Quotes: When patriotism intensifies

"What is a country? The way its people govern themselves. Sometimes self-government just means elections. And sometimes it means recognizing the deeper dignity and meaning of what it means to be a people. That means speaking up, standing out, and protesting. We can only be free together."
— Timothy Snyder, The Logic of Destruction, February 2, 2025

Some old quotes I collected on this topic, years ago.

What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? ... A patriotism that puts country ahead of self; a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. There are words that are easy to utter, but this is a mighty assignment. For it is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.
Adlai Stevenson. New York, August 27, 1952. Quoted in Sen. J. William Fulbright. The Arrogance of Power. New York: Vintage Books, 1966. p. 23.

Let him begin by treating patriotism...as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part.
The demon Screwtape explaining how to mislead a Christian, in The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. Quoted by David Kuo. Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction. New York: Free Press, 2006. p. 57.

...the author comes to the conclusion that there are two Americas. One is the America of Abraham Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Theodore Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. Or to put it another way, two strands have coexisted in American history: "a dominant strand of democratic humanism and a lesser but durable strand of intolerant puritanism."
Francis O. Wilcox. Preface to Sen. J. William Fulbright. The Arrogance of Power. New York: Vintage Books, 1966. p. x.

There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power.
Sen. J. William Fulbright. The Arrogance of Power. New York: Vintage Books, 1966. p. 245.

The intensity of a Scottish boy's patriotism, reared as I was, constitutes a real force in his life to the very end. If the source of my stock of that prime article — courage — were studied, I am sure the final analysis would find it founded upon Wallace, the hero of Scotland.
Andrew Carnegie. The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie and his essay The Gospel of Wealth. New York: Signet Classics, 2006. Autobiography, p. 21.

Patriotism, as we have recently come to understand it, rarely contemplates the nation's endangered young. Today's so-called "patriotism," with its obsessive loathing of taxation and deep suspicion of communal responsibility, is more an exercise in getting one's own.
"Real patriotism is about reclaiming our children." Ron Powers, special to CNN. July 4, 2011.

In an interconnected world, when you serve your community, you serve your country. Our longstanding sense of charity and humanity -- particularly outside of the government -- is one of the things that have made us a great country. And, in the 21st century, that is more essential than ever. Not just because it makes us a better example to others in the world and helps restore our all-important moral credibility, but most importantly, because it makes us better examples to ourselves. Citizenship is not residence, and patriotism isn't something you feel or put on a bumper sticker -- it's something you do, for others.
"National Service Day." Ret. Col. Christopher Holshek. Nov. 11, 2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-holshek/national-service-day_b_1086206.html

Insights emerging from a strange actor in the US Capitol riot: How some people believe rights and responsibility work

One of the stranger and yet most revealing comments about ethics I have personally seen has appeared in the context of the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

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Richard Barnett, 60, from Gravette, Arkansas, is one of the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol. He entered the office suite of Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and sat at a desk full of papers, a computer, and a telephone. In one photo attributed to photojournalist Jim Lo Scalzo, Barnett gleefully holds up an envelope with Nancy Pelosi's name in the return corner and a typed address for Republican Rep. Billy Long. Barnett removed the envelope from Pelosi's office, replacing it with a coin.

[This photo is by Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock and was published by the New York Post.]

As described by the New York Post:

New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg interviewed Barnett and posted video of the interview to Twitter. In that interview, Barnett maintained: “I didn’t steal it [the envelope]."

Here is his argument: "I bled on it because they were macing me and I couldn’t f-ing see." He added: "So I figure, ‘Well, I’m in her office, I got blood in her office, I’ll put a quarter on her desk even though she ain’t f — ing worth it.'"

He also told 5News: "I put a quarter on the desk because I’m not a thief."

His rationalization seems to be: He was injured while storming the Capitol. (He may feel sorry for himself about that.) Because he has bled on the envelope, it now somehow belongs to him or it otherwise ought to be removed. Additionally and separately, the envelope seems to be purchaseable: If he leaves $0.25 in its place, he has paid for it. The envelope at least is worth that much, even if the Speaker of the House herself is not worth anything, in his view.

Rosenberg tweeted that Barnett had bragged: "I wrote her a nasty note, put my feet up on her desk and scratched my balls." He claimed that the note said: "'Nancy, Bigo was here you bitch.'" Inside Edition published a photo showing a sheet of paper inside a manila folder; directly on the manila folder, someone had written: "WE WILL NOT BACK DOWN."

The Daily Dot reported that Pelosi's "office was vandalized by a number of President Donald Trump supporters, who flipped desks, tore pictures off the walls, and rifled through the speaker's property."

Rosenberg added: "[Barnett] claimed that he was politely knocking on the door of Pelosi’s office when he was pushed in by other protesters. It was a story he knew no one would buy — 'I’ll probably be telling them this is what happened all the way to the D.C. jail,' he said."

[Photo credit: EPA]

On January 2, on a Facebook page under a fake name, Barnett had criticized Pelosi "for using the description 'white nationalist' as a 'derogatory term.'" He argued: "I am white. There is no denying that. I am a nationalist. I put my nation first. So that makes me a white nationalist." Thus, he concluded: Anyone who doesn't identify as a nationalist should "get the f--- out of our nation." (Note: The definition of "white nationalism" is not the appreciation of the nation in which one happens to live while simultaneously happening, quite incidentally, to be white. The correct definition is, rather, the ideology of white identity and the desire to build a white ethno-state.) The Washington Post also reported that he has recently shared conspiracy theories online about the coronavirus vaccine and helped fundraise for a campaign tied to QAnon. Though he supported the police in the context of the 2020 George Floyd protests, the storming of the Capitol in which he participated led to the death of a Capitol police officer, Brian Sicknick.

Apart from possible charges of domestic terrorism for breaking into the Capitol, he might face federal charges of stealing mail under US Code Section 1708. He was indicted on seven counts and remained in custody as of March 2021.

In April 2020, Barnett received a PPP loan of $9,300. PPP loans are a form of government assistance that were created to address the economic troubles of the coronavirus pandemic: generally, they are supposed to be repaid, though in certain circumstances they can be forgiven.

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One could pull this apart for a long time, if one had time and interest. For me it provokes some insights about how some people believe ethics works and what they believe liberty is about.

On criticizing one's country

"To criticize one's country," said Sen. Fulbright, "is to do it a service and pay it a compliment. It is a service because it may spur the country to do better than it is doing; it is a compliment because it evidences a belief that the country can do better than it is doing." Or, as Carl Schurz said: "My country, right or wrong! When right, to be kept right. If wrong, to be put right."

A little bit of disloyalty to a party line may open up space for a multitude of perspectives and opinions. Michael Eric Dyson:

Whether his take on race is viewed as less or more helpful than mine should be judged, but not by reference to an unchanging, eternal idea of Blackness that is stuck in the Black sky as a North Star to shed light on our doings as a people....It [the term "post-Black"] doesn't mean we're over Blackness; it means we're over our narrow understanding of what Black means. Post-Blackness has little patience for racial patriotism, racial fundamentalism and racial policing. Racial patriotism builds on the parallel between loyalty to the race and loyalty to the nation. Loyalty isn't the problem, but rather the sort of racial fidelity that often flies under the banner of Blackness. Black folk offered the nation a great gift by proving you are most loyal to your country when you're willing to accent its virtues and criticize its failures. Too often racial patriots are just as blind as other American patriots: my country right or wrong becomes my race right or wrong, and even more disturbing, racial patriots often identify their views of Blackness with the only acceptable views of Blackness, and are willing to railroad or expel all others who disagree.

Similarly, Eddie Vedder:

As a touring musician, I would play thirty places in Europe in five weeks and not just pass through or see the sights but actually have an exchange with people. Everything I probably missed out on by not going to college as far as geography, history, world social studies and religion I feel like I've kind of made up for by just being alert on tour. That puts you in a sensitive place because you come back to the United States and you're happy to be back, but at the same time you feel like sharing what you've seen with other people. You want to say, you know, "I've seen some examples where things work a little better as far as healthcare, gun control, the modern-day prison system, the war on drugs"—you want to be able to share that and not feel like you're being unpatriotic or extra critical.

Eric Felten wrote about political criticism as "tough love" that is sometimes mistaken as hostility:

"Republics, and liberal democracies especially, rely on mutual trust between governments and citizens to an unusual degree,' Judith Shklar observed. 'Threats to the established constitution, even when no foreign state is involved in the enterprise, are therefore perceived as attacks on every established political relationship and every social agreement.' For self-government to succeed, we have to know we can rely on one another. Which is where patriotism comes in. It is a promise, both outward and inward, that we can be counted on when it counts. Sneering at the rituals of patriotic observance may be one's right, but it does little to build trust. Those who would challenge the orthodoxies of their countries are likely to have more luck the more they are trusted, the more they make it clear their recommendations are expressions of tough love — with the emphasis on love. If dissent devolves into hatred of one's country or countrymen (as it did for State Department spy Walter Kendall Myers, who told an FBI agent posing as a Cuban spymaster, 'The trouble with this country, there's just too many North Americans...believe me, those North Americans, you don't want them.'), democracy is undermined. 'An enemy is not recognizable as a social critic; he lacks standing,' observes political philosopher Michael Walzer. 'We expect and simultaneously discount criticism from our enemies.'

Some critics, especially by virtue of their minoritized identities, risk being labeled as enemies of the state. Arundhati Roy:

Recently, those who have criticised the actions of the US government (myself included) have been called "anti-American". Anti-Americanism is in the process of being consecrated into an ideology. The term is usually used by the American establishment to discredit and, not falsely - but shall we say inaccurately — define its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he or she will be judged before they're heard and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride. What does the term mean? That you're anti-jazz? Or that you're opposed to free speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean you don't admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans? * * * To call someone anti-American, indeed, to be anti-American, is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you: If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not good, you're evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists.

Religious dogma can cause people to close themselves off to criticism, and "any government that imagines it has a divine warrant will perforce deal with its critics as if they were profane and thus illegitimate by definition," Christopher Hitchens wrote, warning that we can see "what happens to a state or society that forbids itself the secular catharsis of self-criticism."

"All cultures, whether Arab, Asian, or Western," wrote Tariq Ramadan, "require a critical and self-critical mind apt to assess habits in light of principles because habits often erode or blur principles. One should therefore be both open and critical: always remain curious and seek what is beautiful and good, and always remain cautiously alert in assessing what is negative and unfair."

That "self-critical mind" of which Ramadan speaks is crucial, too. After all, as James Albert Pike put it: "If a person lacks self-acceptance, he can't live with himself; if he lacks self-criticism, others can't live with him." Or, as Abba Poemen put it, "always to accuse" oneself — that is integrity.

An example of criticism from Jared Yates Sexton: "The United States of America, armed with its myth of American exceptionalism, has perpetrated some of the worst crimes in the history of humanity. It has subjugated the people of the world, inflicted a possibly mortal blow to the concepts of truth and human dignity, and manufactured an alternate reality that now threatens everyone and everything we purport to hold dear."

Perhaps relatedly, here's A.R. Moxon giving his definition of supremacy (No Beliefs, Just Intentions, The Reframe (Substack), Dec 17, 2023):

"...supremacy—a human spirit that believes most people don’t matter—is always inherently eliminationist and therefore inherently violent. And they are almost always doing it in the name of a desire for some good thing—in fact, in the name of the exact opposite thing that they intend; in the name of the exact thing they are working to destroy.

So I conclude that fascists and other supremacists find themselves easily able to claim to hold any beliefs at all—even beliefs whose goals they are actively working against—because their only real belief is in their own supremacy.

Beyond that, they have no beliefs. They only have intentions.

So I conclude that intention is a matter of what is actually done, not what is claimed.

I’d suggest this means that it is very important to pay attention to what is actually done."

He continues: "Supremacists, like bullies, will always deny their real intentions, because supremacists, like bullies, do not want to pay any cost for their bullying, and loss of reputation is a cost. And supremacists, like bullies, are finally attuned to the margins of support, and so they know what is allowed and what isn’t, even as they work to move those margins further out."

Sources

Sen. J. William Fulbright. The Arrogance of Power. New York: Vintage Books, 1966. p. 25.

Eric Felten. Loyalty: The Vexing Virtue. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. pp. 257-258.

"Not again." Arundhati Roy. The Guardian, Friday September 27, 2002.

"Tour(é)ing Blackness" by Michael Eric Dyson. Foreword to Touré, Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What it Means to Be Black Now. New York: Free Press, 2011.

Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, in an interview with Ann Powers, "The Power of Music," posted online December 23, 2002. Printed in The Nation, January 13, 2003.

"The Death of Theocracy." Christopher Hitchens. Newsweek. Jan. 11, 2010. p. 23.

Tariq Ramadan. What I Believe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. p. 41.

James Albert Pike. Beyond anxiety: the Christian answer to fear, frustration, guilt, indecision, inhibition, loneliness, despair. Scribner, 1953. p. 22.

Abba Poemen, cited in Kathleen Norris. Acedia & me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life. New York: Riverhead Books, 2008. p. 139.

Jared Yates Sexton. Prologue to American Rule. Dutton, 2020.

A.R. Moxon, No Beliefs, Just Intentions, The Reframe (Substack), Dec 17, 2023.

In 1965 Norman Morrison set himself on fire outside the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. His 1 year old daughter, Emily, was in his car not far from the scene. 5 Days after Norman's death, a vietnamese poet wrote these words that generations of Vietnamese children have now learned by heart.

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— Emily S 🌹 (@emily4u.bsky.social) February 26, 2024 at 1:27 PM

All dissent, now, is treason

It’s perhaps important to again emphasize just how dangerous it is that Trump is calling any dissenting language from his opponents “treasonous.”

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— The Steady State (@steadystatevets.bsky.social) October 30, 2025 at 9:56 PM

All reporting, now, is treason

New York Times Journalist Fires Back At Trump: 'Reporting Is Not Treason' “The president seems to conflate news he doesn't want to hear with treason and that's not the case," the reporter said. Pocharapon Neammanee, HuffPost, May 16, 2026

Margaret Sullivan in American Crisis, Jan 6, 2026: "These stories take a lot of digging, a lot of reporting and a lot of journalistic elbow grease. They tell us things we didn’t know, they expose wrongdoing, they don’t pull their punches. That’s the role of journalists in a free society. And that’s what I’d call loving America."

Humility on the home front while criticizing violence abroad

At the National Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 5, 2015, President Obama said:

But we also see faith being twisted and distorted, used as a wedge -- or, worse, sometimes used as a weapon. From a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris, we have seen violence and terror perpetrated by those who profess to stand up for faith, their faith, professed to stand up for Islam, but, in fact, are betraying it. We see ISIL, a brutal, vicious death cult that, in the name of religion, carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism...

Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ...

And, first, we should start with some basic humility. I believe that the starting point of faith is some doubt -- not being so full of yourself and so confident that you are right and that God speaks only to us, and doesn’t speak to others, that God only cares about us and doesn’t care about others, that somehow we alone are in possession of the truth.

Our job is not to ask that God respond to our notion of truth -- our job is to be true to Him, His word, and His commandments. And we should assume humbly that we’re confused and don’t always know what we’re doing and we’re staggering and stumbling towards Him, and have some humility in that process. And that means we have to speak up against those who would misuse His name to justify oppression, or violence, or hatred with that fierce certainty. No God condones terror. No grievance justifies the taking of innocent lives, or the oppression of those who are weaker or fewer in number.

Obama outlines the tension – a near paradox – inherent in this idea of humility. On the one hand, we must admit that we "don't always know what we're doing," and on the other hand, we "have to speak up against those who would misuse [God's] name to justify oppression, or violence, or hatred with that fierce certainty. No God condones terror." This humility means being certain that we can't have certainty. It is an attitude that we must profess uncertainty about our own righteousness. It is a conviction that we must not allow anyone else to commit violence in the name of their own misguided assumption of self-righteousness.

More specifically, in identifying the errors committed by others, we must remember the transgressions of our own groups and traditions. The "high horse" that is not to be ridden is the idea that barbaric violence is "unique to some other place". Obama clearly had a negative judgment of the Islamic State terrorist group, which he called ISIL. The United States military had been fighting it for six months, and less than a week after Obama gave his prayer breakfast speech, he presented Congress with a resolution to formally authorize the use of force.

Michael Felsen wrote for Haaretz that Obama was

modeling behavior that ought to be emulated. By acknowledging regrettable chapters in his own religion’s both distant and recent past, he implicitly calls on leaders and followers of other faiths to do the same: face and confront those who appropriate religious doctrines and beliefs to serve a brutal quest for power and control. Today – in the face of ISIS and Boko Haram and Al-Qaida – Muslim leaders, and the many millions of Muslim faithful, must do this. But they’re not alone in that obligation.

Stephen Marche wrote in 2009: "The reality we can't bear to look at, however, isn't hidden groups of powerful men controlling everything but the more terrifying truth that there are no hidden groups of powerful men controlling everything. It's our deepest form of escapism to imagine a world in which we are powerless, because it excuses our selfishness. The real nightmare is that no one is to blame for the state of the world but ourselves."

In this statement, Marche provides one explanation for why people avoid humility. Some people's rage at expressions of humility – for example, former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, who called Obama's remarks at the prayer breakfast "the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime" – may come from a place of fear of having to acknowledge our own crimes. Some disorder and ugliness is caused by other people, but some we also caused ourselves. As we acknowledge the former, we cannot lose sight of the latter, or we, too, will likely come to embody the very self-righteousness that we are challenging in others.

Andrew Bacevich wrote that humility supports realism, since humility is nothing more than seeing ourselves as we really are.

Realism in this sense implies an obligation to see the world as it actually is, not as we might like it to be. The enemy of realism is hubris, which in Niebuhr's day, and in our own, finds expression in an outsized confidence in the efficacy of American power as an instrument to reshape the global order.

Humility imposes an obligation of a different sort. It summons Americans to see themselves without blinders. The enemy of humility is sanctimony, which gives rise to the conviction that American values and beliefs are universal and that the nation itself serves providentially assigned purposes. This conviction finds expression in a determination to remark the world in what we imagine to be America's image.

Someone posted this “antique” yesterday. Published in 1910. They’ve been weaving this particular white supremacist narrative to avoid reckoning with actual enslavement since forever. The # of white women just in my lifetime who’ve used interracial kidnapping as a cover story… pic.twitter.com/qASozSGZTo

— Bethany C. Morrow (@BCMorrow) April 24, 2022

Sources

Transcript of Obama's National Prayer Breakfast speech, Feb. 5, 2015.

"Obama ISIS fight request sent to Congress," Jim Acosta and Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Feb. 12, 2015.

"Get real: Obama's prayer breakfast speech never really trampled on Christian or American values," Michael Felsen, Haaretz, Feb. 10, 2015.

"Why People Who Love Conspiracy Theories Are Part of the Problem," Stephen Marche, Esquire April 21, 2009.

Andrew J. Bacevich. The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008. p. 7.

See also

Pete Hegseth’s Crusade to Turn the Military into a Christian Weapon: Trump’s pick to run the Pentagon has embraced an aggressive form of Christianity that is at war with the military’s nonpartisan and pluralistic culture. Jasper Craven. Politico Magazine. December 6, 2024.

Trump says he ordered airstrikes on terrorist targets in Somalia. From CNN's Samantha Waldenberg and Alayna Treene. President Donald Trump ordered airstrikes on ISIS and affiliated targets in Somalia on Saturday, according to his administration. CNN, February 1, 2025.

What is patriotism?

"Patriotism is another form of isolationistic practice where one group believes it is better than another," said Ralph Minogue. For Tolstoy:

It is quite possible that governments regard this sentiment [patriotism] as both useful and desirable, and of service to the unity of the State; but one must see that this sentiment is by no means elevated, but, on the contrary, very stupid and immoral. Stupid, because if every country were to consider itself superior to others, it is evident that all but one would be in error; and immoral because it leads all who possess it to aim at benefiting their own country or nation at the expense of every other--an inclination exactly at variance with the fundamental moral law, which all admit, 'Do not unto others as you would not wish them to do unto you.' * * * Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, and conscience, and a slavish enthralment to those in power. And as such it is recommended wherever it is preached. Patriotism is slavery.

The word patriotism itself "is not one of my words," said Oscar Wilde.

One of its perversions is the use of galvanizing symbols in place of arguments: "...Von Hoffman razzes what he called 'flagolatry,' a fetish employed in 'bamboozling the moron masses with showy irrationalities,'" said Eric Felten.

Bill Moyers bemoaned:

The flag's been hijacked and turned into a logo – the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism. On those Sunday morning talk shows, official chests appear adorned with the flag as if it is the good housekeeping seal of approval. During the State of the Union, did you notice Bush and Cheney wearing the flag? How come? No administration's patriotism is ever in doubt, only its policies. And the flag bestows no immunity from error. When I see flags sprouting on official lapels, I think of the time in China when I saw Mao's little red book on every official's desk, omnipresent and unread.

As the word "flagolatry" suggests, this can carry religious fervor. Paul Von Ward:

Leaders in the U.S. government in the 1950s wanted the phrase "under God" added to the American pledge of allegiance to evoke a supernatural religious archetype. Repeating the phrase on a regular basis energizes the sense of a chosen people whose leadership is blessed with divine power to carry out God's destiny for the country. People now resist the idea of removing it because they don't want to give up the feeling of psychological security or superiority evoked by the archetype.

Chris Hedges:

We all stoke and feed the fires of symbolic mythic narratives about our nation, our times and ourselves to give meaning, coherence, and purpose to our lives. The danger arises when the myths we tell about ourselves endow us with divine power, when we believe that it is our role to shape and direct human destiny, for then we seek to become gods. We can do this in the name of Jesus, Mohammed, or Western civilization. The result for those who defy us is the same: repression and often death.

Taking another perspective, Gandhi understood patriotism as the pursuit of a people's well-being.

My patriotism does not teach me that I am to allow people to be crushed under the heel of Indian princes if only the English retire. If I have the power, I should resist the tyranny of Indian princes just as much as that of the English. By patriotism I mean the welfare of the whole people, and if I could secure it at the hands of the English, I should bow down my head to them. If any Englishman dedicated his life to securing the freedom of India, resisting tyranny and serving the land, I should welcome that Englishman as an Indian.

If patriotism is not bad, neither is it sufficient substitute for other virtues. "Patriotism is not enough," said Edith Cowell. "I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone.
" She was a nurse in World War I who treated everyone regardless of nationality.

Citations

Ralph Minogue. Responsibility To, Responsibility For. Baltimore: AmErica House, 2000. p 190.

Tolstoy's Writings on Civil Disobedience and Non-violence. New York: Bergman Publishers, 1967. pp. 97, 103.

Oscar Wilde, quoted by Jonathan Glover in Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century. Yale University Press, 2001 (originally 1999). p 18.

Eric Felten. Loyalty: The Vexing Virtue. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. p. 240. Quoting Nicholas Von Hoffman, Hoax: Why Americans are Suckered by White House Lies (New York: Nation Books, 2004), pp. 36-37.

"A democracy can die of too many lies." An address given by Bill Moyers at the National Conference for Media Reform in 2005.

Paul Von Ward. Gods, Genes, and Consciousness: Nonhuman intervention in human history. Charlottesville, Va.: Hampton Roads Publishing Co., 2004. p. 230.

Chris Hedges. I Don't Believe in Atheists. Audiobook. CD 1, Track 6.

Gandhi. Quoted by Sari Nusseibeh. What is a Palestinian State Worth? Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011. pp. 199-200.

Cowell made the statement in Brussels on Oct. 12, 1915. It is inscribed on a statue in St. Martin's Place, London.

Whence patriotism?

Where does patriotism come from? On an evolutionary level, oe might try to trace it, as Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson did, to the aggressive loyalty that is seen in some other primates.

"Unfortunately, there appears something special about foreign policy in the hands of males. Among humans and chimpanzees, at least, male coalitionary groups often go beyond defense (typical of monkey matriarchies) to include unprovoked aggression, which suggests that our own intercommunity conflicts might be less terrible if they were conducted on behalf of women's rather than men's interests. Primate communities organized around male interests naturally tend to follow male strategies and, thanks to sexual selection, tend to seek power with an almost unbounded enthusiasm. In a nutshell: Patriotism breeds aggression."

As the U.S. Secretary of Defense once put it: "The Department of Defense is optimistic about the underlying patriotism of our youth in the face of national crisis." If the patriotism is "underlying," this may be due to cultural influences, but it may also be an evolutionary heritage and a common feature of the adolescent mind. Why, furthermore, would a military official feel "optimistic" about such an attitude? Perhaps because patriotism is the moral fuel of the war machine. "Therefore," Tolstoy said, "to destroy war, destroy patriotism."

Isak Dinesen suggested channeling that energy into caring for people in a way that is more universally applied.

"Now, while the concept of patriotism is still not a century old, humanity surely has courage and imagination enough to take the huge step of encompassing the race itself, the whole of humanity, with the same feeling of responsibility, the same burning desire to serve."

Sources

Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson. Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996. p 233.

Caspar W. Weinberger, Secretary of Defense, Foreword to Martin Anderson, The Military Draft, p xvi.

Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy’s Writings on Civil Disobedience and Non-violence. New York: Bergman Publishers, 1967. p 140.

Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen]. On Modern Marriage and Other Observations (1924). Translated by Anne Born. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986. p. 87.