Patriotism Definition Essay Text

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The united states is presently at war in iraq and afghanistan, where american troops are fighting and dying. At home, cars and homes display solid yellow or red, white, and blue ribbons that call for americans to support our troops. It is patriotic for americans to support their daughters and sons fighting in a war, but this patriotism does not mean that americans must blindly support the decision to go to war. Being patriotic means that americans must do the opposite: they must question their government.

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Questioning the government, voting, and respecting the rights of others are what make true patriots in a democratic society whereas, blind following of one's government creates dictatorships. For example, the government sanctioned the institution of slavery, denied women the right to vote for nearly 150 years, and prolonged a war in vietnam that the government leaders knew they could not win. Fortunately for the united states, in each of those cases, there were patriots who spoke out against what the united states was doing and brought about change. Without the abolitionist movement in the early nineteenth century, slavery may have existed far longer than it had already been allowed.

Suffragettes from the late seventeenth century through 1920 gave women political equality at least on paper. In more recent times, the protests of the 1960s finally led the united states to negotiate a peace long enough to get its troops out of vietnam. The government was wrong in its official positions, and the people who opposed those positions were right. Had those right minded people not openly voiced their disapproval of what the government was doing, our history would not reflect the democratic principles it so publicly espouses.

For a democracy to work, its citizens must keep informed and vocally express their approval and disapproval. The united states government should not proclaim that protestors are not patriotic. By their very act of thinking independently from the government, they are being true patriots.

People who agree with a government's actions are patriots as well so long as their agreements are based on how they analyze what the government is doing and base their agreement on thought and not on blind obedience. For example, patriotic proponents of the war in afghanistan base their support on the need to eliminate al qaeda and not on simply accepting that the war is correct because government leaders say it is. These supporters for the war are doing so because they have analyzed why american troops are fighting there and have decided that the government is right. Patriotism is based on analysis and reasoned thought it is not based on blind obedience. Questioning the government is one part of the definition of an american patriot a second part is taking that analysis of the government and acting on it through voting. However, voting, for the american patriot, is not simply casting ballots it is knowing about the issues and then casting ballots.

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To vote for democrats or republicans simply because the voter has always voted for that party or because the voter's family has always voted for that party is not being patriotic it is again being blindly obedient. Voting requires knowledge of the candidates, knowledge of the issues, and ultimately an understanding of one's own stand on the issues. For example, in 1948, thomas dewey was predicted by nearly all news services to win the presidential election over incumbent harry truman. What the news services did not realize was that the united states was full of patriotic americans who thought about their votes and did not simply follow trends.

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Truman, a supporter of stronger civil rights legislation and fighting communism in eastern europe. It causes wars, its roots lie in xenophobia and racism, it is a recent phenomenon an invention of the last few centuries which has been of immense service to demagogues and tyrants but to no one else. Disguised as patriotism and love of one's country, it trades on the unreason of mass psychology to make a variety of horrors seem acceptable, even honourable. For example: if someone said to you, 'i am going to send your son to kill the boy next door' you would hotly protest.

But only let him seduce you with 'queen and country!' 'the fatherland!' 'my country right or wrong!' and you would find yourself permitting him to send all our sons to kill not just the sons of other people, but other people indiscriminately which is what bombs and bullets do. Hitler said, 'the effectiveness of the truly national leader consists in preventing his people from dividing their attention, and keeping it fixed on a common enemy.' and he knew who to appeal to: goethe had long since remarked that nationalistic feelings 'are at their strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture'. Nationalists take certain unexceptionable desires and muddle them with unacceptable ones. Most of us value the culture which shaped our development and gave us our sense of personal and group identity that too is unexceptionable. But the nationalist persuades us that the existence of other groups and cultures somehow puts these things at risk, and that the only way to protect them is to see ourselves as members of a distinct col­lective, defined by ethnicity, geography, or sameness of language or religion, and to build a wall around ourselves to keep out 'foreigners'.

It is not enough that the others are other we have to see them as a threat at the very least to 'our way of life', perhaps to our jobs, even to our daughters. When europe's overseas colonies sought independence, the only rhetoric to hand was that of nationalism. It had well served the unifiers of italy and germany in the nineteenth century which in turn prepared the way for some of their activities in the twentieth century , and we see a number of the ex colonial nations going the same way today. The word is meaningless: all 'nations' are mongrel, a mixture of so many immigrations and mixings of peoples over time that the idea of ethnicity is largely comical, except in places where the boast has to be either that the community there remained so remote and disengaged, or so conquered, for the greater part of history, that it succeeded in keeping its gene pool 'pure' a cynic might say 'inbred' . Much nonsense is talked about nations as entities: emerson spoke of the 'genius' of a nation as something separate from its numerical citizens giraudoux described the 'spirit of a nation' as 'the look in its eyes' other such meaningless assertions abound. Nations are artificial constructs, their boundaries drawn in the blood of past wars.

And one should not confuse culture and nationality: there is no country on earth which is not home to more than one different but usually coexisting culture. Those who oppose closer relations in europe, or who seek to detach themselves from the larger com­ities to which they belong, do well to examine the lessons of such tragedies as the balkans conflicts, or the same thing writ larger europe's bloody history in the twentieth century. Gleaned from the meaning of things by a c grayling 2001 this book is an excellent read an interesting web site with a strong anti war message and thoughtful views on the real meaning of patriotism can be found at birdman's anti war page.

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Jacob spady argument of definition proposal what is patriotism? argument of definition proposal some people define patriotism as supporting ones country no matter what. However, i believe patriotism is questioning the government and exercising our freedom of speech. The significance of patriotism is that patriotism is the duty of any united states citizen and the ways that american citizens define patriotism has much to do with their actions and other things they do to be a patriot. My intended audience in writing this argument paper will be any people who define themselves as patriots , any people who are interested in knowing what patriotism means, and also any of those who take action in the name of patriotism. I believe i am the person to write about patriotism because i have been a united states citizen my entire life. I believe in patriotism and am very curious to see the different definitions and actions people take when it comes to patriotism. A few key challenges i will face during this is not being biased and ones sided towards what i believe about patriotism.

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