Aubrey Menen on 'patriotism' (italics mine)

There are no national virtues. We are alone, each one of us. If we are good, we are good ourselves. If we are bad, the virtues of others will not make us better. We cannot borrow morals. They are ours or they do not exist for us …. A nation cannot make our souls for us.

Neither can any group. In this cold age we have a great faith in groups. But this faith may betray us …. We here in Europe have learned that very bitterly. We have said, “We are doing fine.” “We are jolly good fellows.” “We are getting things done.” Then came the knock on the door in the small hours, the covered truck, and the rubber truncheon.

We cannot take refuge in a political idea. The man who becomes a communist [or a champion of ‘freedom fries’ for that matter] does not add a cubit to his stature, although he thinks he does. To live in a free land does not lessen our responsibility to ourselves. A narrow, bad man is not made any less narrow, or any less bad, by the freedom of his institutions. Every mouse was perfectly free to express his opinion as to who should bell the cat. One was elected by universal secret suffrage. When the election was over, they were still mice.

Or you may have accepted, as I have, the moral discipline of a great church. That does not make either you or me any less responsible for our own souls. Nobody can help us, in the end. We cannot say: “I did so-and-so because my neighbour, who agrees with my religious views, did the same.” You are asked to love your neighbour as yourself: you are not called upon to share his opinions ....

Nor can you take refuge in your caste or your class …. But … all sensible men are agreed that to love one’s country is a noble thing. Is this proved wrong because we must make our own souls? Not in the least. It is a noble love when it is honest, because when it is honest it is a discipline. First, it teaches us to obey the laws. This we must do because all men are created equal in at least one thing: not one of them is to be trusted to rule the rest unless he is restrained by law. And if he is not restrained by it, our discipline teaches us to disobey him and reestablish the rule of law according to the traditions of our native land. Secondly, it disciplines us in our dealings with other countries, provided it is a true patriotism and not a false one.

A false patriotism is that which makes us love not our country but the ideas that have been put into our minds about it, and thus about ourselves. A true patriotism is a simpler thing. It is to love the land of one’s birth: its hills and mountains, cities and skies: its sea; its air; its language and the people who nurtured you. It reminds us constantly not of our greatness, but of our true size. We were not born across a continent or bred at a straddle between boundaries. We were born in a place, a house, a town, a village. We did not have a hundred million fathers and mothers. We had one father and one mother….

The man who has lost this love has lost himself. He has no measuring rod. It is he who joins the Party. The man who keeps this love can face the world with great confidence. He knows that however vast the decision he is called upon to make, when he decides between a matter of right and wrong, he must be no bigger than his breeches.

[Dead Man in the Silver Market, 1953: Aubrey Menen]