Posted on 11/13/2008 11:02:58 AM PST by Sisku Hanne
I would agree with your distinction between patriotism and hyper-nationalism. I would feature that comparison in your assignment.
H
G.K. Chesterton said, “’My country, right or wrong,’ is a thing that no patriot would think of saying. It is like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’”
When increases in our already confiscatory tax rates are couched by unscrupulous politicians as “patriotic”.
A good bad example would be DemonRats peeing on the country and claiming it’s patriotism. It is obvious that by the very nature of the assignment that the instructor has no ethics.
Nazi Germany. Imperial Japan.
I don’t know if German patriotism in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, or Soviet patriotism from 1917 through 1992 was such a good thing.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I love America, because it is eminently lovable. IOW, there are very good reasons for being patriotic in America, they are real, and they are irrational, and anyone who is anti-patriotic in America is irrational, or misinformed.
Think Nazi Germany as patriotism gone bad.
Two classic examples of “patriotism gone wrong”: Imperial Japan, Germany .....of the 1930’s-mid 1940’s. In each case, whole populations were whipped into a frenzy of bloodlust by pseudo-patriotic propaganda perpetrated by governments with horrific agendas. Delve into those for your paper.
History, since the time nations were formed, is replete with malevolent acts done behind the guise of patriotism.
Patriotism is never a bad thing. However, nationalism can be.
I would write it using examples of excessive nationalism and write in there that that is what you are doing, that patriotism is a good thing.
Supporting the future president is a bad thing.
You’d have to find a country that wasn’t worth loving, like a brutal dictatorship. Zimbabwe might be a good place to start. Or maybe Turkmenistan.
Depends on what country
Sadly, today the words ‘patriotic’ and ‘Christian’ will bring a flurry of 4 letter words from left wing moonbats who claim those two words represent the worst intolerance of other humans in the world—it’s hard to believe that just 50 years ago these were celebrated by the American public. Now, many people are ashamed to stand up and proclaim themselves either one.
Luckily this is a grad course from a Christian University, and I can freely argue my case from more of a Divine Command Theorist perspective, arguing that human relativism & utilitarianism is responsible for morphing virtues such as patriotism into the excesses of nationalism.
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