National Pride

I think it does a little of both, if there's a strong morale and sense of patriotism in the country then the nation will prosper (or atleast the people will be content). In contrast, patriotism can also lead people into not seeing the elephant in the room. I guess it all depends on the actions the country is hiding (the elephant) and it also depends on the world view of the nation (the room).

Personally, I believe pride almost always leads to a lessening of clear, logical thinking. It prompts a great number of terrible actions taken by both individuals, and groups, and the world would be better off dropping this silly notion of being "proud" of your sex, race, religion, sexual preference, country of origin, etc.

That is not to say having self-respect is bad, but pride, to me, always suggests allowing those feelings to override logic.

Of course it is necessary and healthy to be proud of one's nation to the extent that the nation is prideworthy.

Beyond that we get to that broad zone where patriotism becomes jingoism and pride in the motherland becomes brainwashed flag-saluting.

When it comes time to defend your country, then pride helps a lot. You may just be proud of simply being born there, but when the other option is death or subjugation, then what's wrong with pride. But when people turn that pride outwardly and start attacking other countries with the justification that "My country is better than yours and I'm proud of it", then that is a problem. The rational people will lose their pride after a few years of being the agressor, and the only ones who will remain blindly proud will be the more emotional people.

The answer is yes.

All nations eventually fall.

Pride comes before a fall.

I think that having pride in a country is necessary for a nation. I think that the people living there need to have pride and a sense of patriotism to the nation. It's like owning a home: You take pride in the home therefore, you keep it clean and neat for visitors. That is how pride in your nation should work. You should feel that you are a nation of individuals who can set an example. You keep it clean and open for those in need of refuge. You give freedom to all who enter, and have a sense of pride in helping others potentially have a better life. That is what having pride in your nation should entail. Not blindly going into conflicts always assuming your nation is the only one that could be right. That is called ignorance.

Pride in one's country is healthy, blind faith in self-righteousness is what inhibits logical thinking.

Pride in ones country is necessary and healthy just as pride in oneself or pride in ones work. If you are not proud of yourself, change. If you are not proud of your work, improve. And the same is true for ones nation.

There's a line between healthy pride in oneself, one's work or one's country and delusion, jingosim or simple ignorance. It's hard to contribute meaningfully to the global conversation if you don't believe you're worthy of taking part. But it's dangerous to believe your worth exceeds someone else's based solely upon your own self-estimation. What we need more of is personal responsibility, the kind that comes with wanting to be the best person / nation one can be, not simply a better person / nation than someone / somewhere else.

Pride is an essential componant for self respect, pride is what prevents sloppiness in our work & our daily lives.
It's pride which retains our personal standards & therefore when we are proud of our country, we will always strive for & attain higher levels of respect abroad, only when we are proud of our country will we receive that respect.

Only 'false pride' [ boastful, blind following ] comes before a fall, the Brits are not given to this.

Pride in one's own nation is very healthy. Pride means that you have a stake in your nation, that you are responsible for your nation. Having pride means that you work to better your nation, you strive for excellence of your nation.

However, pride alone is not healthy. Pride and a healthy dose of humility are the best combination. Be proud of what your nation does well, and have the humility to understand what your nation can do better. Pride without humility leads to blind allegiance and extreme nationalism, both of which are unhealthy for your nation and the world.

To paraphrase Dinesh D'Souza, you should love you country because it is lovely.

Having pride in one's country is indeed healthy for a nation, but it can also inhibit logical thinking about a nation's actions. The main factors contributing to this inhibition are ignorance and vested interests. The main vested interest is cost. People are more likely to act illogically if they perceive that such actions incur lower cost compared to logical actions.

Nations themselves have outlasted their usefulness. The world is essentially one large nation now, and the concept of "pride" in arbitrary borders is one of the two issues that has the world so divided at all times - the implication that someone born in what we call America is better than someone born in the region called France, etc.

Pride can't be coerced or forced, but many (most) countries try it anyway, and this in itself is something to be ashamed of.

Think about it - Very few people actually choose the nation where they live. People born in the US tend to stay in the US. How many times will be hear that "America is the greatest country in the world" from people pho have never even been to Canada?

Having national pride most definitely inhibits logical thinking about the nation's actions.

If one's nation is living by its principles and relating justly and peaceably among the other nations of the world, there's good reason for pride. If a nation disregards or trashes its founding values, however, and threatens the community of nations, it'll cause great shame and eventually a failure of the state.

It's good to recognize and be proud of things that your country has done to benefit mankind. It is essential to also acknowledge and try to correct the things which have harmed mankind.

Bill Hicks, the greatest comedian who ever lived, said it best. When asked if he was proud to be an American he said "My parents @!$%#ed there. OK, I'm proud." I think that sums it up nicely.

Pride in one's nation is not a bad thing if the nation propagates good and carries with it an innate sense of the moral/ethical responsibility.

Pride and love of FREEDOM are healthy, and in fact, almost necessary to ensure liberty!

Pride and love of the GOVERNMENT, the STATE, or POLITICIANS leads to nothing more than a subservient population, endless taxation, an out of control government that lies, spies and wages war, and much more tyranny.

Freedom should be our goal. government is simply a method to achieve it. This was stated so clearly in the Declaration of Independence:

...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...
...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...

Pride in yourself isn't necessarily arrogance, and pride in one's country isn't necessarily militant supremacism. Obviously, it has a lot of drawbacks (genocide) but it can draw people together, helping a populace work for the common good and betterment of all. It can overcome destructive polarization seen in many nations today. A liberal national identity can even enable absorption of immigrants whose patriotism outweighs their otherness.

So when is nationalism sufficiently liberal? There's been a lot of social-political-historical research into that. There will be right-wing nationalists in any country, but the presence of two things can trump that. First, appropriate checks on government power. It wasn't that no Germans spoke out against Hitler, but he sent them to concentration camps. Second, there must be a populace willing to fight to maintain these freedoms for everyone.

Given those conditions, pride is one's country is not only necessary, but decidedly good.

I think there is a distinct difference between pride and fanaticism.

Pride in one's country is healthy and helps solidify the people and help them reach a greater place in the world. However, pride that spills over into hubris is destructive and leads to a certain amount of ignorance about the nation's actions - and can eventually be the downfall of a nation and its people.

It is a fine line that must be tread delicately.

To love one's country gives one a sense of belonging and a desire to make that country better. But that shouldn't come at the cost of another country. We have to recognize that we're not just members of our national community - but of our international one - and that we owe the same respect to our global neighbors as to our local ones.

I have great pride in the american experiment and am very critical of this current admin and even with the lows and sometimes extreme lows of this country i still think it is the greatest in the world. We could change some thing but who couldnt. Now is my logical thinking impaired? Well you probably need to ask someone a little less biased, because I am always right and logic only seems to support that fact.

It's both necessary and healthy if deserved.

Having pride in something should not inhibit logical thinking, whether it's your nation or your '65 Mustang Fastback.

These ideas are mutually exclusive.

The two are not mutually exclusive. One can think logically about the nation's actions AND have a healthy pride for the country.

First of all, the question is bizarrely framed - as if logical thinking regarding a nation and national pride are mutually exclusive. They aren't, by default. But most of the time, they are.

To answer the question - yes, national pride is necessarily healthy for the maintenance of the nation as a concept, but is inherently detrimental to the members of that nation. Calling an act that undermines, among other things, the right to privacy "The Patriot Act" is perhaps the most storied example - by implying that arguing against such a law is unpatriotic, Bush defined America's mutually exclusive values of logical thinking and national pride. Only in America do we consider the people working hard to make our country a better, freer place "unpatriotic". Sickening.

Having pride in a country anymore is a strange thing. I never knew what the US had until 9/11 happened, and now the obscene amounts of pride have made me rather nauseous. Living in a country like Ecuador, where they have a whole lot "less," I've found that pride is something much more tangible. Yet, it really only foments itself when an event such as the World Cup is going on. I really don't think it amounts to anything other than "Mine is bigger than yours." I think we will soon have to have pride in things such as Microsoft or Mercedes Benz much more than any country. As globalization happens, do borders even matter?