I'm a little late to this thread, being only an occasional visitor these days, so I haven't read more than the first few posts. My apologies if this has already been said, especially if it's been better said than I'm about to attempt, but those first few posts provoke me to offer the following for consideration...

"I am proud of my country because..." That, to me is patriotism, and I see nothing wrong with that. We evolved as a social animal, small groups. Family, which doesn't have to mean blood relation, is what we're wired for. Tribe / clan / folk we can cope with - those we don't know but, given that we naturally label the world around us, those that we can label as "those that are generally like us", whatever the criteria for "like us" may be. Going beyond that is more difficult. In my experience, it's only a small minority of people that can rise above family & folk, and view the whole of humanity more or less without prejudice.

The thing about patriotism for me though, is that it has to be not only "I am proud of my country because...", but also "I am well aware of the shit things we've done as well". It isn't patriotism that is the problem; it's nationalism - "My country is BETTER than every else because..." THAT, I think, is when the sense of "we've done a lot of shit things too" is lost, history gets whitewashed and we can do whatever we want because we're obviously superior...