The enclosed article Does Patriotism Matter? by Thomas Sowell points out that patriotism and internationalism are competitors. This excerpt is a revelation:

Charles de Gaulle, Francois Mauriac, and other Frenchmen blamed a lack of national will or general moral decay, for the sudden and humiliating collapse of France in 1940.

At the outset of the invasion, both German and French generals assessed French military forces as more likely to gain victory, and virtually no one expected France to collapse like a house of cards -- except Adolf Hitler, who had studied French society instead of French military forces.

Did patriotism matter? It mattered more than superior French tanks and planes.

Islamic fundamentalists imitated Hitler by studying the politics in Western democracies rather than analyze military capabilities. It was not difficult for Muslim thinkers to see that if every Muslim country joined forces they could not standup to the military might of a united West. They studied and understood the split in the West that was caused, and is still preserved, by Socialists. Muslims have been exploiting that split to great effect.

The war against communist aggression did not end because the Soviet Union imploded nor will victory in Afghanistan and Iraq bring an end to the war against Islamic terrorism. Yet each battle must be won by American patriots until Muslim fanatics lose the will to fight, or are stopped by fellow Muslims.

American liberals have no use for American patriotism that calls for defending the country militarily. At the same time the American Left wears down this country’s will to fight a war of self-defense, liberals are too blind to see that Muslim terrorists are Islam’s patriots.

Trace conventional patriotism from the eighteenth century to Woodrow Wilson and you will see that in WW I American patriots failed this country for the first time —— not by choice but because there was no way they could see the seeds of America’s destruction being planted by the intelligentsia of their day.

Patriotism involving the military begins and ends with self-defense. Wilson led the earliest generation of American Socialists in changing all that. I’m convinced that American patriots would have stopped Wilson from choosing one side in a European war had they understood what he was really after.

This final excerpt goes to the very heart of the Left’s anti-American beliefs:

Most Americans today are unaware of how much our schools have followed in the footsteps of the French schools of the 1920s and 1930s, or how much our intellectuals have become citizens of the world instead of American patriots.

The great pity is that loyal Americans are funding the cosmopolitan pretensions of our intellectuals while American military personnel are dying for them. Without American military muscle standing behind them our leading intellectuals of a liberal persuasion would be the laughing stock of the world yet military men and women are the very Americans leading Democrats despise the most.

No doubt, some will say that mankind will be better off once every reason for patriotism is eliminated. The problem with that objective is this: After every expression of institutional patriotism is abolished you will still have the individual’s instinctive determination to fight for their personal sovereignty. What will liberals do then? Logically, they will have to mold every personality into one mindless, obedient, race of servants. Oh, wait a minute! That is what Big Brother has been after all along.

One final observation: Propaganda succeeds in controlling thoughts not the personality. That is why propagandists hold the public purse with their favorite sales pitch: A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

For all of the money the education industry gets there can’t be too many minds functioning beyond the reach of thought control. To paraphrase the thought police: A personality is a terrible thing to waste. So maybe it’s time somebody did something for the tens of millions of personalities that are wasted in every generation because they did not come out of a collective womb. Restoring individual liberties is a good beginning, and it doesn’t cost anything.

The following article looks at what can happen when there is an absence of patriotism:

July 01, 2008
Does Patriotism Matter?
By Thomas Sowell

The Fourth of July is a patriotic holiday but patriotism has long been viewed with suspicion or
disdain by many of the intelligentsia. As far back as 1793, prominent British writer William
Godwin called patriotism "high-sounding nonsense."

Internationalism has long been a competitor with patriotism, especially among the intelligentsia.
H.G. Wells advocated replacing the idea of duty to one's country with "the idea of cosmopolitan
duty."

Perhaps nowhere was patriotism so downplayed or deplored than among intellectuals in the
Western democracies in the two decades after the horrors of the First World War, fought under
various nations' banners of patriotism.

In France, after the First World War, the teachers' unions launched a systematic purge of
textbooks, in order to promote internationalism and pacifism.

Books that depicted the courage and self-sacrifice of soldiers who had defended France against
the German invaders were called "bellicose" books to be banished from the schools.

Textbook publishers caved in to the power of the teachers' unions, rather than lose a large
market for their books. History books were sharply revised to conform to internationalism and
pacifism.

The once epic story of the French soldiers' heroic defense against the German invaders at
Verdun, despite the massive casualties suffered by the French, was now transformed into a story
of horrible suffering by all soldiers at Verdun-- French and German alike.

In short, soldiers once depicted as national heroes were now depicted as victims-- and just like
victims in other nations' armies.

Children were bombarded with stories on the horrors of war. In some schools, children whose
fathers had been killed during the war were asked to speak to the class and many of these
children-- as well as some of their classmates and teachers-- broke down in tears.

In Britain, Winston Churchill warned that a country "cannot avoid war by dilating upon its
horrors." In France, Marshal Philippe Petain, the victor at Verdun, warned in 1934 that teachers
were trying to "raise our sons in ignorance of or in contempt of the fatherland."

But they were voices drowned out by the pacifist and internationalist rhetoric of the 1920s and
1930s.

Did it matter? Does patriotism matter?

France, where pacifism and internationalism were strongest, became a classic example of how
much it can matter.

During the First World War, France fought on against the German invaders for four long years,
despite having more of its soldiers killed than all the American soldiers killed in all the wars in
the history of the United States, put together.

But during the Second World War, France collapsed after just six weeks of fighting and
surrendered to Nazi Germany. At the bitter moment of defeat the head of the French teachers'
union was told, "You are partially responsible for the defeat."

Charles de Gaulle, Francois Mauriac, and other Frenchmen blamed a lack of national will or
general moral decay, for the sudden and humiliating collapse of France in 1940.

At the outset of the invasion, both German and French generals assessed French military forces
as more likely to gain victory, and virtually no one expected France to collapse like a house of
cards -- except Adolf Hitler, who had studied French society instead of French military forces.

Did patriotism matter? It mattered more than superior French tanks and planes.

Most Americans today are unaware of how much our schools have followed in the footsteps of
the French schools of the 1920s and 1930s, or how much our intellectuals have become citizens
of the world instead of American patriots.

Our media are busy verbally transforming American combat troops from heroes into victims,
just as the French intelligentsia did-- with the added twist of calling this "supporting the troops."

Will that matter? Time will tell.

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Does Patriotism Matter?

__________________

Flanders

The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do. It is the freedom to refrain, withdraw and abstain which makes a totalitarian regime impossible. Eric Hoffer