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Originally Posted by TalnSG
Though I do believe in gods, I would agree with every thing else you stated about religion.
I disagree with the depiction of patriotism/nationalism. The two terms should not be interchangeable, as they have differing connotative meanings. Patriotism is that pride that exists regardless of the existence of any other country or people. It does not require comparison.
Nationalism, with it's negative connotation since the 1940's of extreme, blind, irrational, arrogance does indeed thrive on the condemnation of all others.
The crime is that all too often nationalism hides behind a banner of patriotisman and perverts a noble sentiment into something that corrupts the masses.
Given the history of bigotry that still persists in Australia, it would be best to drop this example. I know of no Aboriginal, Japanese or Korean person who would accept this depiction of the country. Hate crimes persist in the major cities today and there is little evidence of any major effort on the part of the government to address the problem.
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Patriotism and nationalism are only a matter of degrees. One leads to the other. Patriotism is not possible without comparison. You may not be fully aware of it, as in you probably don't outright state I love (insert country) because it's so much better than this or that country but you can only have pride in your country by comparing it to others whether you are aware of it or not. This is the problem with all pride and why just about all major religions consider pride a sin.
I assume you have never been to Australia. I certainly didn't claim there were no racists there or problems, in fact I explicity made it clear there are. On the whole though it has worked well. The waves of European immigrants after WWII are now completely integrated in Australian society. The wave of immigrants after the Vietnam war are completely integrated into society. The immigrants after the war in Bosnia still have maybe a little way to go but I'd give only one more generation and there'll be few problems. The recent muslim immigration is causing issues like everywhere in the world but we have no one but ourselves to blame really after the years of propaganda demonising muslims to make our little wars in Iraq more acceptable to the public. I'm confident though that within a couple of generations the muslim population will find a reasonably harmonious place within Australian society. Australia is certainly not perfect, it has had and continues to have issues but no one in Australia is claiming multiculturalism has failed. No one that matters that is.