Ask Lemmy

wanting your country to be better if the only valid patriotism.

thinking you're better because some arbitrary borders might as well be a mental disease.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

first off, we need to drop this false dichotomy between arbitrary words like patriotism and nationalism. it's not as simple as "good vs bad" or "moderate vs excess". you're talking about two completely different points of pride.

nationalism is pride in a shared identity between people; patriotism is pride in the state of a country. and you ask for my opinion: both are bullshit.

I like how someone referenced schopenhauer. I prefer Sartre. In "antisemite and jew" he wrote about how the bigot, by putting down another group, instantly promotes himself into a group of the chosen ones, the good guys -- all without doing anything.

that's what pride in a group identity often does. elevates yourself based on the accomplishments of others. it's a substitute for character.

HOWEVER we cannot dismiss all collective pride this way. when a group we actually belong to and contribute to actually does something good, why not be proud of it? the trouble is, the more people you involve in this collection, the less any single individual needs to actually DO to contribute.

that's why I honestly believe nationalism is less toxic than patriotism: because there can be many smaller groups (nationalism) within a country (patriotism).

the anarchist perspective is that a nation is a PEOPLE and the state is a parasite. patriotism is pride in the state, not the people. why be proud of tapeworms?

In the long run it's dumb and cringe.

Source: I'm American and old.

Does it count as patriotism if you think your country kind of sucks and want to improve it? I suppose many rightwingers are convinced that they are doing exactly that, if only it were actually true ...

It'll fuck your country up real bad.

I don't like nationalism. You don't have to appeal to people's pride for things that are good.

It ain't worth a damn to me. Maybe if your country doesn't suck lol. There truly are things about my country I love. In some ways, we're the best in the world. An American can be white, black, asian, hispanic, arab or anything else really. It's a very beautiful thing to me. I find it deeply depressing that those in power want to strip this country of what makes it great. Also having no social safety net is not acceptable obviously. There's far more I can shit on this country of mine for than I can praise it for right now. I sincearly hope that changes. I'd like to be proud to be American. I've always wanted that. Sadly, it's never been a reality for me and millions of other Americans.

It's hard to comment on the flavors of national pride in nations other than the one I live in, but I think if you're an American patriot, you either 1) are proud of horrendous, immoral things, 2) are proud of a mythologized nation-state that stands for liberty and justice which never actually existed.

Much of the time, patriotism leads to nationalism, and therefore xenophobia and racism. How could it not? If you think your country is great, you need to find ways to justify that belief, and when facts don't get the job done, the next steps are lying and stereotyping.

My question to hardcore patriots: Why the hell are you so hyped over a place? Especially a place that is governed like dogshit?

Its crucial for a nation to have. Its good for citizens to unify around goals and achievements but to much can lead to a big head and losing the ability to accurately self reflect and self asess.

I have no idea who Doug Stanhope is but I like this quote:

Nationalism does nothing but teach you to hate people you never met, and to take pride in accomplishments you had no part in.

Dangerous.

Every single person on the planet just happened to be born in some particular place, and every place has some particular set of people who at some point drew some arbitrary lines and decreed that the area within the lines was a country and gave it a name.

The idea that happening to have been born within the confines of one arbitrary set of lines rather than another is something of which to be proud is blatantly stupid.

Patriotism. It’s the food of the wise man but the liquor of the fool.

It stinks.