I am sorry to have missed last week's discussion as this particular subject is interesting to me. I recently attended a naturalization ceremony for a friend of mine and was struck by the patriotism the new citizens exhibeted based on little more than myth and instruction. I remember being moved by the tears and excitement folks were displaying as they reached their goal of becoming part of the "American Dream". Then I looked at my friend, a cruise ship waiter who married an American woman and became a citizen because this is where he lives. - not quite so dramatic, not quite so mythical, but quite real and practical. So, I think the creation and perpetuation of these ideas are often, at the very least, unreal. I do believe they can serve a valuable purpose ("Rally round the flag") at certain times in the life of a country. As in all things, they can be dangerous when taken to extremes.

Everyone needs a sense of identity, and of course your country becomes part of that. I tend to identify myself more as a Vermonter than an American, however! As social creatures, we all have a psychological need to belong to groups, and it helps when those groups are cohesive. So in that sense, I think it's good to promote nationalism to a certain extent. However, cementing ingroup cohesiveness also tends to strengthen the boundary between the ingroup and the outgroup. The more you feel part of one group, the more you tend to denigrate outsiders. I think this is a huge problem. I feel like Americans in general tend to be pretty arrogant about being American, denigrate other nations who disagree with American policies (freedom fries, anyone?), and are often quite ignorant about other cultures. This is probably true of a lot of other nations as well. I think nationalism can become dangerous because at some point it will encourage viewing the "other" as something to be attacked. I also think creating a national identity is very limiting, because it excludes so many things. If America is apple pie and baseball, where do all the people from other cultures fit in? How do you really get to be an American? It also troubles me that sometimes people are called unAmerican for having opinions different from those of the government.

I think that nationalism and patriotism are great ideas, in theory. Why would we not want to be proud of a nation the is based on the ideals of freedom and the Bill of Rights. But I also think it is dangerous when nationalism or patriotism are seen as things that must be compulsory, or when they exclude people who are not from this country, or not as enthusiatic as it deemed necessary. It seems to me that in this country we have come to the dangerous view that patriotism is supporting our government without question. I believe patriotism is celebrating the rights guaranteed to us by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, especially the now often contested freedom of speech. Questioning the government is patriotic, regardless of the negative image this administration has put on dissenters and protesters. Patriotism in theory is a great thing, just as America, in theory, is a great country. We need to look back at the intentions of the Framers of the Constitution, and see how far off course we have gone from their original vision.

What I thought was so interesting about the Englishman's Boy was how Canada represented this wild and lawless place to the wolfers and later Hollywood kind of became that place. Canada during Harry's time retreats into a nice, safe, quiet place- kind of like Harry himself, which is I guess why he chooses to return there. Sequestered in the back of the movie theatre he manages, rather than living the wild, Hollywood life with the likes of Rachel Gold, Harry watches on the screen the movies he could have had a hand in making.

This contast between the "nature" of the two nations (and how the perception of that nature changes in time) is fascinating to me. I think that true nationalism lies in the spirit of the people of a place and how they choose to inhabit it. To me Harry is quintessentially Canadian, and Rachel is brashly American. No amount of anthems and pledges can change either one of them.

these ideas of nationalism, i feel, are dangerous in some respects. the way in which Chance chose to display his nationalism--through the use of propaganda--is the wrong way for love of nation to be expressed. Harry was right when he decided to go back to his native Canada and leave behind the affairs he was a part of.
nationalism can be a good thing when the things that a nation stands for are just and fair. i don't believe that all Americans should be strictly Americans. We all should be proud of our backgrounds and never forget where we came from.
no nation can ever truly represent a large number of people. everyone within a nation must understand and celebrate who they are first, and we should all realize that the affairs of a nation are to help its people first, no matter what ideals they identify with.

Nationalism is an outdated and inherently flawed ideolgy; it was brought about as the response that replaced the concept of the divine appointment of monarchs and the feudal system, as a post-Enlightenment and post French Revolutionary ideal. However, it is no more than an assertion of superiorty, of "ownership", and competition in a Darwinian context. It has often degenerated into more base and sinister ideologies like Fascism, Stalinism, racism, and of course, Nazism, in which a sense of destiny, purity and supremacy of a nation was put into action. Nationalism should not be confused with "community", the allegiance you might feel with a fellow human being, as opposed to Patriotism, allegiance to guys with cowboy hats pursuing economic self-interest by kindly "liberating" the people and resources of other nations. Loyalty to arbitrary lines on a map has replaced our loyalty to the immediate community around us. Those of us from the Northeast (in the context of a US map) can easily forget what was here before us, with most of the native populations having died, assimlated, or confined to the misery of the Reservation systems.