On Patriotism

November 2025

Patriotism is a poorly understood concept for the reason that it is so emotive. Mccarthyism is still a dirty word with which to accuse someone, and any serious public figure will be patriotic, or at least claim to be.  

There must, however, be a sense of objectivity to the term. What patriotism is not is simply ‘I think xyz would be best for the people of this country’. On the fair assumption that any individual will think their ideas are ‘the best’ for a populus, that premise would erroneously make every single person with any policy ideas a patriot. 

Someone who dislikes their country as it is will push for their own agenda under the guise that it’s the patriotic thing to do. If your worldview involves changing your country’s inherent features more than preserving them, then you don’t like your country. You like what your country could be. It would be absurd in any other domain of life to like something predominantly for what it could be rather than what it is now. This does not predicate reformists as non-patriotic, but there is a difference between optimising an existing system to achieve broadly-shared values, and replacing a system completely to achieve different values. 

I’ll try to shape patriotism as objectively as possible through these facets:

You are a civic nationalist at a minimum. If you dislike the idea of nation-states completely then you’re not patriotic. 
Your country’s historical and current influence is generally positive, or at least not intentionally and consistently harmful. 
You do not want your country to become less powerful, or at least want it to be secure. 
You want your country’s population to have higher living standards and live with dignity. 
You prioritise your own country, within moderation.
Your country is more than the sum of its people. 
You like its cultural norms. 

(Admission: the one ideological assumption I make here is that of real politik. I passionately believe that a weaker country is invariably a bad outcome for its population)

The violent chauvinist dictators we think of from history would not pass this for a few reasons. They greatly manipulated what their countries’ ‘true’ cultural norms were to suit their worldview. Also, maltreating others outside your country in the name of exceptionalism will probably harm your country’s reputation, power, and economy in the long run. After all, those who had a tendency to treat foreigners badly tended to treat their own citizens badly too.

There’s an awkward outcome of this logic though. Undermining your country’s current actions may sometimes be the patriotic thing to do. Think of history’s most awful regimes, which caused immense suffering domestically and internationally. Ones which were aberrations from a country’s usual condition and from norms of that time. Morally good people during these periods undermined their countries in the name of patriotism – people who genuinely wanted to improve the fortunes of both their compatriots and foreigners, and who are now remembered fondly. 

A signalling error emerges with this line of thought though. How do we differentiate between people who are genuine patriots undermining an aberrative, dangerous regime, and opportunists who don’t like their country as it is and want to radically change it to their own worldview? These three axioms will help determine someone’s intentions: 

How bad is the current regime versus a probable alterative.
Is the expected long term value of regime change worth more than the short term costs of turbulence.
How  extreme is the current regime to the historical average and current norms.

All dictionary definitions I found of patriotism can be summarised as the idea of devotion to one’s country. That needs refinement to something like devotion to your country’s values. It may be patriotic to dislike your country’s actions, but it is never patriotic to dislike its ideals. So the real debate that patriotism comes down to this: what are your country’s values and do you like them?