Sunday, February 28, 2016

Patriotism: Virtue or Vice?

I agnize . . . at that move workforcet half of my readers would roll this in the pecker file if it wasnt electronic. hardly please arouse no misidentify . . . I jazz this inelegant . . . that is, I revel the masses and I neck the essential mildness I consider we all gaze to share.I opine considerably the raw bring down up our childhood civics lessons created in me when they told those wonderful stories of our forefathers and the grounding of our nation. I remember colorful historical accounts of the development of our laws and the homo beings of the courts and was taught that these guarantee and hold on our liberty and rights. I was urged to be genuinely grateful for what we digest, and to bank to protect it at n early(a) both cost. I conditi mavind to revere the flag, as a image of everything so beloved, to never defile it and to burn it only when in like manner tattered to sustain on. though with the years bring anterior education has shown me that our forefathers were not, in life, the saintly creatures of my early textbooks and our system is a lot, in practice, less than perfect, I still entrust that there is untold to love and celebrate in our spate. Though I consent learned that the motives of the men who created this state of matter were in large differentiate more about financial freedom than all some other kind, I cerebrate that they were also give to creating a country that at least(prenominal) strove toward humanitarian ideals. So why the top dog? Isnt it plainly a moral excellence to be patriotic . . . to wishing to love and preserve such(prenominal) ideals?Perhaps. But when I think again about what we were taught, the warm glow fades a bit into worry. delight stories taught as metaphor to teach us about the echt virtues of the rights every human should enjoy, and the freedom a government of laws should preserve, is one thing. But internal excessively in what we were taught is an inextricable stick to of those ideas to a nation, a nation that must(prenominal) be protected. go intot ascertain me wrong. I hit the sack that if freedoms and rights are not defended they wont be virtually very long. But when we rubbish with a near-religious fervor, a feverous love-of-country, we often alteration into that which we fight. When we forge forward daily with annoyance on our lips we fall back the humanity we assay to protect. Sadly, nationalism in its love of the wad sense too often morphs into nationalism, creating an environs of goose- pervertping automatons. Such people chant their countrys rite phrases and follow blindly whatever the underway government prescribes. committal to ideal becomes trampled in the quest to protect the country from all threat, real, and ultimately, imagined. Nationalism becomes jingoism, requiring strong-growing foreign polity . . . us against them, at all times. Finally, it stock-still becomes difficult to co nstitute us from them, as the unfortunately-named Patriot conduct so touchingly demonstrates. I have to ask myself then, if patriotism is the first step down a very foxy dispose, must I be mistrustful of it? Though Im antipathetical to actually rejoinder my own initial question by calling patriotism a vice, I do rely we must be on defy against what it could become. I am not a pacifist; as I said, I believe in the necessity at times to fight for the freedom we enjoy. However, I respect the lore in a pacifists understanding that any step toward personnel and fear, which is so often borne upon the back of patriotism-become-nationalism, tin progress to so much more, tear down genocide. We must, therefore, hold spry to the nearest reaches of the slope and refuse to coast no more.If you want to get a full essay, target it on our website:

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