Patriotism is one’s love, pride, devotion, attachment, and loyalty to a country. The feeling of love and unity towards your home nation results in patriotic action and it is considered as an attribute of good citizenship.
Your attachment to the country is based on factors like culture, religious beliefs, race or ethnicity, and history.
Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of patriotism.
Pros:
1. Protects the interest of the country: One’s love and respect for the country lead him/her to act in the interest of the country. The desire is for the country to thrive in the future.
2. Positive values: Patriotism leads to freedom, justice, and equality. The government and its people work together for a better quality of life.
3. Leads to independence: The love for the nation and shared pride bring people together and help them to endure challenges. The shared beliefs and pride towards the nation contribute to the road towards independence.
4. Overcome challenges: Patriotism brings people together to overcome any great depression and achieve victory. America used patriotism to win victory in World War II.
5. Pride of the country: Being patriotic makes you proud of your country and you will try to work hard to improve the country as well as support all the policies being set in the country.
6. Promote better governance: The act of patriotism leads to volunteering for community services, payment of taxes, obeying all government laws, and understanding your rights as outlined in the constitution.
7. Preserve and protect the nation: Patriotism is important in preserving and protecting the nation to make it a better place for all its citizens. Patriots work hard for the development of the country.
8. Loyalty: Patriotism makes people create a human history where they support, work hard, fight, and even die for the country. People become loyal to the nation and have the courage to defend their nation.
9. Enhance social cohesion and peace: Patriotism upheld by the majority of people in the society bring togetherness and people will promote the rule of law when coming with conflict resolutions in the community. This promotes peace among people in society.
10. Productivity: Patriotism helps in creating incentives that enable citizens to contribute positively to the economic development of the country. People will be happy doing something for their country.
Cons:
1. Creates division: Patriotism divides more people than it actually gathers. People who support different ideologists end up discriminated and some people may think certain lives are more important than others.
2. Affects the growth of nations: To have a better world, patriotism should be practiced with limitations by avoiding things that might threaten anti-patriotism or create some grievances between nations.
3. Costly affair: To love, respect, and support the countries traditions, requires an individual to abide by the country’s laws and act responsibly by paying taxes.
4. Create enmity: When patriotism turns political, it can turn groups against the other and it can lead to the enmity of fundamental values. Supporting the country’s policies blindly may lead to wars between nations.
5. Unquestionable loyalty: There are occasional problems associated with blind loyalty to an entity. Support for your countries policies may lead people to sacrifice themselves for the nation and do things without thinking.
6. Privacy invasion: Patriotism requires people to abide by government rules and sometimes the rules may infringe their privacy where the government collects personal information without their knowledge. This jeopardizes personal freedom.
7. Anti-immigrants: During World War II, immigrants were suspected of terrorist activities and were detained without being given a chance to prove their innocence. This creates a traumatic experience for them and also those who want to visit the country as immigrants
8. Racial profiling: Any person suspected to be anti-patriotic is treated as a terrorist since they don’t support government rules and traditions and abide by them.
9. Violation of the first amendment: Collection of personal information to unsuspecting citizens and using the information against them is unconstitutional and this limits citizens’ freedom of speech.
10. Hinder growth: Supporting all government-enforced rules without challenging some of the unethical rules may hinter the country’s growth in the future.
