Patriotism

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

It was a cool Spring evening in April, 1775, when Samuel Johnson declared that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel". James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck, qualified this statement, explaining that Johnson was not indicting patriotism in toto but specifically that curse that is false patriotism.

I wonder... was Johnson right? Was Boswell right to make his distinction? Is there a substantive distinction between patriotism and nationalism, and if not, should the last century's demonstrations of nationalistic fervour not urge caution for those who are frevent in their patriotism?

[Primula Baggins]

The fervid patriots will always be with us—and will always be, for me, hard to understand. In the bad old days of the early 1970s in the United States, a common refrain of those who thought antiwar people were traitors was, "My country, right or wrong."

I don't think that, at the time, those using the saying meant it as it was meant by the man who said it first, Senator Carl Schurz in 1872 (link):

The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, “My country, right or wrong.” In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.

He expanded on it decades later in a way that speaks to me, at least:

I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves … too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: ‘Our country, right or wrong!’ They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: ‘Our country—when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.’

I think he was a patriot in a sense that is no longer widely understood; it's come to be synonymous with "nationalist": "My country can do no wrong." I think that older sense still exists, though it's hard to explain in the world as it is.

[Teremia]

Thank you so much for that, Prim. I hadn't seen the Schurz quotes before, and they are illuminating.

I have always thought of myself as fervently against both nationalism and "patriotism" (thinking of it as the jingoistic, not Schurzian type), but I can see that there could be a good sort of patriotism--"Our country, when right to be kept right, when wrong to be put right"--which hinges on our *responsibility* as citizens of a particular country to make that country as worthy a place as it can be.