seeing what it's been corrupted into by Authoritarians and Teabaggers. It's a vice.

Moreover, the 1% use it as a form of control. They view nations themselves as obsolete. Lets face it. As the ultra-rich they have no need of nations, except as markets.

Should the other 99%?

While feeling compassion for the unemployed fellow in Thailand or Vietnam is human nature, does making sure that your American next-door neighbor is gainfully employed take precedence?

I mean we all got to get along to get along, and helping out anyone, any where, has it's reward, but doesn't sticking your neck out for your fellow American mean more to you simply because his welfare is more intimately intertwined with your own?

IS your fellow American's welfare more intimately intertwined with your own in the age of globalization?

I assume that it still is.

I'd also say it's a no-brainer, but some folks wouldn't agree.

Nationalism isn't patriotism. Patriotism is pride based and nationalism is rooted in arrogance.

Neither, however, are patriotic.

Really, that is the biggest difference between nationalism and patriotism, IMHO. Xenophobic arrogance vs pride.

Very accurate

. . . that it is far too often confused with nationalism -- and nationalism is most certainly a vice.

That's why I thought I should come up with something a little better than "love of one's country" as a I defined the word.

Do you consider yourself a patriot?

If so, why?

If not, why not?

Are you comparing yourself to others who call themselves patriots, and you don't think too highly of them for one reason or another?

For me, my patriotism is deeply personal and what others claim to be 'patriotic' is usually horse shit.

A famous person said that... I forget where.

For me the question is far too subjective, given that everyone seems to have their own definition of the word.

At the risk of sounding trite I have an affinity for the land of my birth and would not hesitate to do my part to defend my fellow citizens from an external enemy that threatened the existence of the country. I do not believe in "my country right or wrong" nor do I believe a government has to be perfect in order to deserve the moderate allegiance of its citizens. Call me a "middle of the road" patriot, small p, and you decide whether it's virtuous. I don't see it as either.

Patriotism is a desire to see one's country become a better place and fix its faults.

Nationalism is refusing to acknowledge the faults of one's country and blindly holding to the idols and relics of the established civic religion.

It is both a virtue and a vice.
I know some pretty extreme tea party folks, relatives, and they are real patriots who love this country. Like me, they are former military. However, they do not believe a liberal can be a patriot, and they consider George W. Bush a liberal.
Extremism quite often leads to vice. When patriotism is coupled with extremism it is a vice.

I do love this country, but I'm not a my country love it or leave it or right or wrong. The country does many things that are just wrong and it is a citizen's responsibility to work diligently to change those and to speak out against power no matter what party is in power.

I never thought "My country right or wrong..." was noble enough to qualify as something a true patriot would ever say.

The full quote, by the way, is "'Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong' and is a lot less sinister than the sneer usually accompanied with 'My country right or wrong."

saying some people are just haters because they are against for what someone is for. It is an argument that relies on name calling.

I don't doubt the patriotsim of a man. I do think their attitudes stink and some of their other views are unacceptable.

people are more divided by socioeconomic class than national borders.

So, in your view, the outsourcers are on the right track, and we should follow their lead?

What is needed is international labor solidarity. There should be no safe refuge for their exploitive tactics anywhere on earth.

or something that is willing to sell out. Look at the history of incorporation in America, particularly J D Rockefeller's state shopping graft.

We can't get 50 states to agree that women are people, too. How do you think we can get 7,000,000,000 billion people in over 200 nations and countless communities/tribes/religions/cultures to agree that workers must be paid a good wage? The first one to say, "I'll do it for less than a secure, comfortable living", and the race is back on.

So, in your view, helping out an unemployed fellow in Mexico carries the same weight as helping out your next door neighbor?

If you owned two businesses, one domestic and the other overseas, and you had to lay off workers, who would get the pink slips, first?

Any worker facing firing has more in common with another worker, wherever located, than the scumbag doing the firing, wherever located.

If you can't make payroll, what are you going to do?

My question remains: Who gets the pink slip first? The foreign worker, or your American neighbor?

Your question has meaning only to that tiny percentage of humanity that finds itself in the position of treating lives as commodities with as much and as little value as the price of fuel.

Ask that question in the board rooms of corporations that actually make those decisions. You'll hear polite chuckles and get a pat on the head. They do not care about our American neighbors.

You may not own a business.

You may never own a business.

But the question was strictly hypothetical, and was predicated on the supposition that you did own a business.

I will say this: all things being equal, I would help the person I know. That's human nature. But things like patriotism and nationalism tend to mask human nature. And all things are not equal.

Your business has to lay off one worker. The choice comes down to a Canadian Stansteader who lives on the "wrong" side of the border or an American working in your El Paso branch office.

Who gets the pink slip? The Canadian worker who is your neighbor (whom you probably know since Stanstead is a small town) or the American who lives 2,000 miles away?

The Canadian gets the pink slip.

I get more out of my American neighbor's financial success than the Canadian.

The American pays taxes which my community (and me and my family) utilize.

The American is obligated to defend the nation (and me and my family) in times of war. That is an incentive to keep the man happy and content.

Lastly, the American is more likely to spend his income at my business, or a business on which I might financial depend but do not own.

With no animosity towards the Canadian, his absence will effect and disrupt my life and the lives of my family to a much lesser degree.

OBSERVATION: Loving one's country along with one's fellow countrymen isn't dependent upon me hating those who live on the other side of the border, any more than loving one's wife means you must hate your father or your child.

The relationship between residents of the same nation and the residents of another IS different.

One, by necessity, is more intimate.

I know not a single citizen of Botswana.

I do not hate the Botswanians, I simply do not have a relationship with them, past living on the same planet with them.

In reality, the unemployed man in Mexico is just as much our neighbor as the guy who lives in the house right next to yours. The reason we think otherwise is because of the xenophobia which is so often a byproduct of nationalism.

You'd flip a coin?

And also consider their economic situations, whether being laid off would more drastically affect one or the other.

But, all other things being equal, yeah, ideally just flip a coin. But there's still enough bias programmed into all of us that would lead us to favor our neighbor or at least someone of our own national or ethnic identity.

I see a lot of responses here that ignore national boundaries, including your own, and I can't see how we can reconcile our own domestic economy, boom or bust, with interdependence on another nation's.

You see nothing wrong or immoral with the outsourcing of US jobs overseas?

At least in the way it's used to avoid having to pay workers a decent wage by simply exploiting the poor labor practices of developing nations.

I might be far too idealistic with my standards to have really have a practical solution. Ideally, I would prefer that the most qualified person would take the job and they would be paid fairly for that work, whether they were an American being hired by an American company or someone of any other nationality being hired by an American company. Unfortunately, outsourcing has nothing to do with merit, and everything to do with labor exploitation.

ALL JOBS ARE EXPLOITIVE.

Unless you're on your own, that is.

If borders don't matter, and the workers don't matter, then why should firing your neighbor matter, especially when an unemployed Mexican, or Indian, or Malaysian can get a head working for pennies on the dollar which you'd be sending him?

I mean - you're helping the guy out, right?

THIS IS WHY I MADE THIS THREAD IN THE FIRST PLACE.

There's a socio-economic component here, that without patriotism, not only won't be resolved - but can't in any way avoid getting worse.

Can't necessarily argue with that.

The outsourcers have got it right?

How do we resolve this dilemma? Is there a resolution?

In OP I specifically added a moral component: Is patriotism a virtue or a vice?

Minus patriotism, what are the outsourcers morally doing wrong, outside of exploiting workers - which is what ALL business owners do, everywhere?

Is the answer REALLY nothing?

However, within the context of a capitalist economy, there can be situations where the exploitation is far less offensive. Workers can at least be paid a living wage and have access to essential benefits. The immorality of outsourcing is that it's deliberately avoiding situations where they would have to do the moral thing in order to make a profit.

Short of universal laws on labor and pay across the globe, the only way to solve the dilemma is to continue shaming those who pull this immoral behavior.

One with which I do not instantly disagree.

HOWEVER, with that said, the counter-point would be to interject that some outsourcers have greatly enhanced the lives of the people who work for them overseas - more so than the harm done to those who have lost their jobs, here at home.

Assuming that this is, indeed, the case in at least some situations, firing the American would have to be said to be the moral thing to do, if the employer couldn't keep them both, would it not?

I mean, someone working for slave wages in Bangladesh would certainly be "better off" (I really hate using this term when referring to third world labor exploitation) than they would if they had no income at all. But, on the flipside, how many hundreds of Bangladeshi garment workers aren't "better off" now thanks to American retailers placing them in a substandard work environment?

In the hypothetical I answered earlier, I assumed the labor and work conditions between the American and non-American employee were equal, which is why I decided to evaluate the layoff on individual merit and home situation. The moral thing is to ultimately encourage and embrace fair labor practices rather than circumvent them to save a few bucks.

Assuming the non-American employee is being treated fairly and making a decent wage, I would agree with that hypothetical.

"...treated fairly and making a decent wage."

By whose standards?

Theirs or ours?

And while some labor laws are certainly universal (primarily workplace safety and health standards), any sort of laws or regulations should accommodate the cultural demands of the area (time set aside for religious practice, for example).

Last edited Mon Jul 8, 2013, 08:47 AM - Edit history (1)

But now you're talking about a government that cares about it's people... and that, brings us full circle: If the government cares about it's people, we can assume it is also a government which the people care about.

We must assume - I do, anyways - that if a government has any kind of investment in the governed people's welfare, that the people governed must also have some kind of an investment in the government.

And I am not talking merely about time or money.

I'm referring specifically to an emotional attachment.

PATRIOTISM.

"Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel"

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/samuel_johnson.html

While Wikipedia is hardly the be-all/end-all in reference sources, this is what they had to say about that particular quote:

the word "patriotism" in Johnson's quote should itself be put in quotation marks.

How many posts this time before you're locked out of your own thread? Over/under is 35.

Patriotism is at least a toxin.

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

He's was nuttier than squirrel shit, that one.

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#dcdcdc; padding-bottom:5px; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom:none; border-radius:0.4615em 0.4615em 0em 0em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]George Orwell[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#f0f0f0; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius:0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism.Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. 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 on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, 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

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#dcdcdc; padding-bottom:5px; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom:none; border-radius:0.4615em 0.4615em 0em 0em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]George Orwell[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#f0f0f0; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius:0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]Patriotism has nothing to do with Conservatism. It is actually the opposite of Conservatism, since it is a devotion to something that is always changing and yet is felt to be mystically the same.

And because I love Samuel Clemens sooo

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#dcdcdc; padding-bottom:5px; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom:none; border-radius:0.4615em 0.4615em 0em 0em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]Mark Twain[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#f0f0f0; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius:0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]...the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.

"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 on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally."

nt.

Perhaps we should take pride in where we live, but take pride in our republic? No. I'd much rather have our people looking forward than to the past. Patriotism today is an excuse to be lazy, both physically and intellectually.

?

It's a little complicated. Hard for me to nail down myself to be honest. At the risk of sounding dumb or worse, I'll just say we as Americans today spend too much time talking of the constitution, and the founders, with a kind of dogmatic religious reverence. And in my experience nothing good comes from worship. At least nothing good enough to make up for all the baggage that comes with it, like hubris. We're not half as critical of ourselves as we ought to be.

I believe we spend too much tossing the word 'Constitution' and the phrase "Founders" around with very little knowledge about the document or the men who wrote it.

I am a firm secular humanist - the Founders weren't demi-gods. They weren't even decent human beings (for the most part).

But they were frickin' geniuses.

The Constitution - while flawed - has mechanism after mechanism to fix what ails it.

Now, when I say 'flawed' I don't mean The-Glass-Is-Half-Empty 'flawed'.

I mean The-Glass-Is-Half-Full flawed.

And the difference between the two is PATRIOTISM.

I WANT it to work.

Social & Economic Justice/Civil Rights/Just Courts/Peace & Prosperity: Wherever man fails us, government for and by THE PEOPLE can fix it. But not with out a little bit of elbow grease and sweat.

Human history - or roughly the last 8,000 years of it - has shown us that dictators/kings/theocracies/and emperors all come and go.

Some left their mark on history but the mark left was the stamp of a MAN - not the stamp of the nation or city state from which that MAN came or represented. Everyone remembers Alexander the Great - not Macedonia the Awesome.

Since 1776, that equation has been turned on it's head.

FDR didn't storm the beaches of Normandy. Neither did Ike. AMERICA DID.

Ask folks in Botswana who first walked on the moon, I doubt they'll tell you off the top of their heads that it was Neil Armstrong - they'll say, "AMERICA." I say that only because most American kids couldn't tell you who Armstrong was.

I want it to work - and I work to make it work.

I think we're headed for a cliff, though. Too many good people confuse patriotism with nationalism, and, even more upsetting, too many bad people confuse nationalism with patriotism.

Oscar Wilde.

I see my patriotism as a great love for my country that I am willing to die for. I put on a uniform knowing that I could put my life on the line if asked.

I also see it as a love for country that I am willing to point out the weaknesses and mistakes. I also see it as loving my country enough to protest what it does.

It's not a simple definition for me.

Which is the club of Americans who despise America, because America isn't as perfect as they think she ought to be. The club of "Blame America First, Last and Always". The club of no matter what America does as a nation, America is wrong. If we do nothing we're wrong. If we do something, then we're probably wrong, because we didn't do enough, or we did too much.

That doesn't mean that I don't value our Constitution; I do.

It's a phrasing problem. "patris:" "fatherland;" "patrios:" "of one's fathers;" etc..

That term, to me, is tainted by male dominance in a planet that has sought to use that dominance to subjugate women. Our founding "fathers" were no exception. While I value some of the ideals in our Constitution, I don't pretend that it, as a legal document, is the best that we could do. The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, was written to protect the rights of white men, especially white men that owned property. Our Constitution has evolved somewhat since that time, but it's still got room for enlightenment.

The modern use of the word "patriotism" not only carries the taint of misogyny, it's also a euphemism: a "softer" nationalism.

I love the bones my nation sits on; the physical geography, regardless of who "rules" it. I love individual people, regardless of their nationality, race, ethnicity, or culture. I love the physical planet that nurtures us.

I also have a different definition of "enemies" than the average "patriot" does. I think we are our own worst enemy, and the enemies we need to be sacrificing ourselves to protect are, not Muslims, so-called "terrorists," etc., but the 1% across the globe. The world-wide corporatocracy and theocracy. The neoliberals and neoconservatives on a global level.

And we need to start right here at home.

If that's what you mean, then hell no, I'm not willing to die so some rich asshole can keep profiting from war (ie see Iraq).

That isn't the oath our soldiers commit to.

The leaders are to blame for that.

Lumping all of our soldiers into one pile - and all of their commanders, too - is group guilt by association.

As a former Marine I reject the notion, and think that only the guilty should be held accountable for their crimes.

Not to be flip, but the concept is called JUSTICE.

Such as universal human rights, universal labor rights, etc. My first loyalty is to my family and friends, next is the rest of humanity(through my principles), I don't understand loyalty to abitrary lines on a map though.

of "some freaked-out, know-nothing Tea Bagger, flag-waving nonsense."

I sort of shut down and all that comes to mind is snark.

Perhaps that is the answer. The terms and words have been so overused by groups that are so completely abhorant to me, that I can't separate the terms from the people who use them.

I'm a member of a small protest group based out of NW Illinois, and our mission is simple: Whenever OCCUPY, MoveOn, CodePINK, the PDA, or whomever needs bodies for a local event (protest, rally, et cetera) they can call on us to be there.

What was happening was ugly as hell: Whenever one of these groups held an individual event, the local Tea Party would show up en masse and the story in the local press turned into whatever they wanted to turn it into - not what the progressive group was promoting or contesting.

There was a need for local liberal groups to circle the wagons, so to speak.

And it's worked better than we could have ever hoped for.

The concept is not unlike modern day minutemen, at the ready, waiting for the call.

Anyways, I digress...

It was during one of the many peaceful confrontations we had with the Tea Party that I realized that not one liberal had brought with them an American flag. It dawned on me that the Tea Party had stolen the symbols of America and had wrapped themselves so tightly in the nation's icons that the public was (falsely) viewing the TP as something that it was not: Patriotic.

Worse, so devastatingly successful was this framing, that liberals weren't clinging to their own icons simply because they didn't want anyone to confuse them with a TP sympathizer.

From that moment on, we brought flags to every event, and something resonated... the TP barely comes out any more in our neck of the woods.

If you do a Google image search for BAINPORT - the tent city set up across the street from the factory in Freeport Illinois which Mitt Romney shut down and shipped off to China last summer - and spot a flag in the photo, it's one we provided.



When they started to arrest people, we had a WW II vet go off to jail with one of our flags - and he went into the police station and came out carrying it with honor and pride when we bailed him out. The cops - God bless 'em - wouldn't take the flag away from the fellow, against police regulations.



I'm Joe Cool with the dangling cigarette to the far left of the photo.

I make no bones: I'm a patriot. And I want the wonderful country I was told about as a kid to be real.

And I'm trying like hell to make it so.

Lotta truth in that.

Bake

from James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson (1791):

'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.' But let it be considered that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self-interest.'

From which, it is alleged, came the quote form Oscar Wilde, "Patroitism is a virtue of the viscious."

Are the flaws you see irreparable?

conclusion, a virtue.

I like it.