Patriotism must be defined before a patriot can be inferred. The matter in controversy is the nature of patriotism in the nation. Insidiously to employ the words allegiance, fidelity and Americanism before these attributes are made apparent in the United States and then universally inferring allegiance to a head of state is a common sophism against which we would be mindful to be vigilant.

Why do we admit patriotism in any national interest of our own contrivance? It is because innumerable instances of the patriotic have been contrived by human fantasy and presented to the minds of the masses. We are bombarded by people who construct what is patriotic, but if we had no previous knowledge of the patriotic and we had accidentally come across a flag flapping in the wind, we should have been justified in concluding that was a mere cloth hung for some purpose, perhaps merely decorative.

What then do we need to consider regarding the existence of patriotism? It is suited perfectly for the production of certain effects that natural harmony be achieved and no cause for alarm to the State. Thus patriotism requires a maximum patriarch, a maximum leader, a king or president, who embodies and further creates and recreates patriotism.

Until it is clearly understood that patriotism is a human and willful construct, we may reasonably suppose that it has existed forever. It is easy for us to suppose that patriotism is and has always been than to conceive that it and all its emotional attachments were created for explicit purposes, that is to set in motion internal mechanisms of self-governance and behavior.

It is the essence of patriotism to elude thinking and every aspect of critical analysis. Every aspect of patriotism involves an inherent witness that is bound to evade our examination of it.

The notion of patriotism belongs to the rigidity of the mind, and cannot continue when the human intellect begins to frame a systematic analysis of it. Patriotism is a malady and like all maladies is best dealt with as something to remedy.

A spate of visits to Walter Reed would reveal hundreds or thousands of crutches, prosthetics, and wheelchairs, all acquired through patriotism's call to arms, to do battle, to inflate itself with the importance and acceptance of the self and ultimate sacrifice. There exists a national presumption that death achieved in patriotic fervor deserves special attention and even gratitude. Witness the playing of taps, the 21-gun salute, the crisp machinery of men marching in the obligatory casket-presenting parade and the presentation of the folded flag to the grieving spouse or the next of kin. Interestingly, the president of the United States does not participate in the funerals of fallen soldiers. Perhaps, he inherently understands the dichotomy between patriotic fervor and his being absent without leave (AWOL)?

We are as infants in our recognition of the deleterious effects of patriotism. We are ignorant from whence in the face of grave loss we choke up when the colors are presented or the national anthem is played. Patriotism never tries to interfere with our inability to understand it. It exists as an ever present aspect of our being, a fact of life successfully inculcated from an early age from the habits of our parents and our schooling through the dominant and domineering paradigms of our culture. Patriotism's demanding proliferators build upon our internal proclivity toward something bigger than the self. In that regard patriotism is a parasitic infection that often destroys the host and many more times those branded as its enemies and collateral damage. Patriotism is an infection that cares not one whit whether the host survive only that the parasite continues...

More: Metaphoria.Org - Patriotism: The Other Opiate of the Masses

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