Gurkhas also serve(ed) both the Indian and the Sultan of Bruni. I wonder if this sentimental attachment is active in these places?

http://www.spectator.co.uk/clivedavis/3584516/the-case-against-the-gurkhas.thtml

Even if they are tenuous, it doesn’t mean their irrelevant, especially if the virtues and their associated goods supply the principles for rightly-ordered living.

Well, no, it’s a definition that pays attention to the patria in patriotism, which is quite different from a game of semantics. A subject of that empire might be a patriot of Tyrol or, more broadly, Austria or Hungary, but I think I am on safe ground to say that no one is a patriot of Cisleithania or Transleithania, much less of an empire spanning from Ruthenia to northern Italy. All of this becomes clear if we distinguish between regime, polity and country. When we start mixing up these things, the different obligations owed to them get confused.

I was not aware that Massey held that Petain and De Gaulle were both patriots, but I would agree, although perhaps not for his reasons. Petain becomes culpable to the degree that he came to collaborate with German acts of despoliation of France and her people. I am speaking of forced labor and deportations to the death camps.

Here is where I think we agree. Nationalism can manifest itself in a blind adherence to an amoral governmental framework. I would say that the government in Washington is such a cold soulless framework. I would go further and say that present day Conservatives have largely been seduced by this framework and are actively collaborating in the deconstruction of the society they think they are defending.

Was it Tallyrand that said “Treason is largely a matter of Dates.” Consider some of my remote ancestors. They were Celts with their own culture and all the trappings. The Romans conquered them and gradually they became as Roman as the Romans. Ultimately despite their spirited resistance, they fell under the rule of Germans and duly adopted German norms of conduct and culture. At what point were they traitors and to what? And given the history of Europe, aren’t we all descendants of traitors?

But both sides don’t earn the title, and only one deserves it. Both sides may claim the title, but the collaborators who claim it are wrong. Alex Massie had an interesting idea that both Petain and De Gaulle were patriots, but on different timetables. That’s a generous way of saying that the collaborators thought they were doing the best they could under the circumstances, but even if we want to say that collaborators are patriots in some way I think it is perfectly fair to say that they are bad patriots.

You cannot be a patriot of religion or race. To apply the word to those things doesn’t mean anything.

The Falklands example you mention is a perfect example of identitarian responses based on language. Religious, ethnic and linguistic identity are all powerful, and a person can feel obliged to support others who share these identities, but none of this is patriotic. Indeed, it is possible for these identities to undermine patriotic attachment and cause excessive attachment to a side in a foreign conflict. To the extent that these attachments are more abstract, I continue to regard them as something different from and worse than patriotism.

The Canadians who died in the mud of France felt a patriotic attachment to the Empire. Now you can be against empires, and you can therefore describe patriotism for one’s empire as a kind of false consciousness, but you cannot deny that such patriotic feelings existed and were very real motivators in history.

Feelings of affinity between groups can take curious turns. During the Falklands War the staff in the office I worked in split into two acrimonious factions, the Hispanics siding with Argentina and the rest of us supporting the UK. The obvious linguistic and ethnic tacit identities bubbling up under the provocation of the the conflict.

I mention this because I think you believe that one can be patriotic towards only one place at a time. But it seems to me that patriotism is largely a matter of how one defines oneself. I am a patriot of my country but also to my religion, my race, The West, etc. And in speaking of collaboration I think this brings about the case of the tragedy of two sides, each earning the title of patriot , and each fated to fight the other.

It seems then what Dr. Larison is doing is pointing out the good the virtue aims at, and how it should be understood as opposed to counterfeit goods and habits of character. A Canadian may believe that one has patriotic loyalty to the Mother Country, but the Canadian is wrong in his understanding of his loyalty, even if he acts consistently with his understanding of the virtue.