On Patriotism vs Nationalism:

 On Patriotism vs Nationalism:


There was an old Reddit post I can't find anymore where someone outlined the difference between patriotism and nationalism. I'll do my best to summarize and expand on that here. The post defined it as two ways you can love someone or something. One is healthy, wanting the best for them, and the other is abusive, wanting it to never change.

Patriotism was loving your country like you loved someone you wanted the best for. You want them to grow and become the best they can be. You celebrate when they accomplish things and when they change to overcome problems they've faced. This requires being able to acknowledge the problems they face and mistakes they've made in the past.

Nationalism is loving your nation like you love someone who you don't want to change. You're afraid they won't be the same person you fell in love with. So instead of acknowledging their flaws, you deny those flaws even exist. To a nationalist, they must be perfect the way they are. Anyone who wants to change them is the problem because there's nothing that should be changed about them. There's no growth to be had as they are, in the mind of a nationalist, incapable of error.

Anyone even passingly familiar with how a person or a country of people works will know that we need to be able to grow, to change, and that the people who help us do that are the ones we want to keep in our lives. Those who try to stop us from being our best selves are abusive and hurtful.

Nationalism is the opposite of patriotism. In the coming years, there will be a lot of people calling themselves nationalists and claiming ownership of countries for themselves. The argument of right and wrong, patriotism and nationalism, is one that needs to be made because most people don't know the difference. In some ways, there isn't a clear enough difference between them for there to be an easy definition. So it's up to all of us to define them. Patriotism and nationalism are both about love of country, but one is about abusive love, and the other is about a growing love.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On MAGA, Thought-Terminating Cliches, Cults, and the Real Meaning of "TDS"

 On MAGA, Thought-Terminating Cliches, Cults, and the Real Meaning of "TDS" I recently had a very negative interaction with a MAGA supporter online, the details of which I won't go into here but are all still public on my Facebook page. Rather than focus on the hatred the person had toward my Jewish ancestors and myself, I want to focus on something he kept repeating, and something I've seen repeated recently by MAGA supports about anything critical of them, trump, or nazis. Funny how they already lump all those things together even if not relevant to the conversation topic. They write, or rather shout by typing in all caps, "trump derangement syndrome is real." The phrase is sometimes shortened to TDS, though that will always be The Daily Show to me, and The Daily Show is very, very real. If you want a more detailed explanation of the phrase, see its Wikipedia page here:  Trump derangement syndrome - Wikipedia . The short version is that it's used to di...
Read more

On the Software for a New CNC Router

 On the Software for a New CNC Router An organization I run, Juneau Makerspace, has recently gotten a new CNC router, a big machine that will carve shapes out of wood from a digital file. We had our first class on how to use it the other day and it was my first introduction to the new machine. I've used older ones, so I was familiar with the process, I just needed to learn the ins and outs of the new software. All of that is just prologue to compare the old software I first used to the new version. The interface of the old software was meant for people who knew what they were doing. You had to set measurements and values yourself and were responsible for making sure the machine was cutting where you wanted it. The new software had a detailed step-by-step process built in that prevented the user from moving on to the next step without completing the current step, either by inputting they had done it or a sensor on the machine showing it had been completed. This was great as it meant...
Read more

On Felon 47 Being the New Pharoah Akhenaten

 On Felon 47 Being the New Pharaoh Akhenaten It's easy to make parallels of trump to Hitler and other evil dictators of the modern world as many have, but what about the ancient world? There are plenty of terrible kings of old that he can be compared to, but perhaps the one most associated with extreme change opposed by their subjects is Akhenaten, an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh that ruled from roughly 1353 to 1336 or 1351 to 1334 BCE. Already you can tell what we know about the guy is fuzzy. Some of that was intentional on the part of the ancient Egyptians who were slightly less ancient than him. Akhenaten is known for making quite a few changes in Egypt during his reign. He abandoned their traditional polytheism that was welcoming of lots of gods and instead forced a monotheistic worship of a god called Aten onto his people. He even changed his name from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten, which meant "One Who is Effective for the Aten." Worshipers of other gods were persecuted und...
Read more