The Problem With Patriotism

A group of World War Two airmen posing in front of a Lancaster Bomber of the type flown by my father throughout the summer and autumn of 1943 Picture from https://raf-pathfinders.com/other-pff-sqds/ He and they were proud patriots in an unquiet world.

It was the Dublin born playwright and Nobel prize winner George Bernard Shaw who said “You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.” (Misalliance, 1910).

I could not agree more. Others might dismiss the statement on the grounds that Shaw was a Socialist: member of the Fabian Society, present at the founding of the British Labour Party and apologist for Lenin, Stalin and…