From: phsj@marlin.jcu.edu.au (Su Jianfeng)
Subject: Re: About Patriotism
Organization: James Cook University
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 92 11:31:36 GMT

In article <Bz4r67.Bq8@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> ST@linguist.umass.edu writes:
>........
>
>    2.  When there is an international dispute, patriotism should not be used
>as a criterion to judge which side is correct.
>    For example, when there is a war between two countries, A and B,
>citizens of A should not automatically support A, and citizens of B should
>not automatically support B either.  People should check what causes the war
>to decide which side (or neither side) should be supported.
>    Similarly, when there is a trade dispute between two countries, people
>should not automatically support their home country's trading policy because
>of their citizenship.  Other criteria should be used.
>    In the dispute about Hong Kong democracy between PRC government and
>British-H.K. government, Chinese people should not automatically support
>PRC government's policy, and British people should not automatically support
>Pattern's plan.

The example above is reasonable for the people who do not serve as
politicians.    But, for politicians who claim to work for interest of poeple 
in their country, it is not proper.    The reason for people to support
politicians is that they hope the politicians, who they support, serve 
for their own interests, but not work as the judges to judge which side
is correct.   The politicians are the employees of the people who
support them.    If one wants to serve as the judge, he should not claim
to work as a politician working for the people in one country.   This
may be easier to be explain by an example.  e.g.

Both companies A and B sell similar products, e.g. electric fans made by
their own companies at the same price.    Person A works as a saleman
for company A and he knows the quality of the fan made by company A is
worse than that by company B.    But, the person A can not suggest his
customers to buy the products of company B except that he have resigned
from his position, because he is the employee of company A.   The reason 
is simple.   The company A hires persons for selling its products only,
but not for the judgement.    

I think this example can be used for the trade dispute between USA and
PRC.   For the Hong Kong democracy, if you think people in Hong Kong can
be benefited from the reform, you may have the reason to support it.



J Su
      I am the most important for myself.


>
>    In sum, Patriotism should not be used as a criterion or a reason in an
>international dispute.  People should be very cautious not to be blinded
>by patriotism/nationalism.
>    Those whose opinion happens to be the same as PRC government's should
>not use patriotism to justify their own stand against the other side,
>explicitly or implicitly.
>    Of course, those whose opinion happens to be different from PRC
>government's should not use another thing -- supporting the totalitarian
>government -- as a reason to critisize the other side either.
>
>    Nothing particularly new in my posting.  Other people have already
>pointed out or discussed the points I wrote about above.  I just want to
>emphasize these points and hope that there is a more or less consensus
>on them so that current or future disputes on other topics will
>not be affected by patriotism.
>    (When people do not have a clear mutual-agreed concept for patriotism,
>it will make things more mixed-up rather than serving as a common ground for
>debating.  Patriotism or Nationalism?  True patriotism or the extreme of
>patriotism? etc. etc.  So, it is better NOT to use the concept of patriotism
>at all when debating on other topics.)
>
>    Thank you for reading my posting.
>
>    SHEN Tong
> an ordinary student of linguistics at University of Massachusetts at Amherst


Newsgroups: talk.politics.china,soc.culture.china