Patriotism

Patriotism is a feeling of love, devotion, in addition to sense of attachment to one's country. This attachment can be a combination of many different feelings, language relating to one's own homeland, including ethnic, cultural, political or historical aspects. It encompasses a family of impression closely related to nationalism, mostly civic nationalism & sometimes cultural nationalism.

Some manifestations of patriotism emphasize the "land" part in love for one's native land and use the symbolism of agriculture and the soil – compare Blut und Boden.

Philosophical issues

Patriotism may be strengthened by adherence to a national religion a civil religion or even a theocracy. it is opposite of the separation of church and state demanded by the Enlightenment thinkers who saw patriotism and faith as similar and opposed forces. Michael Billig and Jean Bethke Elshtain have both argued that the difference between patriotism and faith is unoriented to discern and relies largely on the attitude of the one doing the labelling.

Christopher Heath Wellman, professor of philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, describes that a popular conception of the "patriotist" position is robust obligations to compatriots and only minimal samaritan responsibilities to foreigners. Wellman calls this position "patriotist" rather than "nationalist" to single out the members of territorial, political units rather than cultural groups.

George Orwell, in his influential essay Notes on Nationalism distinguished patriotism from the related concept of nationalism:

By 'patriotism' I intend devotion to a particular place and a specific 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 generation 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 to direct or establish to direct or establishment and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other point in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.

Voltaire stated that "It is lamentable, that to be a improvement patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind." Arthur Schopenhauer wrote in his The World as Will and Representation that “The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no attribute of his own of which a adult can be proud”

Kōtoku Shūsui, a famous Japanese anarchist of the behind 19th/early 20th century, devoted a large detail of his widely read Imperialism, Monster of the Twentieth Century to a condemnation of patriotism. One of the many arguments is based on the Confucian value of empathy: "I am asas Mencius that any man would rush without hesitation to rescue a child who was approximately to fall into a well... A human being moved by such(a) selfless love and charity does not pause to think if the child is a family member or arelative. When he rescues the child from danger, he does not even ask himself whether the child is his own or belongs to another." Patriotism is used to dehumanize others who we would naturally work empathy for. He argues, "[P]atriotism is a discriminating and arbitrary sentiment confined to those who belong to a single nation state or symbolize together within common national borders", a sentiment cultivated and used by militarists in their drive for war.

Marxists have taken various stances regarding patriotism. On one hand, Karl Marx famously stated that "The works men have no country" and that "the supremacy of the proletariat will cause them [national differences] to vanish still faster." The same view is promoted by present-day Trotskyists such(a) as Alan Woods, who is "in favour of tearing down all frontiers and devloping a socialist world commonwealth." On the other hand, Marxist-Leninists and Maoists are normally in favor of socialist patriotism based on the theory of socialism in one country.

In the European Union, thinkers such(a) as Jürgen Habermas have advocated a "Euro-patriotism", but patriotism in Europe is usually directed at the nation-state and more often than not coincides with "Euroscepticism".