About love for the homeland and pride in the country

On the occasion of a wonderful holiday of victory over the Poles, which incredibly ralves us after 400 years, many have already talked about the pride that we should experience for the country. Well, they just owe - we do not have another option, except to be proud of it.

And the listeners actively on the Echo on the air called and interpreted with a reproach about the same thing: but how could you not be proud of? You need to love its country!

This formula pleased me very much. Because it capacally reflects the essence, sorry for the stamp, the substitutions of concepts. About the same way we do when we scold power, and they ask us: why do you not like Russia so much?

For those asking power - the synonym of the country. However, now it turns out that even not power, and only one person is the main synonym. So these citizens consider pride a synonym for love. Meanwhile, these concepts are different. Often not synonyms at all, but antonyms!

Love for the homeland (namely with a capital letter) is a feeling that arises naturally due to our birth here, and not somewhere else. A feeling that is very similar to the feelings experienced for their family, for parents, for brothers and sisters, to grandparents, for children and grandchildren. We did not choose them - we just have them. And there are no one closer. And we love them as they are. The son loves his mother, even if the mother of an alcoholic. He loves anyway, even if he curses in words. And his children who love and wait for his father, sitting in prison. Let not a drop of good and warmth from the pope fell. But he is a father, she is a mother.

So with the homeland. We did not choose her, but she made us in a sense, and our love is natural. But as for pride ...

It is not at all necessary to be proud of the alcoholic mother. Such pride is even unnatural. Because there is nothing to be proud of here. And the priority father is not a source of son more pride too.

Love is an irrational feeling, it arises on its own, just like that. And pride is quite objective. You need to be proud of something. And with all my sincere love for my country, I cannot answer the question of what exactly I should be proud of it today. Pushkin? Gagarin? Birch and river Volga? And from the new one? From what is right now? Poor old people? Closing hospitals and clinics? The fact that there is nothing to pay pensions, and many food have nothing to buy for? Thieves and crooks? Cops and judges? Oligarchs and embezzlers? Zhirinovsky and Mironov? The war that my country began with the fraternal people? What should I be proud of, tell me those who are ready to kiss the sand he walked on?

It is the feeling of love for the motherland that forces me to be proud of my country at this historical moment. I consider to be proud of our country today a crime, because in this case it is necessary to be proud of our whole meanness and squalor.

And those who are proud of all this, I would ask their favorite question: why do you not like Russia so much? Because to be proud of it today means not to love very much.

In the photo: Russia. Moscow. November 4. Participants in the procession dedicated to the Day of National Unity.
Photo: Sergey Fadeichev/TASS