Patriotism can focus on preservation, protection and furtherance of what is best in our national way of life, including liberty, democracy, culture, heritage and history etc. Perhaps we are naturally inclined to protect ‘territory’ and the familiar. Typically, Rule Britannia includes the words: ‘Thee haughty tyrants ne’er shall tame: All their attempts to bend thee down, Will but arouse thy gen’rous flame’. In times of greatest danger love of country leads to greatest sacrifice, as typically expressed in I vow to thee my country ‘The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice’ and in Rupert Brooke’s The Soldier ‘If I should die,….there is a corner of a foreign field that is forever England’.
Patriotism Part 20
