Am I correct in inferring that, on your view, “X is patriotic” entails “X believes X’s country is good”?
So I suppose patriotism is a kind of love. We could call a love good if the lover has good reason to think the beloved worthy of love and if the love is on the whole a benefit to lover and beloved. Your initial remark was that that patriotism can be good independently of the goodness of its object, because it can be a benefit. I think this captures one half of the above, both leaves out the ‘worthiness’ part. In other words, I think patriotism has to involve something like knowledge of the moral goodness of one’s country. It’s in that respect that patriotism is concerned with truth, rather than just with benefit.
So I suppose patriotism is a kind of love. We could call a love good if the lover has good reason to think the beloved worthy of love and if the love is on the whole a benefit to lover and beloved. Your initial remark was that that patriotism can be good independently of the goodness of its object, because it can be a benefit. I think this captures one half of the above, both leaves out the ‘worthiness’ part. In other words, I think patriotism has to involve something like knowledge of the moral goodness of one’s country. It’s in that respect that patriotism is concerned with truth, rather than just with benefit.
In my experience with it, patriotism usually seems closer to a kind of hate. It does make people feel good about themselves, though.