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Articles

The Puzzle Of Patriotism

Phil Badger tries to make sense of a tangle of pride, identity and metaphysics.

“If you believe yourself a citizen of the world then you are a citizen of nowhere.”
UK Prime Minister Theresa May, October 2016

My national identity seems to me to be both contingent and coincidental. Being born British, while quite lucky in terms of my life chances and political rights, wasn’t something of my own doing. Therefore it is no more something for me to be proud of than my being born in the middle of the twentieth century. I was once told a (possibly apocryphal) story about a former Prime Minister of Belgium who, when asked if he was proud of his nationality, replied that the question was ridiculous and that he might as well be asked if he was “proud of being a man.

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