The Other Side of Patriotism

This week, reflecting on “Patriot Day,” a friend shared the following politically incorrect thoughts. Most of us have the utmost respect and sympathy for those who have died, serving their nation, in the belief that they were fighting for a larger good. One way of demonstrating that respect is to consider these thoughts:

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson

When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882) , Journals, 1824

"My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober." G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

Hermann Goering: Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797, British Political Writer, Statesman )

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
Oscar Wilde ( Irish Poet, Novelist, Dramatist and Critic, 1854 -1900)

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy
George Bernard Shaw ( Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1856 - 1950)

Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -how passionately I hate them!
Albert Einstein ( German born American Physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. 1879 - 1955)

The time is fast approaching when to call a man a patriot will be the deepest insult you can offer him. Patriotism now means advocating plunder in the interest of the privileged classes of the particular State system into which we have happened to be born.
Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy ( Russian Novelist and Philosopher, notable for his influence on Russian literature and politics. 1828 - 1910)

Patriotism is the religion of hell
James Branch Cabell (1879-1958)

Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen
Ambrose Bierce ( American Writer, Journalist and Editor, 1842 - 1914)

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.
Guy de Maupassant (French writer of short stories and novels, 1850 - 1893)