Patriotism
Definition of Patriotism
General Definition
Patriotism is the love of and attachment to your country (“homeland”), and the willingness to defend it, your devotion to it.
Your attachment can be related to your ethnicity, your culture, the politics or the history of your country, or even the love for the land (symbolised by agriculture and the soil).
Perspectives on Patriotism
George Orwell gave his own definition: “By 'patriotism' I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally.”
However, for George Bernard Shaw, an Irish author, “You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.”
Patriotism vs Nationalism
Comparison
Nationalism and patriotism are close. Nationalism is used in political contexts, and is often pejorative, whereas patriotism is used to refer to moral values.
Orwell's View
For Orwell, “Nationalism [...] is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.”
A.C. Grayling's Perspective
“Disguised as patriotism and love of one’s country, it trades on the unreason of mass psychology to make a variety of horrors seem acceptable, even honourable. For example, if someone said to you, I am going to send your son to kill the boy next door you would hotly protest. But let me seduce you with ‘Queen and country!’ ‘The fatherland’! ‘My country right or wrong!’ And you would find yourself permitting him to send all our sons to kill not just the sons of other people, but other people indiscriminately.”
USA: A Civil/Civic Religion
Concept of Civic Religion
For the Enlightenment philosophers the “civic religion”, the “secular faith” that patriotism was was instrumental in opposing the power of the Church. Today, countries like France and the US have a civic religion.
Expressions of Civic Religion
It is a set of near-religious values of a nation, expressed through:
public rituals
symbols (the Star-Spangled Banner in the US)
ceremonies on “sacred” days (the 4th of July, aka Independence Day, in the US, the Quatorze juillet in France)
at “sacred” places (monuments like the Lincoln Memorial or l'Arc de Triomphe, battlefields like Gettysburg or Verdun, etc.).
National Holidays and Symbols
Typically, in the US, Thanksgiving, Veterans Day, and Memorial Day include salutes to the flag and singing “God Bless America,” a song praising America that was written in 1919. It became the 'unofficial national anthem' for the US during the Second World War.
Mount Rushmore National Memorial
Mount Rushmore National Memorial is centered on a colossal sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore in Keystone, SD. The sculpture features the 18-meter heads of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, to represent the nation's birth, growth, development, and preservation, respectively.
Civic Participation
The population's active role in this “civic religion” can be seen in:
crowds singing the national anthem (“The Star-Spangled Banner”);
parades or display of the national flag on certain patriotic holidays;
expressions of reverence for the state and/or the Constitution;
respect for “sacred” texts (the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, etc.);
expressions of solidarity with fellow countrymen, and hatred towards enemies of the state (another country or foreign ethnic group perceived as such).
Educational Rituals
In public schools, pupils go through the daily ritual of the pledge of allegiance (to the flag of the United States and the republic of the United States of America). The United States Flag Code says “The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag: "I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all," should be rendered by standing at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart.
Role of Soldiers and Veterans
Soldiers and veterans play a central role of standing ready to sacrifice their lives to preserve the nation.
Mythologized National Tales
This “civic religion” involves retelling mythologized tales of national founders (the Founding Fathers, Paul Revere, Molly Pitcher, Davy Crockett, Deborah Sampson, Daniel Shays, Pocahontas, Daniel Boone, Johnny Appleseed, etc.), leaders or great events in the past.
American Exceptionalism
For many Americans, America is a “city upon a hill,” a beacon of hope and righteousness, and it serves a higher purpose than self-interest (American exceptionalism).
UK: Symbols of British Pride
Cultural Sources of Pride
Rather than a civic religion per se, it is British culture as a whole that is a source of pride for British patriots, and that includes many things such as literature, cinema and theatre, television, music, arts, architecture, traditional myths from the past (Beowulf, Robin Hood, pirates, etc.), industry (the Industrial Revolution), sport (football, cricket, etc.), education (“Oxbridge”), the monarchy, etc.
National Symbols
the Union Jack (the UK's flag)
the national anthem, “God Save the King”
“Rule, Britannia!,” a patriotic song, originating from 1740, most strongly associated with the Royal Navy, the British Army
Britannia, the national personification of Britain as a helmeted female warrior holding a trident and shield
Critical Perspectives on National Pride
British intellectuals tend to have a critical approach to national pride.
Imagined Communities
“We need to acknowledge here that, as Benedict Anderson points out, nations are to a large extent ‘imagined communities’. They are constructed entities based on a particular narrative handed down through history and culture. A.C. Grayling takes a [...] dismissive tone towards the nation-state, pointing out that, “Nations are artificial constructs, their boundaries drawn in the blood of past wars”. [...] Human beings are cultural creatures and many if not most ideas that are important to us are in some sense constructed. [...]
National Cohesion and Democracy
Anthropologist Robin Dunbar famously identified the magic number of 150 as the maximum number of meaningful relationships a human being can maintain. Evidence suggests that hunter-gatherer groups that exceeded this number tended to split. […] There needs to be a glue that transcends the divisions that democracy inevitably spawns. Societies with deep religious or cultural divides can become democratically dysfunctional due to a weak sense of national cohesion. Iraq and Northern Ireland are examples that spring to mind.