Jill quotes George Bernard Shaw: “Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.” One difficulty with patriotism, like any kind of particularism, is that it seems arbitrary. By patriotism here, I refer to the ethical obligations that stem from loyalty to one’s country. I’m leaving aside, for the moment, what exactly these ethical obligations are and how far they extend. My concern is the more fundamental question: How can patriotism be justified at all? I take for granted the assumption that all human beings have the same intrinsic moral worth. I suppose you may deny this and build your patriotism around a Nazi-style racism but I’m going to let the moral bankruptcy of such a position speak for itself and proceed as though it doesn’t exist. (In a later post, I may take up the question of what exactly is wrong with Nazi “ethics” because I enjoy asking philosophical questions about patently absurd positions and trying to tease out the precise flaw.)
To answer our question, let’s examine patriotism’s close relative: familial loyalty.
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