Mad Dogs and Englishpersons
oyceter's two excellent and thoughtful posts about nationality, identity, patriotism, nations, national symbols, etc, made me think about my own relationship to my national identity.
I'm English-English on both sides of the family going back for generations, though on one side it's South Kent seaside folk (tradition has it smuggling may have been involved) and on the other Lancashire nonconformists with Old Testament names. In terms of class and culture, this does place me at a considerable angle (something like 180 degrees) to many of the standard and implicitly at least small-c conservative invocations of Our National Traditions.
But, as I've argued when people bewail the conservative and Imperialist nature of much of what passes for British, especially English, national traditions, there are at least possibilities for constructing alternative and equally valid traditions of radical nonconformity, protest, resistance, etc, (as well as the history of philanthropy and voluntary action).
I'm not sure how far these are entirely a get-out-of-jail free card, since they developed as oppositional to the ruling hegemony (there has to be a thesis before there can be antithesis), not to mention the extent to which the individuals and groups involved benefited directly or indirectly from Empire and oppression of various kinds. (Rebecca West in, I think, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon has a rather cruel passage about comfortable middle-class revolutionaries who in the comfort of their Hampstead Garden Surburb homes were able to feel the thrill of rebellion while being protected by the British Navy and having confidence in the benignity of the police force.)
And a lot of those oppositional movements had elements that today we look upon somewhat askance, such as the standard assumptions of their day about race, class, gender, etc: though not always.
It's possible to find things in a national heritage that don't make one instinctively cringe. But nationalism in the sense that We (whoever We are) are Best, rather than that there are things about this culture I have inherited which are okay and even praiseworthy... no.
Though having said this, I find it very hard to imagine living anywhere else. But that's probably the force of long habit.