Well that's how it's meant anyway. There's a passage from Chesterton I'm fond of, talking about patriotism.

"My country, right or wrong" is a thing no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober." No doubt if a decent man's mother took to drink he would share her troubles to the last; but to talk as if he would be in a state oif gay indifference as to whether his mother took to drink or not is certainly not the language of men who know the great mystery...

"The first of all the marks of love is seriousness: love will not accept sham bulletins or the empty victory of words. It will always esteem the most candid counsellor the best." (From A Defence of Patriotism in The Defendant, published 1901.)