Alan,

    Many of the things that you have observed about patriotism stem from the fact that you are a unique man in a unique position. First, you are one of those rare few who is willing to understand that there is a world beyond the barrier of your front door. Second, you are an Englishman living in Germany during the early, and possibly most formative years, of the European Union. To anyone who is paying attention to what is going on about them it has to make one wonder about a few things. I'm assuming that's part of the reason that you started the thread. I'm also assuming (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) that part of the question is not for the present or yourself but for what all of this might mean for your children and the generations beyond. Obviously, I don't have those answers. I do, however, have a few thoughts on what the past can teach us about what might be waiting in the wings.

A brief history lesson:
    In the years between the American Revolutionary War and the American Civil War if one were to ask any given individual what country they were from they would most likely answer that they were from Georgia or Massachsetts rather than the United States. People thought of their home state as their country. It was not until after the American Civil War that something resembling a national identity started to form. It was not, however, until our entrance into the First World War (on the world stage for the first time in common cause with other nations) that we started to identify ourselves as being, first and foremost, Americans. We have done so ever since.

    That is not to say that there are not points of regional or state pride (ask any Texan), or that there are no regional rivalries (ask any Oklahoman about the Texans). As a native Chicagoan I always get a small jolt of pride whenever any Chicago sports team wins a game (we do it so seldom that any victory is a thrill).

Back to the present (such as it is):

          The EU came about in a different way than the United States and is a very different political and economic entity than the U.S. It is much like the United States was before the passage of our Constitution. The exception, of course being that, the EU members have been sovereign nations for a heck of a long time and are in a much better position to maintain that sovereignty than were the thirteen ex-colonies. It is possible if not probable that historians decades hence will see the EU as the logical next step after the Common Market.

          Patriotism, however, is not a politcal or economic phenomenon. It is social in nature. You think of yourself as English. Your girlfriend and children identify themselves as German. The generations of your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will grow up with no direct experience with the world as it was before the EU. For them it will always have been there. This cannot help but have an impact on the social fabric of each of the EU member nations individually and on the EU as a whole. How they think of themselves, what they feel they are a part of, and what sort of geographic space commands their pride will, by the very nature of their experience, be different from ours. I have no idea how it will be different or whether the change will be good or bad. I suspect that it will be good given that it will stem from one of the most useful and productive things that has ever happened in Europe – the creation of the EU.


Just a couple of random thougths for whatever they may be worth.


Stephen Lee