Julius Caesar Patriotism Essay

Patriotism can be defined as the loyalty to one’s country and the love they have for it, but when your patriotism takes over, it can lead to violence and death as seen in The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. Realistically, patriotism does lead to death and violence because patriotism leads people to believe that people must be hurt or die for their country. For example, in The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Brutus explains, “It must be by his death, and for my part, I know no personal cause to spurn at him, but for the general” (2.1.10-12). This is a motivating factor in why patriotism leads to death and violence because Brutus explains that he wants to kill Caesar for the good of Rome. Another example is expressed when Zack Beauchamp …show more content…
For example, in “Crowdsourcing Murders”, Beauchamp says, “While anarchist continue to fixate on the leader-killing glory days, it doesn’t seem like any major extremist fraction of any kind nowadays focuses on assassinating democratically-elected leaders” (Beauchamp). They may argue that this proves that patriotism doesn’t lead to lethal actions because in current times assassinations do not target national leaders. They may say violence has nothing to do with the patriotism or the motivation to change the country but that assassinations of ordinary citizens are simply caused by personal conflicts. However, this is an example of False Cause and Effect. This claim makes it seem as if national leaders and their beliefs are the only reason that people feel like assassinations are necessary, when in many cases it could just be an ordinary citizen who is the reason for an assassination. An assassin could target an ordinary citizen for the same exact reason they would target a national leader. If someone feels like an ordinary citizen is threatening their country, it may lead them to do something violent similar to the way that some people think national leaders are threatening their