Patriotism: Insights from Israel By Eyal Lewin

conquest, would its history have been different? The answers might not necessarily be positive, but the crucial point to be illuminated is that losing the war was only a reflection of the weariness of the collective spirit in France; reluctance to fight was only a symptom of the group’s exhausted inner strengths. Thus, the defeat of the French army at the beginning of World War II is not necessarily a matter for professional military research but rather a case study for political psychology, revealing how lack of patriotism led to the downfall of one of Europe’s leading nations.

Just like citizenship, patriotism cannot be counted as obvious; it relates to the cultural phenomena that establish patterns of thought and social awareness that liberal democracy, perhaps more than any other form of social order, ought to cherish alongside its assorted internal ideological streams of liberal democracy (Berns, 2001). One outstanding verbal illustration of patriotism lies in President John F. Kennedy’s famous call to action in the inaugural address of January 20, 1961: “My fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.” Kennedy’s idea was certainly not a new one, and comparable quotations can be found in earlier centuries; however, it is worthwhile to note that Kennedy delivered this proposal, in one version or another, several times, expressing the spirit of what he thought American citizenship should be like (Schlesinger, 1965). Indeed, the suggestion that patriotism is tied to paying the ultimate price for one’s country goes back as far as the Roman tradition, so vividly exemplified in the Latin lines of the Roman poet Horace of 65 BC: “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” which means “Sweet and glorious it is to die for our country” (Walker, 1987). These highly patriotic words were quoted time and again by British leaders of the 19th century in reference to the wars of their empire, particularly during the Boer War but also as late as World War I.

History is loaded with examples of people who collectively cast aside their private comforts to engage in communal effort for the sake of the country. In Russian terminology, the eastern front of World War II, in which tens of millions of Russians lost their lives defending their