The question of patriotism

George Monbiot, provocateur, writing in the Guardian:

...I don't hate Britain, and I am not ashamed of my nationality, but I have no idea why I should love this country more than any other. There are some things I like about it and some things I don't, and the same goes for everywhere else I've visited. To become a patriot is to lie to yourself, to tell yourself that whatever good you might perceive abroad, your own country is, on balance, better than the others. It is impossible to reconcile this with either the evidence of your own eyes or a belief in the equality of humankind. Patriotism of the kind Orwell demanded in 1940 is necessary only to confront the patriotism of other people: the second world war, which demanded that the British close ranks, could not have happened if Hitler hadn't exploited the national allegiance of the Germans. The world will be a happier and safer place when we stop putting our own countries first.

So Monbiot is a kind of internationalist. But elsewhere in his article he uses a quickie, yet abstract, utilitarian argument to get to this position, one that's very similar to Peter Singer's One World argument minus Singer's ongoing insistence on increasing the circle of moral empathy.

See Peter Levine for an interesting discussion of empathetic versus systematic thinking in a different context.