Is patriotism overrated?

If you're curious, I define freedom two ways. First is political freedom, the ability to participate in the political process equally and without fear of recrimination. Second is social freedom, and that is the freedom to determine how your life will play out. It's the freedom to choose what you will learn, where you will live, what you will devote yourself to, who you will associate with, and all the choices that make us who we are. It is that freedom which many Americans do not have. Being trapped in poverty is one of the main things that keeps a person from that freedom. Bigotry and discrimination is another. You were fortunate, Maggie, to have that freedom. A lot of people in this country don't, and that is unacceptable to me.

jamesrage said:

Actually those two words practically synonymous with each other.

Patriotism - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary
: love for or devotion to one's country

Nationalism - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary
1
: loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially : a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups
2
: a nationalist movement or government

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I don't think the two are synonymous at all. I am the former; I am not the latter.

wolfman24 said:

I am not sure this is going to come out right, but yes I think it is. In my mind a patriot is someone who does something FOR his country just not living here. You can love your country and obey its laws and enjoy its freedoms but does that make you a patriot. the minutemen were patriots and heros. Cops and fireman could be called heros. The soldiers and alot of other people.

If you live here and love your country and are loyal to it and obey its laws, that makes you a citizen but not necessarily a patriot.

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Frankly, I consider the thousands of dollars I pay in taxes yearly, to be helping my country.

Especially when the two are mutually exclusive, I prefer to be a humanitarian over a patriot.

lizzie said:

Frankly, I consider the thousands of dollars I pay in taxes yearly, to be helping my country.

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Ok thats fine and i have no obection to that. But IMO it just does not qualify but that is JUST my opinion

Yes, yes, yes, and yes! completely overated. We aren't the best in the world and I'd much rather take pride in the human race than the cluster**** melting pot, that is the USofA. Every race has contributed something to the US bar none. I think we should celebrate everyone not just our country.

Cilogy said:

I'm back.

Even though I haven't posted in over 2 years and like 99% of you don't even know/remember who I am, I decided to make my triumphant return with something that has been on my mind lately.

I genuinely feel that being a patriot is overrated and slowly becoming just blatantly obnoxious as time goes on. It's rooted in discrimination and crosses over into just pure jingoism at times. From things like screaming "USA! USA! USA!" as loud as you can to arguing about what nation is the best, it has become more and more clear to me that it's all just archaic and neanderthal-like garbage.

Maybe I'll elaborate later on, but I want your opinion and I'd like it if we could get a good discussion going about this. So what do you think?

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A lot of times patriotism is just a form of neo tribalism.
Not to say it's always wrong, but personally, I don't feel the connection between all Americans and me, more than I do people of the South.
We just don't have the same common interests.

As a German, I naturally have a special perspective on nationalism.

Is supporting your country, fighting and killing for it, valuable as an end in itself? If it was, the Nazis would have been the best people on this planet ever. Were the SS soldiers who actually believed they are defending their country heroes, when they murdered Jews, Russians and other "enemies"? Obviously not.

It's all about the values you believe in. When your country stands for just values, and fights a war for a just cause, then yes, people risking their lives to defend it are heroes. But defending it just for the sake of defending it, no matter what it stands for, does not make anybody a hero.

In the German debate, some distinguished between "primary values" and "secondary values": Primary values are values like honesty, kindness, humaneness, empathy, fairness and justice, love -- things like that.

Secondary values are things like obedience, boldness, punctuality, formal intelligence, things like that -- all values you can perfectly put to use to run an efficient death camp with. Without backup by primary values, these secondary values are worthless, dangerous even.

Patriotism as an end in itself is dangerous. When anybody places value in patriotism, regardless of the values your country stands for, he does not only overrate it, but makes a fatal mistake. Simply supporting your collective no matter what it does and stands for, or even supporting your government no matter what it does, is authoritarian thinking. It's the opposite of freedom and the opposite of democratic standards.

But there is nothing wrong with supporting a certain cause you consider just your country, government or collective engages in, and there is certainly nothing wrong with being proud of your achievements and the achievements your country you were part of made, in my book.