It’s one of those “get out of jail free” aphorisms from the mid 1700’s that “𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗼𝘁𝗶𝘀𝗺 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗳𝘂𝗴𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗲𝗹”.
It doesn’t mean patriotism as such and as commonly understood but more, pretend patriotism. Patriotism being used as a cloak of self interest when a person has run out of other arguments to justify their position.
I think this is in need of an update.
In the 21st century the aphorism should be, “𝗥𝗮𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗺 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗳𝘂𝗴𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗲𝗹”
Loosely defined, that means once again, when caught short and a person can’t justify their position, an accusation of “racist” or “racism” is deployed to shut the argument down. Afterall, no one wants to be labelled or thought of as a racist, right?
We’re going to see a lot of this in coming months from the voice yes campaign.
You don’t agree with them, then you must be a racist. They don’t want to hear or be troubled by your logic, reasoning, rationale or justifications for voting no.
Such shallow accusations, like calling someone a Nazi and for the same reason, simply goes to demonstrate the dearth of their argument and their total lack of intellectual curiosity and their intellectual bankruptcy and laziness.
Fortunately, it’s got to such a point of overuse that it has lost its Impact.
After all, if everything and everybody is racist that nothing and nobody is racist.