Joker - the fact that so many oppose this thread should lead you to believe you are onto something. Look up "phyles."
The sheeple have been trained well by their years of propaganda promoting blind nationalism no matter what the moral nature of the matter is. Ringing bells, hall passes, pep rallys, and high school rivalries. They need to train us to back our leaders when they decide to fight senseless wars to enrich and empower themselves and theri friends at our expense.
Penguinfan - you bought his book because you know him - not because of where he lives. Your point has no relevance to his post.
YYZ - your post misses the point too. I can say this about you... "Jones on the team A is a rapist and robber, but he lives in the town next to me, so of course I am going to root for him!! I couldn't cheer for all those charitable, peaceful, benevolent team because they are from another State. What are you crazy. They are from Illinois goddammit!"
This is some warped thinking in my mind
"Natural patriotism may be defined as follows: an automatic and wholly uncritical, instinctive attachment for hereditary or traditional ways of life which are collectively accepted, and an equally automatic and instinctive hostility toward any other way of living. It is love for one?s own, and a hatred for everything foreign?"
"[T]he patriotism that is extolled to us as an ideal and sublime virtue by the poets, by politicians of every school, by governments, and by every privileged class, is rooted not in man?s humanity, but his animality."
Or simply...
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
-Einstein
