Patriotism and Loyalty

After reading various examples of the word patriotism and its use in that context it seems that patriotism mostly refers to the love or emotional attachment that a person can have to their country or to where they are from or simply to the place that they were born in. While researching online for various examples of patriotism I came to find out that there are different levels of patriotism. One such example of patriotism is that practiced by those that have unconditional love for their country and will blindly follow the countries policies without opposition and will see others that opposed a certain idea as a traitor or being unpatriotic.

Other groups of people demonstrate their patriotism by demonstrating it in form of certain symbols like wearing and displaying the flag, singing patriotic songs or the national anthem. There are others that show their patriotism by protesting and criticizing the unjust policies of a nation in order to help keep the nation in check and not blindly follow unjust policies. Accord to the dictionary defines loyalty as “the quality of being loyal to someone or something. ” and loyal as “giving or showing firm and constant support or allegiance to a person or institution. However many times a person’s loyalty can be in a conflict. For example if a person is loyal to the United States but the new government starts making decisions that the individual does not agree with now he can keep on following without speaking up because of his loyalty to the government as well or he can protest against poor policies because those decisions made by those in power are hurting the United States. In his mind he is still being loyal to the United States by protesting and help shape better policies but by others he may be seen as a traitor.