NEW YORK -- Why are politicians so often regressive? Several years ago the Japanese government legally ritualized the singing of the national anthem and the raising of the flag. Now it is intent on changing a 60-year-old education law to codify patriotism.
Like "love of mankind" (jinruiai, hakuai), "patriotism" (aikokushin) carries with it something at once facile and forced. Worse, unlike "love of mankind," it can't escape a taint of ill repute.
Samuel Johnson famously pronounced in 1775 that "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." In jotting down this apothegm, Johnson's friend and biographer, James Boswell, felt it necessary to add that the doctor meant only the "pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self-interest," but not "a real and generous love of our country."