Dulce et Decorum Est: In Defense of Healthy Patriotism

Many students who’ve gone through U.S. higher education in recent years have been taught to be skeptical of patriotism. A critical, and often poisonously cynical spirit has undermined a great deal of modern life, including the nation. At the same time, a naïve kind of globalist utopianism has grown. It promises a new solidarity transcending national borders. But it’s a “solidarity” as shallow as it is wide. A peculiar free-market ideology is married to this globalist dreaming. It asks us to see ourselves almost solely in economic terms. It reduces us to stateless, homeless consumers, not citizens.