Prologue to Part I

Summary

To be patriotic can be defined as placing one’s country’s interests above one’s own.¹ Yet behind this disarmingly simple formulation lies a welter of complications. For one thing, the matter of what constitutes a country’s interests and who can best determine that is an inherently contested issue. Moreover, even as self-sacrifice is esteemed as the highest expression of patriotism, the rhetoric of political leaders and publicists tends to hold forth the promise of what one might term a patriotic version of theodicy, whereby those who defend their nation’s collective security and dignity will duly find their material recompense – or at least will help secure it for their surviving families and compatriots in the event they make the ultimate sacrifice on the field of battle. The longer an allegedly patriotic agenda is manifestly at odds with the welfare of a large proportion of a country’s citizens, the harder it becomes to sustain the claim that it is in fact patriotic.