George Kateb Patriotism Analysis

If someone were to tell me “patriotism is the best thing ever- not dangerous at all! Just ask George Kateb or Frederick Douglas!” I would have to tell them that they were indeed very wrong in making that claim. According to George Kateb, patriotism is, in fact, a mistake. Kateb claims that patriotism is “a grave moral error and its source is typically a state of mental confusion” (Kateb, 902). This claim will be farther explained throughout this essay. Frederick Douglas, who also has ideas on patriotism, but not as clearly defined as Kateb’s argument, states that Americans boast about their love of liberty, superior civilization, and pure Christianity, but the entire nation is “solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three million of its own countrymen” (Douglas, 53).
To argue against patriotism, one must first understand what patriotism is. Kateb defines patriotism as a love for one’s country. This love of country means that a patriot shows a readiness to kill or to die for his or her own country (Kateb, 906). If everyone in America was asked whether or not they were a patriot, I would believe that many people would say they are. However, if one was to tell an American what Kateb’s definition of …show more content…
Viroli’s idea is that patriotism is not love for one’s country, but love for free republican institutions. The principle that people can connect to patriotism is freedom, while freedom is the principle; patriotism is only the driving force behind the principle (Kateb, 911). I would have to argue from my own philosophy that, if patriotism is a love for free republican institutions, then not everyone in the world can show patriotism because not all countries are built on free republican institutions. Since not everyone in the world could be patriotic, that means that it cannot be a principle and it has to be an abstraction. It is simply an idea for the love of free republican