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"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" - Samuel Johnson
People who reference this quote often think that Johnson was deriding patriotism altogether. In truth, he thought that patriotism purely as a love for one's country was indeed a good thing.
The quote was actually about the very thing you discuss, the scoundrels who resort to FAKE patriotism for the good of their own faction or party, self-interest and all kinds of other juicy ulterior motives.
My own view is that the scoundrels are the ones who claim that patriotism is whatever THEIR ideology says it is - that anyone who disagrees with them is a traitor. Throw it into the whole marketing package so that you're not a patriot unless you bought into Ronald Reagan as the Marlboro Man in 1980, or wet your pants over Dubya's top gun aircraft carrier landing.
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