Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 107 Constructive Patriotism in Wartime

Copyright © 2013 Eyal Lewin. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribu-tion License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. As opposed to blind patriotism, a moderate form of constructive patriotism has been depicted in previous research and empirically observed. The major distinction between blind patriotism and constructive patri-otism lies in the latter’s capacity for criticism. Our research suggests, however, an additional distinction dividing constructive patriotism into two forms: one form is capable of practical judgment (hence, politi-cal constructive patriotism), and the other form is critical on grounds of ethical issues (hence moral con-structive patriotism). This study then seeks to examine which sort of patriotism prevails within society during wartime; of special interest, for that matter, are the suggested variations of constructive patriotism. Two diverse cases have been chosen in order to examine the reactions within a democratic society: The American case of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the Israeli case of the 2006 war in Lebanon. A substantive content analysis has been employed, surveying social processes through a variety of articles in an Ameri-can and an Israeli daily newspaper. The findings reveal that in both cases among expressions of construc-tive patriotism, those of political constructive patriotism form a vast majority and only a few of them ex