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Patriotism

Entry 594, on 2007-08-24 at 17:21:38 (Rating 3, Comments)

How important is patriotism? Should we all swear allegiance to our country, or government, or our local sports team? It seems that identifying with a group and supporting that group while rejecting outsiders is a basic human way of thinking. Supporting your country might seem to be a good thing, but I don't know whether it really is. Tribalism must have lead to many conflicts and wars, so shouldn't people just accept that their country is just one of many, with strengths and weaknesses like every other one.

The reason I ask the questions above is a recent incident at a New Zealand vs Australia basketball game where New Zealand's national anthem was sung really badly by an Australian singer - in fact she forgot most of the words. Should we care? What relevance do national anthems have today anyway? I don't see a lot of enthusiasm for singing the anthem, the Maori verse in particular seems to get little support from crowds at big events.

Of course, ours is a particularly tedious and dreary song so it would be hard to get enthusiastic about it under any circumstances. And having the title "God Defend New Zealand" seems rather ironic when you consider New Zealand is one of the least religious countries around (at least that's something to be proud of).

New Zealand isn't a particularly outwardly patriotic country. Being a small country on the edge of the world in the South Pacific doesn't help. But New Zealand does have a lot to be proud of. We have a quite moralistic attitude to wars, trade and environmentalism, even though some of our social justice has been destroyed in the last 20 years by new-right economics.

I guess we are heading towards a major change in our basic identity. The Queen of England is still officially our head of state. She has no real power, but its a symbolic issue more than a practical one. Our flag still has the Union Jack in the corner and is almost impossible to distinguish from Australia's. Maybe its time for a major identity change. We should become a republic, get a new flag, and please, let's get a better national anthem!

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