Patriotism is one of the most important things that you can teach to your kid. While moral philosophers debate the standing of patriotism as an instance of the problem of reconciling universal moral considerations with particular attachments and loyalties, political theorists are primarily interested in patriotism as an ethos of the well-ordered polity and an antidote to nationalism.
Teach kids about these moments of our country's history while still talking about why they were not OK. She notes teaching about slavery and other pieces of America's history, like the Jim Crow laws, ensures the stories continue to get told. For 125 years, the Daughters of the American Revolution has carried the torch of patriotism.
Families gathered together for these celebrations still celebrate in the traditional ways, but there is a sense of pride, a sense of honor, a sense of the recognition that the things we hold dear like freedom, like
democracy, like the pursuit of happiness, are not a given, and we just seem to hold those intangible things that define life in America a little more dear.
This unique kind of design filled a strong of patriotism and national integrity among every Americans. Howard Zinn , Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology (1991). The core of Keller's thesis is that patriotic attachment leads patriots to deny unflattering truths about their country's conduct, hence to maintain their attachment in bad faith." Patriotism should yield to truth, in short, but it doesn't.
However, both Baron and Nathanson fail to distinguish clearly between showing that their preferred type of patriotism is morally unobjectionable and showing that it is morally required or virtuous, and sometimes seem to be assuming that by showing the former, they are also showing the latter.