Patriotism, like democracy, means different things to different people. I will define my brand of patriotism so I won’t be misunderstood. I don’t really have a big problem with Colin Kaepernick or Megan Rapinoe. Disrespecting a flag and a song might be distasteful but there are much bigger fish to fry.
Loyalty or devotion to who or what is critical in defining patriotism. Focusing on symbols detracts from true patriotic duty.
Is the interest of the people best served by giving them something, that is, something taken from someone else? Or is it best served by a simple function of government to secure the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as the stated goal of The Declaration of Independence. Giving them something that belongs to someone else violates the goal of The Declaration.
Think of the war on Afghanistan, the war on Iraq, and the war on Vietnam. Was the legitimate function of government being exercised then? Whose rights were being secured? In the cases of Medicare and Social Security, or the war on poverty, or the war on drugs, whose rights are being secured?
How can we be true patriots when we base our opinions on experts and not simply think logically through an issue. Experts like generals on TV were consulted on whether to wage war. That’s like asking a drug pusher if he advises use of heroin.
In the cases of the social programs, experts have an easy time promoting the idea of taking from the haves to give to the have-nots. It seems simple until you think logically about the causes of dependency and the long-term consequences, such as fatherless families, crime, and poverty (as a result of discouragement of initiative through the blaming of others for our plight). But as long as we simply take the advice of experts we don’t need to put on our thinking caps.
When the U.S. Military was closing in on Tora Bora and Osama bin Laden it became clear that his capture or death would spell an end to another chapter of profitable war. Saddam Hussein then was touted as a threat with his “weapons of mass destruction,” even though he was a sworn enemy of bin Laden. Tora Bora was abandoned without success, to be revisited when Iraq failed to present a profitable war.
Support for all these expensive boondoggles is the opposite of patriotism. Skepticism is the essence of it. The Constitution very clearly forbids congressionally undeclared wars and social programs. Yet it still allows for elections. Why? Because the authors assumed that a tradition of informed and logical thought would prevail when they were gone. They thought that people who saw their hard-earned money squandered on unconstitutional projects waged to steal, not secure their rights, would vote for politicians who would defend them.
When you think of patriots, think of people like Julian Assange, Daniel Hale, and Robert Malone . These people all tried to expose vast amounts of theft from the American people and were vilified successfully instead of recognized for their sacrifices. Hermann Goring, one of the architects of the rise of Adolf Hitler, made it plain how people can be manipulated, “All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”
Our reliance on experts and lack of interest beyond that has cost each man, woman, and child in America $6,060 only from the war on Afghanistan. Patriots like Barbara Lee of California who was the only congressperson to vote against giving the president the power to declare war, need to be recognized and held up as role models for us all.
alternativebyfritz 
This is a quite good compendium of what, at least for the American population, patriotism is not. I was reading to see if your succinct definition of patriotism was stated. I did not apprehend a pithy definition of “patriotism” from what you wrote. A lot of what patriotism ISN’T, but not much about what it is (unless one is required to infer or deduce that definition).
Today’s U.S. government has morphed into an institution that is determined to develop a population incapable of forming any rational or logical opinions, let alone even possessing just a modicum of thinking skills. The hierarchical personages who manage the government’s affairs and the bureaucracy they have created have been very effective at using diversity, multiculturalism, non-European immigration, and the recently instituted pandemic diversions (with Covid’s concomitant restrictions and rules) to ensure that any semblance of a former U.S, “thinking” population becomes so diluted with robotic, obedient, compliant, and government subservient hordes that any sense of individualism and bestowed freedoms is completely compromised.
Our political leaders at the highest levels of the federal government possess an intrinsic arrogance that exists only as a cloak to cover for their low IQ mentalities. It seems that, today, no matter how many times one deals with the behavior of these “leaders,” the level of stupidity is always astonishing.
Many of us with normal intelligence embraces a misconception about stupidity in these mental Lilliputians. We want to believe that, somehow, our vacuous lawmakers are aware of generally accepted logic and the rational, logical methods of getting things done, but simply ignore or overlook them for some rationale, typically an egocentric reason. But that’s not it at all. The fact is that the stupid have their own personal systems of “logic” and “rationality” that appear perfectly workable and acceptable to them, systems that they follow religiously in much the same way that you might follow an instruction sheet for putting together, say, a piece of furniture. The stupid have a worldview that doesn’t include any free-thinking individuals. The problem is that it’s at acute right angles to the actual universe as it exists. And If one subnormal is bad enough, consider what an entire U.S. Congress or a government bureaucracy can do. We have been witnesses to the outcomes of their escapades for the last 60-years, since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Immigration Act of 1965 (the Hart-Celler Act).
For me, patriotism means individuals or groups of people who will abide by and persevere to ensure that the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights stand for the tenets espoused by their authors. Additionally, patriotism for me consists of a group or a single individual who will hold accountable those members of government who violate their political office oaths, insofar as upholding the rights of the U.S. citizenry and the U.S. Constitution. And yes, not only can our political leaders be that stupid and self-serving so as to ignore the foundational principles of our society, but they are, and have been, and will be, world without end.
Today, the doctrines and maxims set forth by the founding documents of the United States are ignored by every branch of government and the judiciary. Patriotism also means knowing the country’s history and embracing the lessons from those chronicles, both the good and bad deeds that were accomplished or perpetrated. Like having no borders, a country without a history and, today, one without a common language, is no country at all.
My view of patriotism no longer exists in the United States. My country’s future will clearly be that of a single political party, composed of moronic leftists, which will rule with an iron fist. We are seeing, today, the final nail in America’s coffin being hammered into place. Close the lid on the sarcophagus that contains, at one time in the past, a freedom-loving country named America, and shovel in the last pile of dirt.