15 May 2014

Boswell attributed to Dr Johnson these well-known words: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” I suppose there is some merit in this view if you accept that the great tyrants of history have tended to claim to be patriots (though “scoundrel” seems a mild word to apply to the men responsible for the Holocaust, Collectivisation and The Great Leap Forward). Johnson actually wrote at length on the subject of patriotism, specifically in opposition to American independence. “He that wishes to see his country robbed of its rights cannot be a patriot. That man, therefore, is no patriot, who justifies the ridiculous claims of American usurpation; who endeavours to deprive the nation of its natural and lawful authority over its own colonies; those colonies, which were settled under English protection; were constituted by an English charter; and have been defended by English arms.” I think the key sentence here is the first. It raises the interesting but complicated notion that a nation can have rights, beyond the aggregated individual rights of its citizens. It is a potentially dangerous idea and has been the cause of many international disputes, some farcical, others calamitous. After a couple of world wars and a widespread if not ubiquitous international consensus in favour of eliminating racial discrimination, patriotism is a trickier position to hold than it once was. Patriots use their support for sport as a way of expressing themselves. I found the chauvinism during the 2012 London Olympics somewhat distasteful (being of the opinion that hosts have the obligation to put the interests of their guests first) but certainly not dangerous or harmful. If crowd behaviour limits itself to sport, we should be thankful. In 2014, financial patriotism has started to feature in political debates. We have become accustomed to being told that e.g. Romanian families will travel 2000 kilometres in order to claim state benefits in the UK. (I find this hard to believe. How many Britons would emigrate to Romania on the promise of living in poverty for free?) Now, somewhat bizarrely, some people object to foreigners bringing too much wealth to the UK. They are supposedly buying our trophy assets, aided by the fact...