Understanding Patriotism

Independence Day in the United States is celebrated with parades, fireworks and parties. Apparently that is enough, however, to satisfy many people, especially families who have lost a son or daughter to war and former soldiers who liberty have lost friends, and who need to be reassured that the patriotic response of their loved ones was justified and that they didn't die in vain.

Independence Day (aka ID4) and Land of Plenty are also two American feature films directed by German émigrés. It's used for various positive sentiments, attitudes, and actions involving loving one's country and serving the great good of all its people. Local communal identification implies a more visceral loyalty, an attachment and love for the "familiar." This is why some contemporary commentators can still insist that patriotism is more of an emotion than an intelligible political idea.

Customs and traditions became included in the patriotic orientation with an accompanying sense of national and historical pride. I bought into American exceptionalism via this strong patriotism until I entered high school. Many more Americans risk it all to protect the safety of perfect strangers.

Mark Twain once defined patriotism as supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it.” Americans have historically come together during times of crisis, but this isn't happening now, in part because many on the left don't subscribe to Twain's maxim.

Conversely, actions that work towards the benefit of the nation as a community of cultural values should mainly be referred to by the term patriotism In some languages, however, this term has a different connotation, and it does not appear that it can be a substitute for the term ‘romantic nationalism', as Joep Leerssen understands it, or the term ‘humanist nationalism' in the sense put forth by Carlton Hayes.

Writing in the first of The Federalist papers in October of 1787, Hamilton made the point that Americans have a collective interest in making the new democracy succeed (Payton Papers 2000). In the true definition, it errs on the disrespectful side, as all athletes are wearing American flags like capes.