Yeah. I can pledge allegiance, now, and when I do, I mean it—but coming out of the mouth of a child, it’s as meaningless as they all know it is. When I was a kid, I knew it was all kinds of messed up. I suspected that I would agree with it when I was older, and I was right. That doesn’t make it valid.
As a child I had to pledge that I will become a law-abiding citizen of my country, and a member of the Communist party.
I have failed to adhere to both parts. The first part, because “my beloved homeland” does not exist anymore. The second part, knowingly and willingly. (Although, as a 6-years old child, I would probably also guess that I will agree with both parts when I grow up. Mostly because of: “if that wouldn’t be a good thing, they would not ask me to promise it”.)
Or maybe it’s just because I had to recite the pledge only once. ;-) (OK, technically I had to practice it a few times first.)
What? I’d drop the ‘under god’ part, but that isn’t really what I was talking about. My not agreeing with everything the country does, does not have the pledge as its subject matter.
That is, say, the unjustified wars, etc.. The whole laundry list. The particular method of choosing representation in our government - ‘plurality of first preference’ voting, with closed primary elections, and districts chosen in a partisan way. There’s a reason congress is as messed up as it is.
Because states are still a powerful force for (or against) change in this world, you are limited in the number of them you can directly affect (determined largely by where you and relatives were born), and for political and psychological reasons that ability is diminished when you fail to display loyalty (of the appropriate sort, which varies by group) to those states.
Then the obvious strategy is to start feeling lots of loyalty toward Easily Affected Country, and donate lots to organizations in Powerful Country that effect change in Easily Affected Country. This diminishes your political bonus but the extra leverage compensates. Bot-swa-na! Bot-swa-na!
I actually think the apple pie reason is an unusually good one. There’s nothing wrong with cheering for things.
You’re assuming that display of loyalty can radically increase your influence. My model was that your initial influence is determined situationally, and your disposition can decrease it more easily than increase it.
That said, let’s run with your interpretation; Bot-swa-na! Bot-swa-na!
Yeah, but a lot of stuff is meaningless coming out of the mouth of a child. But you have to start teaching them about things like duty and loyalty at some point. The pledge is a reasonable way to get kids to understand that they’re part of a country, and that there’s a common moral and political activity that they’ll one day be involved in.
The pledge is a reasonable way to get kids to understand that they’re part of a country,
If the status quo didn’t already include the daily recitation of such a pledge, do you think you would suggest it as a way to get kids to understand that?
I think that’s a practical question too complicated for me to answer. I would want some kind of voluntary activity like that in place. The pledge isn’t great, but it’s likely that something better would require more resources. And while I don’t think (and would doubt) that the pledge has any kind of ‘brainwashing’ effect, it would be worth looking into whatever data we can gather about that.
Data point: My home country, Australia, does not have a pledge of allegiance. Overt demonstrations of patriotism were limited to being expected to sing the national anthem in school assembly once a week. I personally feel that there is still plenty of patriotism to go around. However, a common perception of the US is that you guys are over-patriotic.
Thinking a bit more on this, I can’t help wondering how much of this can be traced to free voting versus mandatory voting. How much of encouraging patriotism is an attempt to make people care enough to vote?
I wonder whether the reason why a lot of people don’t realise it might be because it’s not actually true.
I mean, ESR’s argument seems to me incoherent and mostly aimed at finding a way to identify Barack Obama as not only an America-hater but also a freedom-hater. (Step 1: True US patriotism is more about loving the ideal of liberty and less about tribal attachment to the US as such. Step 2: Because for a while Barack Obama chose not to wear a flag pin, he doesn’t love his country. Step 3, unstated but I think clearly there: Since true US patriotism means loving liberty and Barack Obama is not a true US patriot, he is opposed not only to the US but to liberty.) It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that his characterization of US patriotism may be as much a matter of political convenience as the (absurd) inference he draws from Obama’s not wearing a flag pin. Certainly at least one of them must be wrong; it cannot be true both that patriotism for Americans means loving their country “not as a thing in itself, but insofar as it embodies core ideas” and that not wearing a US flag pin indicates “a lack of love for America as it actually is” and therefore a lack of patriotism.
And it’s certainly not only in the US that patriotism tends to involve not only tribal loyalty to one’s country but also love of what are taken to be its virtues. (Sometimes grand things like liberty and enterprise in the US, courage and fair play in the UK; sometimes little quirks like apple pie and baseball in the US, pubs and cricket in the UK.)
I’d be very interested in others’ opinions: Is US patriotism really as much more “abstracted” than other nations’ as ESR suggests? Is it true that “most Americans love their country … not as a thing in itself, but insofar as it embodies core ideas about liberty”?
But the French, roiled by political instability and war, have never settled on a political unifying idea or constitutional touchstone. Instead, French patriotism expresses a loyalty to French language and culture and history. It replaces tribalism not with idealism but with culturism.
That sounds wrong. Certainly people who consider themselves French patriots are likely to say “Speak French, dammit!”, “Yeah, maybe it’s like that in your country but you’re in France now”, or “Go Napoleon!”, but no more than American patriots are likely to say the analogues.
Also, French patriotism is huge on political ideas. Motherland of human rights, French revolution, Resistance, and all that.
That’s OK; I, likewise, missed the part in what I wrote where I said that those words appear in ESR’s post.
I think he’s suggesting it, not saying it. And he comes pretty damn close to saying in so many words that Barack Obama “doesn’t love” America, which of course is far from the same thing as hating it but still a pretty serious accusation to level at a candidate for the presidency.
As for the stronger claim about hating, though, consider the following bits from what ESR wrote. (Please feel free to verify that the ellipses don’t misrepresent his meaning or tone.)
[...] a kind of anti-patriotism in which dedication to an imagined America-that-might-be produces actual, destructive hatred of America as it is and has been. [...] for this kind of anti-patriotism I shall analogously coin the label “chomskyism” [...]
But my choice of Noam Chomsky as an icon does reflect the fact that chomskyism is far more a phenomenon of the American left than of the American right. It is near impossible to imagine a conservative presidential aspirant refusing to wear a flag pin, or explaining that refusal as Obama did.
It seems to me that (1) ESR is defining “chomskyism” to mean actual destructive hatred of America, and (2) his comments about the significance of Obama’s not wearing a flag pin make no sense unless he’s taken to be saying that Obama was exemplifying “chomskyism”, and hence actual destructive hatred of America.
But no, indeed, he didn’t actually say it explicitly using the words “America-hater” or “freedom-hater” or any close analogue.
(I shall not comment further on the political questions at issue here. The actual point I was making was just that I don’t feel any obligation to believe what ESR says about American patriotism as compared with other sorts.)
Yeah, it seems like you’re going a bit far to connect the dots. ESR is saying that the “destructive hatred” is produced by “patriotism by dissent” “at its extreme”. He didn’t actually say that Obama has this extreme sort.
It seemed to me that he was just using the flag pin case as an accessible example of this “patriotism by dissent”. It didn’t seem to me that he was even saying anything was wrong with “patriotism by dissent”, other than noting that a lot of Americans seemed to disagree with it. Though he does suggest it’s a “pathology”, which would normally be a negative term.
In the comments, he even clarifies that he was not trying to call any particular person unpatriotic, and repeatedly says that he is trying to do an analysis of American patriotism. Given the sorts of stuff ESR has written on the philosophical side before, I’m inclined to believe him.
Whereas, given the sort of stuff ESR has written on philosophy and politics before, I’m not at all inclined to believe that he didn’t (alongside the theoretical stuff, which I’m sure he means sincerely) intend to insinuate that Barack Obama doesn’t love his country.
But I think taking this further would almost certainly get unproductively political, so I shall leave it here.
According to the article, patriotism-as-dissent is identified as un-American and as Obama’s theory. American patriotism is also conceptualized as loyalty-to-freedom, for example in the Franklin quote.
Something that a lot of people, both inside and outside the US, don’t realize is that what patriotism means in the US is not quite the same as what patriotism means in other countries.
I would expect nearly all patriotic people to consider patriotism to their own country to be different in some fundamentally important way to patriotism to another. The other patriots don’t care about Better Seating after all.
Requiring someone to make a mandatory pledge to a flag instills the Love of Freedom how...?
By making it Capitalized. Actually having the people loving freedom sounds all sorts of dangerous—people may expect you to let them do stuff. If you make them Love Freedom instead you should be able to keep them in line.
That doesn’t seem true to me. Do you have anything more solid to back this up? Also, see Esar’s comment below that the US is a mess but it’s his mess. How is that not regular old tribal patriotism?
First things first: do people have to be part of a country? If the division of humanity into mutually distrustful camps is ultimately a problem, not a solution. (I think it is. My evidence is history. Nothing specific...just open a page at random..)
you might be causally defending something that is as bad, or worse, than religious tribalism.
First things first: do people have to be part of a country?
You mean metaphysically? No. Practically? Yes. Having no citizenship is pretty serious problem. And these mutually distrustful camps aren’t very mutually distrustful at the moment. Most countries are actually very stable, peaceful, and trusting. More so now then at any other time in history. Other kinds of political organization may be feasible, and that’s fine, but this one is working pretty well and changing things would probably result in trouble.
From a simple consequentialist perspective, I think it’s hard to argue against the present system. Do you have an alternative suggestion?
At one time it was a practical necessity to belong to some religion or other.
Having no citizenship is pretty serious problem.
Just because everyone believes you need one. But does that pass the PKD test?
Most countries are actually very stable, peaceful, and trusting. More so now then at any other time in history.
Does that prove that nationalism is good...or that its one the way out? Europe went through a period of religious bloodshed...followed by an era of religious tolerance...followed by a period of irreligion. SWIM?
Other kinds of political organization may be feasible, and that’s fine, but this one is working pretty well
Nations solve the problems created by nations. Up to a point. Does religion “work” when there is a respite
in the slaughter?
and changing things would probably result in trouble.
Maybe things are chainging anyway. I’m a citizen of England, and the Uk, and the EU. If you are a Usian, you are also in a federated superstate.
In any case you don’t have to believe in (qua approve of) something just because you believe in (qua note the existence of) it.
As a teaching tool it seems almost useless; the language is antiquated, way past age-appropriate for elementary school, and while the meaning of the Pledge might be the subject of a third-grade civics lesson I don’t recall any substantial effort to break down its text in such a way as to integrate it into working knowledge.
Which now strikes me as a fairly clever bit of social engineering. At first I don’t think you’d need meaningful content; if you and your classmates are facing the flag, right hand over heart, and quoting from the text in unison, you’d still get group cohesion effects if the text itself was a list of Vedic demons or multilingual translations of the word “pickle”. But later, as children learn about concepts like duty by other means, they’re supplied with associations left over from their childhood practice. At least in theory; in practice this might be ruined by other associations, as elementary school’s usually not a terribly pleasant place for its inmates.
The “under God” bit can lead to some unpleasant cognitive dissonance as a secular child, too.
And I agree, ‘under God’ should be removed. But it’s not really a big deal. A substantial part of the value of secularism is in the fact that you have to go against the grain a bit.
Well, not just patriotism (which is good if your country is good) but also the whole ‘liberty and justice for all’ thing. I think it’s kind of nice. I want liberty and justice for all.
Patriotism can also sometimes be good independent of whether my country is good, insofar as it can facilitate cooperation among patriots, who even in a bad country might have good goals which are more readily achieved cooperatively.
That’s a good point, but I think there are stricter conditions on the goodness of patriotism than merely consequential ones. I’m not sure how to articulate this, but as a disposition, patriotism is enough like a belief that it ought to be true, and not just beneficial.
Hm. I understand how patriotism might be a beneficial belief if my country is good and harmful otherwise. But you seem to be suggesting that patriotism is true if my country is good and false otherwise. Which suggests to me that we aren’t using the word “patriotism” the same way. Am I correct in inferring that, on your view, “X is patriotic” entails “X believes X’s country is good”?
But you seem to be suggesting that patriotism is true if my country is good and false otherwise.
Which suggests to me that we aren’t using the word “patriotism” the same way.
It looks more like you aren’t using the word true the same way.
Perhaps? I’m content to accept that “”X is patriotic” entails “X believes X’s country is good”″ ⇒ “X’s patriotism is true only if X’s country is good”. This is admittedly an extended sense of “true”, to mean something like “does not entail falsehoods,” but I’m willing to work with it.
I’m content to accept that “”X is patriotic” entails “X believes X’s country is good”″ ⇒ “X’s patriotism is true only if X’s country is good”.
I would accept those, or at least continue the conversation without commenting, although I’d squirm rather a lot at the final one. What I couldn’t accept is “patriotism is true”.
Am I correct in inferring that, on your view, “X is patriotic” entails “X believes X’s country is good”?
So I suppose patriotism is a kind of love. We could call a love good if the lover has good reason to think the beloved worthy of love and if the love is on the whole a benefit to lover and beloved. Your initial remark was that that patriotism can be good independently of the goodness of its object, because it can be a benefit. I think this captures one half of the above, both leaves out the ‘worthiness’ part. In other words, I think patriotism has to involve something like knowledge of the moral goodness of one’s country. It’s in that respect that patriotism is concerned with truth, rather than just with benefit.
Yeah. I can pledge allegiance, now, and when I do, I mean it—but coming out of the mouth of a child, it’s as meaningless as they all know it is. When I was a kid, I knew it was all kinds of messed up. I suspected that I would agree with it when I was older, and I was right. That doesn’t make it valid.
As a child I had to pledge that I will become a law-abiding citizen of my country, and a member of the Communist party.
I have failed to adhere to both parts. The first part, because “my beloved homeland” does not exist anymore. The second part, knowingly and willingly. (Although, as a 6-years old child, I would probably also guess that I will agree with both parts when I grow up. Mostly because of: “if that wouldn’t be a good thing, they would not ask me to promise it”.)
Or maybe it’s just because I had to recite the pledge only once. ;-)
(OK, technically I had to practice it a few times first.)
Also because observations contradicted the belief that your country was good.
Brainwashing success!
I don’t agree with everything the country does, that’s for sure. But on the broad strokes, I’m willing to stand for it.
Why? In other words, which parts of the pledge would you keep, and which would you change/remove and why?
What? I’d drop the ‘under god’ part, but that isn’t really what I was talking about. My not agreeing with everything the country does, does not have the pledge as its subject matter.
That is, say, the unjustified wars, etc.. The whole laundry list. The particular method of choosing representation in our government - ‘plurality of first preference’ voting, with closed primary elections, and districts chosen in a partisan way. There’s a reason congress is as messed up as it is.
But it’s my messed-up country.
Why is it your messed-up country?
Because its laws treat you well, and you want to support that system out of gratitude?
Because you’ve lived there a while, and you’re attached to things in it?
Because you were born there, and… that matters for some reason?
Because you have relative from there, and ditto?
Because you have relatives from elsewhere, and it sucked, so you cheer for the least-bad country?
Because bald eagles look awesome and apple pie is delicious, so you have positive emotional associations to the corresponding countries?
I wonder if “rationality of patriotism” has been discussed on LW? Probably in the context of the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
Something like that was discussed here.
Because states are still a powerful force for (or against) change in this world, you are limited in the number of them you can directly affect (determined largely by where you and relatives were born), and for political and psychological reasons that ability is diminished when you fail to display loyalty (of the appropriate sort, which varies by group) to those states.
Also, apple pie is delicious.
Then the obvious strategy is to start feeling lots of loyalty toward Easily Affected Country, and donate lots to organizations in Powerful Country that effect change in Easily Affected Country. This diminishes your political bonus but the extra leverage compensates. Bot-swa-na! Bot-swa-na!
I actually think the apple pie reason is an unusually good one. There’s nothing wrong with cheering for things.
Wouldn’t that… if enough people did it… I mean, wouldn’t it sort of… work?
Wait, that wasn’t serious?
You’re assuming that display of loyalty can radically increase your influence. My model was that your initial influence is determined situationally, and your disposition can decrease it more easily than increase it.
That said, let’s run with your interpretation; Bot-swa-na! Bot-swa-na!
Yeah, but a lot of stuff is meaningless coming out of the mouth of a child. But you have to start teaching them about things like duty and loyalty at some point. The pledge is a reasonable way to get kids to understand that they’re part of a country, and that there’s a common moral and political activity that they’ll one day be involved in.
If the status quo didn’t already include the daily recitation of such a pledge, do you think you would suggest it as a way to get kids to understand that?
I think that’s a practical question too complicated for me to answer. I would want some kind of voluntary activity like that in place. The pledge isn’t great, but it’s likely that something better would require more resources. And while I don’t think (and would doubt) that the pledge has any kind of ‘brainwashing’ effect, it would be worth looking into whatever data we can gather about that.
Data point: My home country, Australia, does not have a pledge of allegiance. Overt demonstrations of patriotism were limited to being expected to sing the national anthem in school assembly once a week. I personally feel that there is still plenty of patriotism to go around. However, a common perception of the US is that you guys are over-patriotic.
Thinking a bit more on this, I can’t help wondering how much of this can be traced to free voting versus mandatory voting. How much of encouraging patriotism is an attempt to make people care enough to vote?
Something that a lot of people, both inside and outside the US, don’t realize is that what patriotism means in the US is not quite the same as what patriotism means in other countries.
I wonder whether the reason why a lot of people don’t realise it might be because it’s not actually true.
I mean, ESR’s argument seems to me incoherent and mostly aimed at finding a way to identify Barack Obama as not only an America-hater but also a freedom-hater. (Step 1: True US patriotism is more about loving the ideal of liberty and less about tribal attachment to the US as such. Step 2: Because for a while Barack Obama chose not to wear a flag pin, he doesn’t love his country. Step 3, unstated but I think clearly there: Since true US patriotism means loving liberty and Barack Obama is not a true US patriot, he is opposed not only to the US but to liberty.) It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that his characterization of US patriotism may be as much a matter of political convenience as the (absurd) inference he draws from Obama’s not wearing a flag pin. Certainly at least one of them must be wrong; it cannot be true both that patriotism for Americans means loving their country “not as a thing in itself, but insofar as it embodies core ideas” and that not wearing a US flag pin indicates “a lack of love for America as it actually is” and therefore a lack of patriotism.
And it’s certainly not only in the US that patriotism tends to involve not only tribal loyalty to one’s country but also love of what are taken to be its virtues. (Sometimes grand things like liberty and enterprise in the US, courage and fair play in the UK; sometimes little quirks like apple pie and baseball in the US, pubs and cricket in the UK.)
I’d be very interested in others’ opinions: Is US patriotism really as much more “abstracted” than other nations’ as ESR suggests? Is it true that “most Americans love their country … not as a thing in itself, but insofar as it embodies core ideas about liberty”?
That sounds wrong. Certainly people who consider themselves French patriots are likely to say “Speak French, dammit!”, “Yeah, maybe it’s like that in your country but you’re in France now”, or “Go Napoleon!”, but no more than American patriots are likely to say the analogues.
Also, French patriotism is huge on political ideas. Motherland of human rights, French revolution, Resistance, and all that.
I would say that many Americans don’t properly keep the two concepts separate.
I missed the part where he was identifying Obama as an “America-hater” or a “freedom-hater”—I don’t see those words, or any analogues, in the post.
That’s OK; I, likewise, missed the part in what I wrote where I said that those words appear in ESR’s post.
I think he’s suggesting it, not saying it. And he comes pretty damn close to saying in so many words that Barack Obama “doesn’t love” America, which of course is far from the same thing as hating it but still a pretty serious accusation to level at a candidate for the presidency.
As for the stronger claim about hating, though, consider the following bits from what ESR wrote. (Please feel free to verify that the ellipses don’t misrepresent his meaning or tone.)
It seems to me that (1) ESR is defining “chomskyism” to mean actual destructive hatred of America, and (2) his comments about the significance of Obama’s not wearing a flag pin make no sense unless he’s taken to be saying that Obama was exemplifying “chomskyism”, and hence actual destructive hatred of America.
But no, indeed, he didn’t actually say it explicitly using the words “America-hater” or “freedom-hater” or any close analogue.
(I shall not comment further on the political questions at issue here. The actual point I was making was just that I don’t feel any obligation to believe what ESR says about American patriotism as compared with other sorts.)
Yeah, it seems like you’re going a bit far to connect the dots. ESR is saying that the “destructive hatred” is produced by “patriotism by dissent” “at its extreme”. He didn’t actually say that Obama has this extreme sort.
It seemed to me that he was just using the flag pin case as an accessible example of this “patriotism by dissent”. It didn’t seem to me that he was even saying anything was wrong with “patriotism by dissent”, other than noting that a lot of Americans seemed to disagree with it. Though he does suggest it’s a “pathology”, which would normally be a negative term.
In the comments, he even clarifies that he was not trying to call any particular person unpatriotic, and repeatedly says that he is trying to do an analysis of American patriotism. Given the sorts of stuff ESR has written on the philosophical side before, I’m inclined to believe him.
Whereas, given the sort of stuff ESR has written on philosophy and politics before, I’m not at all inclined to believe that he didn’t (alongside the theoretical stuff, which I’m sure he means sincerely) intend to insinuate that Barack Obama doesn’t love his country.
But I think taking this further would almost certainly get unproductively political, so I shall leave it here.
According to the article, patriotism-as-dissent is identified as un-American and as Obama’s theory. American patriotism is also conceptualized as loyalty-to-freedom, for example in the Franklin quote.
I would expect nearly all patriotic people to consider patriotism to their own country to be different in some fundamentally important way to patriotism to another. The other patriots don’t care about Better Seating after all.
Requiring someone to make a mndatory pledge to a flag instills the Love of Freedom how...?
By making it Capitalized. Actually having the people loving freedom sounds all sorts of dangerous—people may expect you to let them do stuff. If you make them Love Freedom instead you should be able to keep them in line.
That doesn’t seem true to me. Do you have anything more solid to back this up? Also, see Esar’s comment below that the US is a mess but it’s his mess. How is that not regular old tribal patriotism?
Both forms of patriotism exist and are frequently confused, even by said patriots.
First things first: do people have to be part of a country? If the division of humanity into mutually distrustful camps is ultimately a problem, not a solution. (I think it is. My evidence is history. Nothing specific...just open a page at random..) you might be causally defending something that is as bad, or worse, than religious tribalism.
You mean metaphysically? No. Practically? Yes. Having no citizenship is pretty serious problem. And these mutually distrustful camps aren’t very mutually distrustful at the moment. Most countries are actually very stable, peaceful, and trusting. More so now then at any other time in history. Other kinds of political organization may be feasible, and that’s fine, but this one is working pretty well and changing things would probably result in trouble.
From a simple consequentialist perspective, I think it’s hard to argue against the present system. Do you have an alternative suggestion?
At one time it was a practical necessity to belong to some religion or other.
Just because everyone believes you need one. But does that pass the PKD test?
Does that prove that nationalism is good...or that its one the way out? Europe went through a period of religious bloodshed...followed by an era of religious tolerance...followed by a period of irreligion. SWIM?
Nations solve the problems created by nations. Up to a point. Does religion “work” when there is a respite in the slaughter?
Maybe things are chainging anyway. I’m a citizen of England, and the Uk, and the EU. If you are a Usian, you are also in a federated superstate.
In any case you don’t have to believe in (qua approve of) something just because you believe in (qua note the existence of) it.
As a teaching tool it seems almost useless; the language is antiquated, way past age-appropriate for elementary school, and while the meaning of the Pledge might be the subject of a third-grade civics lesson I don’t recall any substantial effort to break down its text in such a way as to integrate it into working knowledge.
Which now strikes me as a fairly clever bit of social engineering. At first I don’t think you’d need meaningful content; if you and your classmates are facing the flag, right hand over heart, and quoting from the text in unison, you’d still get group cohesion effects if the text itself was a list of Vedic demons or multilingual translations of the word “pickle”. But later, as children learn about concepts like duty by other means, they’re supplied with associations left over from their childhood practice. At least in theory; in practice this might be ruined by other associations, as elementary school’s usually not a terribly pleasant place for its inmates.
The “under God” bit can lead to some unpleasant cognitive dissonance as a secular child, too.
My thoughts exactly.
And I agree, ‘under God’ should be removed. But it’s not really a big deal. A substantial part of the value of secularism is in the fact that you have to go against the grain a bit.
The whole thing, though, is a giant “under God” of patriotism. A small nod to religion isn’t a big deal compared to that.
Well, not just patriotism (which is good if your country is good) but also the whole ‘liberty and justice for all’ thing. I think it’s kind of nice. I want liberty and justice for all.
Patriotism can also sometimes be good independent of whether my country is good, insofar as it can facilitate cooperation among patriots, who even in a bad country might have good goals which are more readily achieved cooperatively.
That’s a good point, but I think there are stricter conditions on the goodness of patriotism than merely consequential ones. I’m not sure how to articulate this, but as a disposition, patriotism is enough like a belief that it ought to be true, and not just beneficial.
Hm.
I understand how patriotism might be a beneficial belief if my country is good and harmful otherwise.
But you seem to be suggesting that patriotism is true if my country is good and false otherwise.
Which suggests to me that we aren’t using the word “patriotism” the same way.
Am I correct in inferring that, on your view, “X is patriotic” entails “X believes X’s country is good”?
It looks more like you aren’t using the word true the same way.
Perhaps?
I’m content to accept that “”X is patriotic” entails “X believes X’s country is good”″ ⇒ “X’s patriotism is true only if X’s country is good”. This is admittedly an extended sense of “true”, to mean something like “does not entail falsehoods,” but I’m willing to work with it.
I would accept those, or at least continue the conversation without commenting, although I’d squirm rather a lot at the final one. What I couldn’t accept is “patriotism is true”.
So I suppose patriotism is a kind of love. We could call a love good if the lover has good reason to think the beloved worthy of love and if the love is on the whole a benefit to lover and beloved. Your initial remark was that that patriotism can be good independently of the goodness of its object, because it can be a benefit. I think this captures one half of the above, both leaves out the ‘worthiness’ part. In other words, I think patriotism has to involve something like knowledge of the moral goodness of one’s country. It’s in that respect that patriotism is concerned with truth, rather than just with benefit.
In my experience with it, patriotism usually seems closer to a kind of hate. It does make people feel good about themselves, though.