Rafael Behr (If this is liberation why does it feel so dull and joyless?, 21 December) has not convinced me that patriotism is anything other than nationalism lite. Human beings need a home, a sense of familiar place, a locus, but this place may be something much smaller than the modern, militaristic nation state.
I identify far more as a citizen of London, or indeed my local borough, than as “British”, and although I feel lucky to live in a country still more relaxed and peaceful than many – most – countries in the world, I belong to only one of many “discrete cultural communities” in these islands and find it difficult to identify with so-called “British values” when on the one hand they are defined as “the Queen and a cup of tea” or on the other as “democracy, fairness, respect” (definitions elicited from bystanders in a BBC report). I do identify with the latter, but because those values are international and universal values, or should be.
“I vow to thee my country” is a Christian hymn, written in Edwardian Britain and set to beautiful music by Gustav Holst. Its third line runs: “The love that asks no questions” and that is not the kind of love any nation state should ask of any of its citizens. Our duty as citizens is precisely to ask questions of the nation state and always to remember that there is a higher morality than “My country, right or wrong”.
Elizabeth Wilson
London
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters
