 years to prove him a liar. He wasn't actually referring to a general sense of love of country, but the false idea of "pride in the achievements of our country". The jingoism and gung-ho patriotism that many (usually, but not exclusively, on the right) exhibit, most frequently when discussing the EU, is a sad claim made by those who rhetorically ride on the back of achievements that they had no part in. Americans who claim "they" won WWII single-handedly decades before their birth; English who claim to have stood alone against fascism when it was their grandparent's generation who did so.
I am very proud and very ashamed of the actions of the British in decades and centuries gone by, in fairly equal measure.
Do the good achievements -
splitting the atom; discovering the double helix of DNA, the Theories of Gravity and Natural Selection; The Babbage and Colossus computers; the steam engine; Penicillin; the role in WWII and the Napoleonic Wars; the works of Elgar, Purcell, Delius and Handel; the paintings of Hockney, Constable, Turner and hundreds more; Shakespeare, Burns, Wordsworth, Thomas and thousands more -
- outweigh the bad - Jewish pogroms of the 12th and 13th centuries; countless wars of aggression including the Boer War, the Crimea, WWI, the Indian Mutiny, the Opium Wars; the European slave trade; genocide of indigenous peoples on 4 continents; the development of the tabloid press; Andrew Lloyd Webber?
I believe the taking of pride in something should be a result of your contribution to that thing. I take pride in the achievements of my nephews and nieces because I have a small involvement in their development. I am proud of the achievements of my grandparents, and of those British people who contributed to my first list, but can take no credit for any of it nor claim that their achievements make me and my generation any more praiseworthy, steadfast, creative, kick-ass or prudent than anyone else.
By your actions will you be known, not the actions in which you had no part. I'm glad the English are the least patriotic of nations, perhaps many or most of them realise the crassness of claiming credit for the achievements of others.
