Patriotism is loving your country and wanting it to prosper. Nationalism is believing your country is superior to other countries and seeing all others as adversaries.
It’s the difference between working on self-improvement because you care about yourself vs. wanting to take things from others and being paranoid about them taking from you.
That’s a nice idea, and if you can maintain that distinction good for you, but the inevitable widespread consequence of loving one’s country more is that one loves other countries less. And that leads to xenophobia, which in turn leads to racism.
It’s a think globally, act locally kind of thing. You can love your community and help people in your community without disliking other communities.
If you love your wife, and she’s obviously of some ethnicity does that mean you’re racist against other ethnicities?
The fact is everyone lives somewhere and wanting to live in a good place and working to to make where you live better doesn’t mean you hate the places you can’t really do anything to improve. This isn’t a zero sum game, people in countries where I don’t live can work to make where they live a better place too.
Wanting to live in a good country isn’t a negative emotional thing, it’s actually very rational. Countries function better when people work together for the common good, and that’s ultimately what patriotism is about.
Patriotism is loving your country and wanting it to prosper. Nationalism is believing your country is superior to other countries and seeing all others as adversaries.
It’s the difference between working on self-improvement because you care about yourself vs. wanting to take things from others and being paranoid about them taking from you.
That’s a nice idea, and if you can maintain that distinction good for you, but the inevitable widespread consequence of loving one’s country more is that one loves other countries less. And that leads to xenophobia, which in turn leads to racism.
It’s a think globally, act locally kind of thing. You can love your community and help people in your community without disliking other communities.
If you love your wife, and she’s obviously of some ethnicity does that mean you’re racist against other ethnicities?
The fact is everyone lives somewhere and wanting to live in a good place and working to to make where you live better doesn’t mean you hate the places you can’t really do anything to improve. This isn’t a zero sum game, people in countries where I don’t live can work to make where they live a better place too.
Wanting to live in a good country isn’t a negative emotional thing, it’s actually very rational. Countries function better when people work together for the common good, and that’s ultimately what patriotism is about.