What is a patriot?

Jeremy Corbyn has received a lot of negative press coverage this past week, and in particular a lot of people are questioning his patriotism.  This is related partly to his being a pacifist, and partly to his failure to sing the national anthem at a service to commemorate the Battle of Britain.

I consider myself to be a patriot, by which I mean that I care deeply about my country.  Being a patriot is not the same as being a monarchist.  Jeremy Corbyn is a republican, but that does not make him not a patriot.  I can understand that someone of a republican persuasion may not want to sing the British national anthem.

To be fair, a lot of people who are not republicans also dislike the British national anthem.

Another issue of contention is that Jeremy Corbyn does not want Britain to maintain its non-existent stock of nuclear weapons. He has also opposed British involvement in various illegal foreign wars, and has even called for Britain to leave NATO.

Being a patriot is not the same as being an apologist for war.  If anything it is the opposite.  I will not vote to send British troops into illegal foreign wars, partly because I respect the right of every country on earth to determine its own affairs.  The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is a murderous organisation which interferes in the affairs of other countries.  (On reflection, that seems to be rather a silly thing to write, given that it appears to imply that NATO is itself a country, which it is not.)

At least one political commentator has compared Jeremy Corbyn with George Lansbury, who led the Labour Party from 1932 until his resignation in 1935.  Lansbury was a pacifist who believed that world peace could be achieved through nation's disarming rather than rearming - a point of view I find hard to take seriously.

But of course Lansbury was a communist, and so presumably wanted the forces of the Soviet Union to be able to invade Britain without encountering any military opposition.

If you are a patriot, then you love your country.  If you love something, then presumably you seek to protect it.  I want my country to maintain a high level of military capability so as to discourage other countries from going to war against us.  That is not the same as saying that I support war.  I support the defence of my homeland, and not the wanton destruction of other countries.

There is however little point in maintaining our armed forces if we are just going to sit back while immigrants take over our country.  I understand that, but Jeremy Corbyn appears not to.  On that basis, he comes across to me as no more of a patriot than David Cameron.

Related previous posts include:
A reasoned approach to war