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Is it wrong to love your country?

It only becomes wrong when your country becomes something so vile that you need to flee to survive, but even then you can still love what it used to be, and what it could be once again.

Keep in mind I am talking about hostile takeovers like with Communist or Fascist. Like 1940s - 1970s shit with Nazi German and Soviet Russia.
 
Depends on the meaning of it, if country is about the people in it then i think its alright. Otherwise loving a country just because seems dumb to me.
Edit: I should point out that the culture also makes a big part of it, cant really love a country if you have nothing to remember it by.
 
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Yes. Countries are just words on paper. What they are changes frequently, sometimes even rapidly, and is often if not always not at all what people think they love them for. Having love for a country is really just conditioning from whatever propaganda you were raised on.

Now, loving your culture is much different, and is what a lot of people are really thinking about when they say they love their country. But even that is often just nonsense.
 
Daytripper said:
Is it wrong to love your country in spite of its flaws?
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There's nothing wrong with adoring your culture, your environs, national ideals, or even simply the aesthetic and mindset of some particular national group. However, the compulsion to continually and vehemently inform others of just how much you love your country, and experience distress when others cannot see the immediate and obvious truth of your stance, is a strong sign of one or more of the following:
1) You are the victim of some pretty hardcore propagandist mindfucking.
2) You have some sort of mental defect that renders you incapable of understanding how limited any single human viewpoint is.
3) You are actually a legitimate asshole doing some recreational (or reconnaissance) trolling.

I love the ideals of my nation too, as laid out in the foundational documents and supporting lore of the founders. Most countries have great foundational ideals. Most also have psychotic powerhungry assholes that pervert the interpretation of those ideals and give said countries a bad image. So I know that not everyone sees the same dream of what my country could be that I do, due to the taint of the actions of such figures. I can respect their opinions and the truth values that inspire their narratives, without ceasing to love the dream of my nation.
 
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I'd be very careful of dedicating yourself to lines on a map and a vaguely defined set of ideals backed by a monopoly of force.

Less sarcastically, i understand why dealing with people like me can feel like you're being personally attacked. National identity runs deep and personal. My skepticism in large part comes from being an American and seeing how much awful stuff we glazed over because it wasn't deemed as important. There's a lot of things I like about my country, there are a lot of people in it's history I deeply respect (even as I often loathe them for their flaws), but I don't think I can ever love my nation again. It's not a human, it's not a dog, it's a thing. It has, does and will do horrible things. It has, does and will do wonderful things.

It simply is. It is an utterly amoral thing. I am an American. I am neither proud of the accomplishments of my forbearers nor enamored with the result of their efforts. I just...have this sad longing that it would, that it could live up to it's grand ideals and some bitterness knowing it never will.
 
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Daytripper said:
Is it wrong to love your country in spite of its flaws?
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Not really, no. Loving your country despite its flaws show that you love your country for what it represents, the ideals that are its soul rather than those who are in charge.

I love the my homeland, the Philippines. I love the rolling green hills, the beautiful sandy shores that stretch as far as you can see, and as soft as the twinkling go twilight, and I love the waves that rest in the sand, and the palm trees that shade you from the sun. And by God, the sunset and sunrise here is the ultimate and most beautiful work of art that no artist that can ever copy fully. I love the stories of my country's past, and I love the future of my nation, however dim people might think it is.

Loving is your country is all well and good, despite its flaws, for its an ideal to work for and as long as there are people that believe in its ideals, the soul of a nation is never truly dead. Fight for your country however you can so that it will be a place not what is looks to be, but so that it shall be a place for what could be, a good land were children can have a future and where the old can have security. A place for families to thrive, where the rich and poor can have somewhere to prosper and call each other brother.

I don't know where you are from but I tell you with all my heart, bless our homelands and peoples forever.

Viva la República Filipinas, Viva!
 
Loving your country is a parasocial relationship, on a larger scale than most. You can love your way of life, that your country enables you to pursue. You can love your culture, which your country might help sustain. You can love locations, which your country contains. You can love people in your country, specifically or in abstract. If you love all of those, perhaps you can say you love your country.

But there's love, and there's love, and then there's also love. The love one has for a favorite dish is different from the love a parent should have for their child, which is different from the love one has for a potential spouse, which is different from the love a religious person has for their God. "Love" is a very multifaceted word.

In some ways, it is absolutely wrong to love your country. To quote a certain 20th century author "patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile." It's naive to have unconditional faith in your country, and wrong to unconditionally support it. If your definition of love includes either of those, I will confidently assert that it's wrong to love your country.

On the other hand, it's not wrong to believe in the ideals your country was founded on (assuming those ideals aren't monstrous). It's not wrong to cherish your country's history (assuming you don't whitewash it and pretend none of your country's mistakes ever happened). It's not wrong to love all or most people you interact with (even if they're dickheads. It is kinda wrong to be a dickhead tho). It's not wrong to loudly and publicly declare that you love your country (though it is a little obnoxious).
 
It is never wrong to love your country and its people. But take note, a country has flaws. Its people have flaws. You can love your country and it ideals without turning a blind eye to its problems. Just because you love your country is no excuse to ignore the people who suffer at its faults. A country is its people. If ANY of those people are getting hurt because of your country's societal, governmental, or cultural problems then your country has failed them. And failed you.

Love your country, but love its people too. Those people have flaws, and flaws require corrections. If you can't see that, and know when it is time to take a stand, you have failed your country too.
 
There's actually a Word for that:
"Patriotism", Basically "My country right or wrong". The opposite is Nationalism, "My country my way or no way and everyone must die along the way".

Patriotism is the good thing everyone is okay with. Flag waving and setting off fireworks or some other flamable and possibly explosive things on specific Holidays dedicated to the country and just things like that. Pride in your own country basically. So asking this is like asking if loving to breathe air is wrong. There's conditions where it is but almost all the time the answer will be "no". If anything it's expected to love your own country but not all do and generally that's because they were disgusted by the darker grittier parts of it. It's near impossible to find a single country that doesn't have those parts.

But anyway it only really edges into "wrong" when you start to become and asshole about it or worse: a Nationalist. Look at Chinese Nationalists and how they react to even accidentally saying the name of specific regions on the planet for why. Or tell one of them they have no claim to absolutely everything south of them down to Antarctica. Alternatively look at the Nazis for a Historical Reason as to why Nationalism is a bad thing.

TL;DR:
The word you're looking for is "Patriotism".
 
D'znn-Xy'lll MetaChthonia said:
The opposite is Nationalism, "My country my way or no way and everyone must die along the way".
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Err... no. I have no clue what school you went to that could have gotten this so wrong, though I'm guessing the problem is mostly you thinking Nationalism and National Socialism are the same thing (they're not, just as Socialism and National Socialism are not the same thing).

Nationalism is the idea that groups of people sharing certain commonalities (geographical area/language/culture/ancestry etc) will naturally gravitate towards forming a nation state based on a shared national identity ("We're Americans!"), and Nationalists believe the nation state should serve its own interests over that of other nations and has the right of self-determination without interference from outside parties (i.e. they don't want foreigners telling them what to do). The opposite of Nationalism isn't Patriotism. Patriotism is love for your fatherland.

Patriotism is heavily promoted by Nationalists in order to help foment a common cultural identity for the people of that nation to unite around ("USA! USA! USA!"). In other words, they want the people to unite around their love of their country like how music fans unite around their love of a band ("Wait, you love Iron Maiden? I love Iron Maiden too! Let's be friends!"). Patriotism is also promoted to get the people of the nation to prioritize the well-being of their own nation and people over that of foreign nations and people ("Why is our government sending billions of dollars in tax money to other countries instead of using that money to fix our shitty roads?"), which is essentially the core tenet and goal of Nationalism. National self-determination, sovereignty, self-governance and self-interest.

The opposite of Nationalism is Imperialism, which is about extending a nation's political influence (and possibly borders) to cover other nations whose people do not necessarily share any commonalities with those of the imperial nation. A more modern opposite to Nationalism is Globalism, which is about nations exerting political influence across the entire globe. Oh yeah, and then there's of course Cosmopolitanism, which is basically the idea that all people are part of the same community regardless of location/language/culture/ancestry/etc and there should be no such thing as nations or national borders in the first place.
 
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Hasn't stopped people that do when asked that.
 
rx915 said:
Hasn't stopped people that do when asked that.
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Entirely true. I think the trick is whether the nation is "the people who live here, and the people who could live here and all of us who are in it together" which is all about helping your weakest members and everybody helping everybody else as per Greek agape, to love your neighbor without expectation of reciprocity vs "our iconography and our soil and our history and our conquests" which is very disagreeable -- born in fear, egotism, selfishness, greed, and cruelty.

One shouldn't be proud of things they personally didn't accomplish, but they should still be glad that good things are done by others.

That being said, I hope the very concept of a nation is a thing we outgrow as a species.

I would much prefer us all be much much kinder to each other.
 
Hyzenthlay said:
Entirely true. I think the trick is whether the nation is "the people who live here, and the people who could live here and all of us who are in it together" which is all about helping your weakest members and everybody helping everybody else as per Greek agape, to love your neighbor without expectation of reciprocity vs "our iconography and our soil and our history and our conquests" which is very disagreeable -- born in fear, egotism, selfishness, greed, and cruelty.

One shouldn't be proud of things they personally didn't accomplish, but they should still be glad that good things are done by others.

That being said, I hope the very concept of a nation is a thing we outgrow as a species.

I would much prefer us all be much much kinder to each other.
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I have my doubts but that's up to the future's generations to decide.
 
The biggest problem is that it can quickly lead to a situation of what I call 'more ideology than sense' and, historically, we've seen where that ends up...
 
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