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I am an expatriate. I belong to the diaspora of emigrants, exiles, strangers who have lived as displaced persons from the place they consider home. But am I a patriot? Many back home are sure I am not because the experience of exile has led me to question many of the comforting certainties around which the home society coheres. Maybe part of the blame is on me for failing to make the message of exile comprehensible. But again the blame for this failure in communication may not be entirely on the exile and on one's distance from the homeland. The blame, at least partly, may belong to elements in the home society which want to protect vested interests, to monopolize benefits and profits, for which the comforting certainties I noted above serve very conveniently as the «pleasing illusions», whose important and necessary function for human society Edmund Burke was the first to point out. These comforting certainties or pleasing illusions as a rule include patriotism, the feeling of belonging, the love of country. For most ordinary people this is a genuine feeling, a part of their existence, a framework of meaning that lends life one of its purposes, besides self and family. And understandably people do not like to feel this framework of meaning disturbed or questioned because this creates confusion and discomfort. These ordinary patriots are genuine and sincere in their feeling and it is among them that heroes emerge, as it happened in Cyprus for instance in 1955-1959. There are also those who preach about patriotism and develop militant rhetoric about it, a rhetoric that includes a considerable element of hatred against enemies, real or imaginary, and especially against those among the expected patriots who do not fall in line, who ask questions, who may entertain a different conception of patriotism. We can more or less take it as a rule that the more militant the rhetoric the more questionable its motivations are. We can also take it as a rule that no heroes emerge from the ranks of rhetorical patriots. They want others to sacrifice themselves but they want to live on to enjoy the fruits of patriotism in the home society. It is these rhetorical...