The need to feel like you belong with your linguistic group or religious group or any other clique is a big one, and the need to .
preserve this is even greater. In school, if a boy or girl is excluded from their friends, it is devastating. With countries, if citizens feel that they aren't aloud to live the way they wish, the same feeling occurs. School children fight, and countries go to war. Count the headstones. It's horrifically real.
Well I guess I'll focus on some good aspects of nationalism before I shift back to the bad. Nationalism can be a very useful tool. It never hurts anybody at all to dream of living in a country where their culture is preserved, and it is a right to be able to look into this even further. Nationalism can be what establishes healthy pride in a country, makes friendly competition that much more exciting, and it defines the unique cultural groups that make up this thriving planet. No one can tell me that the Olympics would be better of if Team Canada's hockey teams didn't stand to their anthem. It gives not only a feeling of belonging, but also unity. As I was also mentioning, though, it can be over used and abused. War is taking it to the extremes, but it is right to place as much blame on the people denying the right to separate as it is to put it on this who rebel. We were given mouths for a reason, but sometimes people fail to use them rationally to solve their problems. It can be taken too far, when it turns .
into discrimination against groups unlike your own. People turn it into a guaranteed privilege rather than an accessible right.
I can not sit here and say that nationalism is outdated. How can the need for a country that cherishes your own culture be outdated? People sometimes believe that separatists want to separate just for the fun of it, do things their own way, as if it were payback for bad treatment. No matter what alternatives there are, nationalism would not even be an issue if we could all just get along and accept each other.