on the patriotic virtue of its citizens. ForTaylor, this virtue consists in the identification with others in a commonenterprise and a shared fate. People become freely motivated to observetheir political obligations because such obligations are shared in common,and this sharing produces a strong emotional attachment both for onescompatriots and for the institutions they share. He writes:The bond of solidarity with my compatriots in a functioning republic is basedon a sense of shared fate, where the sharing itself is of value. This iswhat gives this bond its special importance, what makes my ties with thesepeople and to this enterprise peculiarly binding, what animates my virtu,or patriotism.[9] Similarly, Alasdair MacIntyre treats patriotism as a virtue tothe extent that one is a member of a community and values that particularcommunitys merits and achievements: "What the morality of patriotism at itsbest provides is a clear account of and justification for the particularbonds and loyalties which form so much of the substance of the morallife."[10] More explicitly than Taylor, however, MacIntyre identifies thenation as the particular object of our patriotic sentiment. A patriot mustbe unconditionally and uncritically committed to the nation. That is, "thenation conceived as a project, a project somehow or other brought to birth inthe past and carried on so that a morally distinctive community was broughtinto being which embodied a claim to political autonomy in its variousorganized and institutionalized expressions."[11] MacIntyre argues that thenation so conceived must be exempt from rational, impartial criticismprecisely because patriotism is, by definition, partial; it expresses aparticular, irrational, affectual bond with others who are committed to thenational project.[12] Rational criticism of the nation, according toMacIntyre, renders our social and moral ties too open to dissolution,[13]and this ...
