Is Patriotism A Virtue

The word “patriot” is often used with a positive connotation. It implies loyalty and a willingness to fight for one’s country and people. The image of the Fourth of July, flying flags, and military homecomings come to mind. But is patriotism virtuous? It may sound virtuous in theory but in reality, patriotism breeds immoral actions by creating a sense of superiority in minds of a nation’s citizenry. This superiority perpetuates a culture where people believe they are morally above the others. It encourages people to put their country in front of every other, even if it means causing harm to another. Patriotism violates universal morality by encouraging partiality. In order to be morally virtuous, one must consider all people, not just fellow
Yet if everyone presumes their country is above all others, then at most only one can be correct (Nathanson 537). In the essay “Is Patriotism A Virtue,” MacIntyre brings up an effective example of this. Consider a scarce resource that all countries need such as oil. Since patriotism encourages a people to put their own country’s interests first, they would want to keep their oil within their country and not export to any other country. Patriotism would require a country to hoard the oil in order to benefit its people, while leaving other countries without. Even though this may benefit the oil producing country, it will harm countries that are not oil producers. This is contrary to universal morality because it promotes inequality between resource rich nations and resource poor nations. Such inequalities allow prosperous countries with resources a significant advantage over less prosperous nations, which is morally “objectionable” (Gomberg 109). If decisions are based on universal morality, all nations would share in all oil resources and accordingly all would derive the oil’s benefits. Since patriotic preference for one’s own country violates the laws of universal morality, patriotism cannot be a
A nation goes to war to protect its people or to acquire resources. No matter the reason, war is arguably to benefit the people of a nation, or at least a faction within the nation. War is cloaked in patriotism. It is cast as the ultimate manifestation of one’s patriotism, the price to demonstratively prove patriotism to one’s country. Since the modality of war is to harm others through violence, and since harming others is not a virtue, war can never be considered virtuous. This is another aspect of patriotism that does not comply with universal