Love of country

With Independence Day upon us, celebrating 248 years as a nation, my thoughts turn, as they often do, to the meaning of patriotism. When I speak of patriotism, I don't mean what it's been bastardized into by political parties, essentially to mean, first and foremost, a love of party. It is simply, as Merriam-Webster defines it, "love for or devotion to one's country." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that Stephen Nathanson, in a 1993 book-length treatise on the subject, "defines patriotism as involving: special affection for one's own country;...