Contrarian Thought of the Day

"Is patriotism a mistake? I think that it is a mistake twice over: it is typically a grave moral error and its source is typically a state of mental confusion.… A defense of patriotism is an attack on the Enlightenment … The highest moral principles teach restraint of self-preference, whether the self is oneself or a group-self; while, on the other hand, a person's basic rights and tangible self-interest, in a tolerable society, are supposed to be practiced or achieved without morally cognizable harm to the same rights and interests of others. In contrast, patriotism is self-idealization; it is group narcissism without any self-restraint except for a frequently unreliable prudence, and carried to death-dealing lengths."

--George Kateb, professor of politics emeritus, Princeton (formerly of Amherst College), in "Patriotism and Other Mistakes," an essay collection published in 2006. His argument faulted both postmodernists and conservative political theorists for their defenses of various forms of "group thinking," from ethnic and racial pride to religious sectarianism and nationalism.

PS Happy Fourth!