Patriotism

Consider this: what if the following comment from [Mark] Twain’s notebook appeared as a boxed quote in history textbooks? Patriotism “is a word which always commemorates a robbery. There isn’t a foot of land in the world which doesn’t represent the ousting and re-ousting of a long line of successive ‘owners’ who each in turn, as ‘patriots,’ with proud swelling hearts defended it against the next gang of ‘robbers’ who came to steal it and did—and became swelling-hearted patriots in their turn.” What if teachers asked students to write essays agreeing or disagreeing with this idea in high school? Or what if the final exam required students to respond to a comment Twain made in the North American Review five years before his death—“the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism is loyalty to the nation all the time, loyalty to the government when it deserves it”?

Mark Twain’s Inconvenient Truths

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Censoring Mark Twain’s ‘n-words’ is unacceptable