THE PHILOSOPHICAL DEBATE ABOUT PATRIOTISM

Most people think that patriotism is a virtue. That, at least, is what is suggested by a quick glance at the political world and the popular media in contemporary western societies. Politicians constitute an extreme case – I think that many of them would rather be called cowardly, selfish or corrupt than unpatriotic – but their case is odd only for its extremeness. In everyday life, it seems as though you are usually offering a compliment when you call someone a patriot, and as though patriotism is usually thought to be something that we should foster in our children and ourselves. Patriotism, in the popular imagination, may not quite rank alongside kindness, justice, honesty and the like, but it is a virtue nonetheless; it is a character trait that the ideal person would possess.

I think that this common view is mistaken. Patriotism is certainly not a virtue, and is probably a vice. In Chapter 2, I tried to show that friendship often involves a certain sort of loyalty in belief, which can bring the standards of good friendship into conflict with other important evaluative standards. The next two chapters argue that patriotism, too, involves loyalty in belief, but of a more pervasive and damaging kind.