Tolstoy, Leo - Patriotism & Government

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PATRIOTISM AND GOVERNMENT

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Patriotism and Government

By Leo Tolstoy

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

PATRIOTISM AND GOVERNMENT

Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

Patriotism and Government

By Leo Tolstoy

"The time is fast approaching when to call a man a patriot will be the deepest insult You can

offer him. Patriotism now means advocating plunder in the interests of the privileged classes of

the particular State system into which we have happened to be born." - E. BELFORT BAX.

I have already several times expressed the thought that in our day the feeling of patriotism is an

unnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of a great part of the ills from which

mankind is suffering, and that, consequently, this feeling--should not be cultivated, as is now

being done, but should, on the contrary, be suppressed and eradicated by all means available to

rational men. Yet, strange to say--though it is undeniable that the universal armaments and

destructive wars which are ruining the peoples result from that one feeling--all my arguments

showing the backwardness, anachronism, and harmfulness of patriotism have been met, and are

still met, either by silence, by intentional misinterpretation, or by a strange unvarying reply to the

effect that only bad patriotism (Jingoism or Chauvinism) is evil, but that real good patriotism is a

very elevated moral feeling, to condemn which is not only irrational but wicked.

What this real, good patriotism consists in, we are never told; or,if anything is said about it,

instead of explanation we get declamatory, inflated phrases, or, finally, some other conception is

substituted for patriotism-- something which has nothing in common with the patriotism we all

know, and from the results of which we all suffer so severely.

It is generally said that the real, good patriotism consists in desiring for one's own people or State

such real benefits as do not infringe the well-being of other nations

Talking recently to an Englishman about the present war, I said to him that the real cause of the

war was not avarice, as people generally say, but patriotism, as is evident from the temper of the

whole of English society. The Englishman did not agree with me, and said that even were the

case so, it resulted from the fact that the patriotism at present inspiring Englishmen is a bad

patriotism; but that good patriotism, such as he was imbued with, would cause Englishmen, his

compatriots to act well.

'Then do you wish only Englishmen to act well?' I asked.

'I wish all men to do so,' said he; in dictating clearly by that reply the characteristic of true

benefits whether moral scientific, or even material and practical -which is that they spread out to

all men. But, evidently, to wish such benefits to everyone, not only is not patriotic, but is the

reverse of patriotic.

Neither do the peculiarities of each people constitute patriotism, though these things are

purposely substituted for the conception of patriotism by its defenders. They say that the

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