“Most people, at a crisis, feel more loyalty to their nation than to their class.”

—  Bertrand Russell

Source: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 8: Economic Power

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Bertrand Russell photo
Bertrand Russell 562
logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and politi… 1872–1970

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“People need to feel they belong to their country. Their need for community is most pronounced in a time of adversity. The people who are hit hardest by a depression, who feel that their children will suffer, look for loyalty from the rest of the community and the government. The present immigration programme, in its indifference to the feelings of the old Australians, erodes those loyalties. The multicultural policy, and its emphasis on what is different and on the rights of the new minority rather than the old majority, gnaws at that sense of solidarity that many people crave for.”

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“The people most affected by this are people of the middle class who, lacking the hard contact with realities of the masses and unable to attain to the freedoms of a leisured class, are more than all types of people given to trivial divisions and subdivisions of social rank and precedence.”

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Source: Beyond a Boundary (1963), p. 52

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“What is patriotism but love of the good things we ate in our childhood? I have said elsewhere that the loyalty to Uncle Sam is the loyalty to doughnuts and ham and sweet potatoes and the loyalty to the German Vaterland is the loyalty to Pfannkuchen and Christmas Stollen. As for international understanding, I feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than Mussolini… in food, as in death, we feel the essential brotherhood of mankind.”

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“A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (1967)
Context: A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.

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“Loyalty is weird, it kicks in when you dont expect it and the people who deserve loyalty least seem to get it the most.”

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“The theologian … will be engaged where nations, social classes, people struggle to free themselves from domination and oppression by other nations, classes, and people.”

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“National loyalty involves a love of home and a preparedness to defend it; nationalism is a belligerent ideology, which uses national symbols in order to conscript the people to war.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

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“Corporation executives, particularly the more prominent ones, and wealthy individuals generally decry the fact that the "New Deal" has fostered a feeling of class-consciousness among workers and low-income groups. Class-consciousness, however, is not new in this country, and it is most pronounced among those groups who decry it while not recognizing the phenomenon themselves. Common social backgrounds, common business interests, and common fears, prejudices, and loyalties create among those who possess wealth and economic power a strong and clear-cut feeling of membership in an economic and social class.”

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“Men are more often bribed by their loyalties and ambitions than by money.”

Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) American judge

United States v. Wunderlich, 342 U.S. 98, 103 (1951)
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“This country has shed more blood for the freedom of other people than all the other nations in the history of the world combined, and I'm tired of people feeling like they've got to apologize for America.”

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[Charles Hurt, New York Post, http://www.nypost.com/seven/08182007/news/nationalnews/not_yet_running_thompson_stumps_in_iowa_nationalnews_charles_hurt__washington_bureau_chief.htm, NOT-YET-RUNNING THOMPSON STUMPS IN IOWA, August 18, 2007, 2007-09-21, https://archive.is/5KYSw, 2013-06-30]

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