"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism."
--George Washington, farewell address

"...I favor George Washington's implied distinction between genuine and pretended patriotism. This is like the difference between true and "fool's gold" democracy. But it is a much more puzzling distinction. The rhetoric of false democracy has beclouded the atmosphere for ... decades. The rhetoric of false patriotism is older than the nation itself. It was always used by the classic fascists. It is a favorite artifice of friendly fascism today.
After serving two terms as president, Jefferson explained.... "Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."

...Some years ago, Francis W. Coker of Yale University put his finger on the divisive and exclusive patriots who "insist that the country must always be set above the rest of the world" and "in the name of patriotism conduct a virulent propaganda against economic and political measures of which they disapprove," including the admission of "undesirable" foreigners but also the free expression of dissident views in schools, churches, or the media. In his Militarism, USA, a sober critique based on years of experience in the U.S. Marine Corps, Colonel James A. Donovan identifies the dangerous patriot: "the one who drifts into chauvinism and exhibits blind enthusiasm for military actions. He is a defender of militarism and its ideals of war and glory. Chauvinism is a proud and bellicose form of patriotism ... which identifies numerous enemies who can only be dealt with through military power and which equates the national honor with military victory."

"Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."
--Adolf Hitler

"There is no subjugation so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom, for in that way one captures volition itself."
--Jean-Jacques Rousseau