Citizens Pride, Vanity and Love to Motherland

Patriotism and Nationalism Values
To love our country is part of our common sense. Politicians applaud that love, and promote it. Education, the scholar’s spelling-books and the historic data divulge the values and the examples of patriotism. Citizens feel it as good and desirable. There are nationalistic slivers in the common citizen.

We may say: it’s part of human nature. Nationalism is an extension of the love to family, to clan, to tribe, to ourselves. There are blood vows uniting patriots to their flag. The Motherland is formed by our equals, by those who speak the same language and share many common values, tastes, interests, and contribute to a common pool.

It’s natural, then. But not all of which is natural is good (hate is also natural)…

Obviously we have the legitimacy of liking our country. It’s not that that is at stake. What’s really at stake is to be a citizen of a country without being even more a citizen of the world. It is to have pride and vanity, it’s to think that the truth, the good, the reason and the most brilliant history is associated with the country where we were born, and that only our fellow-citizens deserve our solidarity.

In this view, nationalism is ridiculous and dangerous and is the cause of many wars and evils. And that may justify the words of Albert Einstein and Bernard Shaw: «Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind» (Einstein), «You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race» (Shaw).