Reclaiming Patriotism - Hardcover

Amitai Etzioni is University Professor and Professor of International Relations at The George Washington University. He is the author of Happiness Is the Wrong Metric: A Liberal Communitarian Response to Populism and Avoiding War with China: Two Nations, One World (Virginia).

"This is a major contribution by a leading public intellectual to a central issue of our time. Etzioni attempts nothing less than a reconstruction of national citizenship as a bond between diverse social groups forming a country. The new patriotism is to be built on moral dialogue; it distinguishes itself from libertarianism and globalism and conceives nations as communities of communities. I particularly recommend Etzioni’s ideas about a new, nation-centered international order."

Drawing on a lifetime of sociological research and decades as a global communitarian leader, Amitai Etzioni boldly takes on the most fundamental political challenge of our time. With a wealth of evidence and practical examples, he traces a principled middle way between the extremes of globalism and nationalism. Agree or disagree, his call for a new patriotic movement is certain to spark productive public dialogue.

Etzioni’s new book, Reclaiming Patriotism, is in many ways a natural capstone to his career. No form of community matters more in his view than the nation. Love of country is the spring from which all other good things flow, from faith in democratic institutions to the spirit of compromise.... Etzioni doesn’t imagine that his ideas can overcome all obstacles. He sagely hopes that they can set in motion a set of centripetal forces to balance the raging centrifugal ones that are pulling America apart. That’s a start. Who else has a better way forward?