It’s surprising how many persons go through life without ever recognizing that their feelings toward other people are largely determined by their feelings toward themselves, and if you’re not comfortable within yourself, you can’t be comfortable with others.
It’s odd that the people who worry whether certain plays are “morally offensive” so rarely worry about the moral offensiveness of war, poverty, bigotry.
In a real sense, all of us are “the parents” of all young children – because we help shape the culture and determine its values.
Patriotism is wanting what is best for your country. Nationalism is thinking your country is best, no matter what it does.
But the culture-vultures and the intellectual snobs, and the self-appointed guardians of the Muses, often frighten off the average person from the free development of this appetite.
Just as communism always begins with an appeal to “humanity” and equality” and ends with inhuman despotism, so does fascism always begin with an appeal to “nationalism” and “individualism,” and ends with a military collectivism far worse than the disease it purports to cure.