It all depend on how you define patriotism. Honestly, I think Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem is the most patriotic act ever. He knew people would hate him for it, but he did it anyways because he took a hard look at his own country and decided we needed to do better.
I believe true patriotism isn’t just about loving your country, it’s about holding it accountable to its ideals. I love America deeply, and I honor those who sacrificed to uphold its founding principles. But I also see how words like ‘freedom’ and ‘patriotism’ have been misused, often twisted into tools for division or control. To me, being a patriot means seeking truth, learning from history, and speaking out when those values are betrayed. It’s about striving to make the country better, not pretending it’s perfect.
National pride can be a dead end in liberation or, when, as Otto Bauer argued, applied rationally towards the end of liberation, a means by which the proletariat of the nation can gain access to and ownership of the national wealth.
“Scholarship is able to explain to us the emergence of the national sentiment from national consciousness, the emergence of the curious national form of evaluation from the national sentiment. But it is also able to criticize this national evaluation. And this is a task of no little significance. For it is only the critique of national ideology that can produce the atmosphere of sobriety that alone makes a fruitful examination of national politics possible.”
A national consciousness emerges when we meet people from other nations. We then become aware of that feature and gain a national sentiment or pride. An evaluation of the national form creates a good member of the national. This can, without critically or rationally evaluating it, lead to racist thinking or blaming certain groups for the nation’s ills. However, a class evaluation can prevent this and a rational critique of the nation can give the proletariat access to the full cultural wealth of the nation which had only been previously reserved for the elites.
Chauvinism?
It’s literally a sin. Stop it.
Is that Roman pride?
You can love your Country, but pride or patriotism leads you down a path dangerous to your fellow man. Find a cause.
You can be proud of the good things your country has done or is doing. So long as you don’t forget the laundry list of dodgy shit it has also done.
I liken it to being proud of yourself as a person. You can take pride in yourself and your achievements but you should never forget all the times you fucked up.
The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen. The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.
Arthur Schopenhauer
It may a 200 year old quote, but the only thing that has changed is that we have since found even worse things to be proud of.
I am proud of my nation and its progressive, socialist nature, yet I am fully, and painfully so, aware of it’s shortcomings and problems.
But despite the problems, it’s extremely hard for me not to feel pride for the way we handle things within and without, especially in comparison to the rest of the world. We’ve been consistently at the top of the most socially progressive charts of the world, having also been denoted the worlds happiest country for over 5 years in row, and so on.
I do have my own prides, things I’m not ashamed to claim being very good at, and I do have a lot of very loud criticism against my nation too. But I remain overall proud just because we dare to be, against most odds, progressive and socialist.
I would defend my country, even picking up arms, because the chances are, the invader will simply be worse. Lead to worse overall situation here. Anyone surpassing us on either social or progressive counts, would be almost certainly not invading anyone, let alone us.
Maybe I am the fool the quote talks about, the good-at-nothing simpleton falling back to national pride for lack of any of my own. But I do not feel like one and I certainly have a lot more, explicitly outside the concept of a nation and this specific nation too, prides and accomplishments to be proud of.
I don’t think national pride is all that bad. I think it can be reasonable if the nation is best at its class on things most important and dear to you. Of course most national pride around the world is rooted on shitty stuff, and most nationally pride people usually being neo-nazi assholes, yet I still remain steadfast in my opinion that it need not be so.
It can be fine. I am sure of that.
Patriotism is being proud of being born and grown up in a certain random place.
This is what is left for those who never achieved anything worthy of being proud of on their own.
this thread is bringing all the Thatcherites out
Never seen it not be an unconvincing cover for racism during my lifetime.
Only the gullible are proud of their country. The real patriots are critical of the mistakes of the country.
One can be proud despite its shortcomings. Nothing is perfect in this world. But there are things worth being proud of, despite understanding its flaws and being consistently critical of it as a whole.
I agree with you on this but with some nuance. This thinking is correct and should be used on individual level. However, time has shown us that most humans are stupid and will resort to herd mentality. So, the pride quickly turns into nationalism.
What does it even mean in this context? Pride? You didn’t do it, you were just born there and it was already done. I feel people mistake “pleased” or “happy” with “proud”.
Believe it or not, I’ve been a part of it since I was born. I didn’t just come to be in a vacuum. I’ve influenced the society as much as anyone, we work together to make it better, we are a team, we protest. We sign petitions. We vote. We talk and talk and talk and have kids that will, too, become a part of what we’ve worked hard for and against and with.
Being proud of the team, of yourself, or the fact that you with your team are actively succeeding in not becoming a fascist shithole like the US or Russia for example. It’s not nothing. It’s worth being proud of. And takes effort, work, input every single day of every single month of every single year.
Yeah. I’m proud of myself and everyone around me. But I’m also proud of what we’ve worked together to build. This country did not stay this way by itself. It’d be ruined by capitalism and fascism the second we, the people of this country, stopped fighting against it and making this nation something to feel proud belonging to.
Hey, fair enough, that seems pretty reasonable. If it’s an extension of the pride you feel in being a decent human being who makes his environment better for everyone and it doesn’t veer into jingoistic exceptionalism, I understand and condone it. 👍
Patriotism is the little sibling of nationalism, and the boundaries are fluid. I will never understand why people are proud of other people’s accomplishments and make them their own. Or is it because people were shat on somewhere else in the world than everyone else? Makes absolutely no sense.
Have you ever played a team sport?
I have. And yet I never had the feeling that my club’s achievements were mine, unless I had contributed to them. And even then, I was just proud to have been part of the team with which I achieved the performance. I can differentiate very well.
And even then, I was just proud to have been part of the team with which I achieved the performance.
Isn’t that what the patriotic people experience as well?
They vote, they pay taxes, they’re sometimes politically active. From their point of view, they’ve contributed to the success of their country, and they’re proud of it?
Absolutely correct.
They vote, they pay taxes, they’re sometimes politically active. From their point of view, they’ve contributed to the success of their country, and they’re proud of it?
Does that work the same way when the country performs its atrocities? Everyone becomes implicit in those crimes because they voted and paid taxes that is used to kill civilians abroad? Or it just applies for “feel good” reasons?
Just because you do what most people do, doesn’t validate being proud of other peoples hard work that actually bring change.
Nationalism becomes unhealthy in such endeavours. So no, it doesn’t apply.
Much like cheering for your local sports team is ok. Going to the other town to fight them isn’t. But just because you cheer on your team and want the to win, doesn’t implicate you for the actions of others.
I think most people who are sensible but claim pride for some collective achievement or team or whatever, do so outwardly mostly because it’d be tiring to always include a philosophy lecture about distinction and differentiating between one’s own and others’ achievements. When we think about it actively, we can realize the faults and the details and could put them in words, but who the fuck has the patience to go in depth about all that each time they state they are proud of their team, their friends, etc.?
It’s just easier to say I’m proud of team xyz and hope the other party has the mental facilities to understand that it’s not a simple matter when you break it to pieces and start philosophing about it, but it’s just convenient and more prudent not to go into details or full analysis mode on all that every time…
Nationalism (and by extension patriotism) was an amazing tool to bring people together in a nation, when coming from a past of small kingdoms, city states and similar smaller communities.
Now it’s done it’s job and it’s time we get past that.
THIS I agree with! Nations and patriotism have been out-moded by supra-national corporate conglomerates, banks, and cartels.
This is a good commentary on it:
It’s good to want to improve the world around you, which can be given a label of patriotism. Going too far down that road leads to lots of unhappiness, though.
arbitrary bullshit, we’re just picking which words to like and dislike now. neither of those words mean what that comic says
In the long run it’s dumb and cringe.
Source: I’m American and old.
It’ll fuck your country up real bad.
