Patriotism_&_Democratic_Society

Most countries try to make its people united in order to build a stable society. However, there are some countries where overemphasize people’s identity and their unity. As a result, a form of ‘patriotism’ appears. Admittedly, patriotism holds both advantages and disadvantages. When it comes to this modernized world, I believe patriotism does not go along with the characteristics of modernized world, mostly democratic society. Patriotism refers to people’s loyal attitude towards their country, which brings some positive effects. Above all, a sense of belonging and solidarity can be formed within the society. This is because people share the common idea of loving country. In addition, people are willing to actively participate in their society’s tasks, as they feel they are the people who constitute their nation. On the other hand, patriotism also has demerits. There is high possibility of people to exclude other people who do not belong to their society. Additionally, as they only support their own nation and its people, people who hold patriotism seem to be difficult to adapt in this globalized world, as all people from diverse backgrounds should communicate and share ideas. Meanwhile, democratic society mainly has two features. The first one is that numerous interests should be consciously shared among the people. In other words, citizens should recognize their common interests. Another one is that people should freely express their opinions in the society. Considering these two aspects of democratic society, I believe that patriotism does not fit into the democratic society. The first reason is that if patriotism is formed, there are not many common interests that people can share. To explain, there will be restriction on the issues that coincide with the concept of patriotism. Therefore, only a few of common interests may be dealt with people. Furthermore, people may not openly discuss their opinions in patriotic society. This is because when people speak out their opinions that correspond to the common theme, they may be severely criticized and excluded by other people. As a result, too much patriotism will limit people’s chance to express their ideas fully in the society. For these reasons, I think patriotism is hard to be in balance with democratic society. An example that shows negative result of extreme patriotism is United States after the 9.11 attack. After the 9.11 attack, the Right and Religious Right tried to encourage the public’s patriotism and supported the national identity and protection, integrating people’s emotion that could lead to public advocacy towards their policies. This consequently caused its attack to Iraq, with the reason of elimination of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In this regard, misused patriotism can trigger as a catalyst to destruct global relationship and cooperation. To sum up, patriotism obviously can contribute to the integration of people in one nation. However, if patriotism goes too far or misused, it would rather become dangerous element to the society, as people will only share “their” way of thinking and exclude other people who hold different ideas. Therefore, in my perspective, patriotism cannot be in harmony with democratic society since people will not share diverse common interests and also cannot freely express their opinions. Loving one’s nation and excessive form of patriotism are not the same. People should have affection to their country, but they should also have understanding attitudes towards other cultures or nations even though they differ from their own.