Dialogue: Why patriotism leaves me cold

By KATE BELGRAVE

I remember well the first time that I realised that there was absolutely no point to patriotism and that most people, even people from countries renowned for great nationalist spirit, were cynical in their use of said spirit.

I was about 21, travelling through America and headed for a northern youth hostel. The hostel was romantically positioned in the middle of a little island some miles off the north-western coast. Getting there involved about 40 bus changes and ferry sailings.

The island was only just worth it. Isolated, wet and freezing cold, it was a thankless end to a hopeless day. Still, it was with a great sense of achievement that we Americans, New Zealanders, Australians and Canadians poured off that boat.

We were ambushed by the hostel's concierge. A large, cheerful lady, she broke the ice by offering round a flask of hot chocolate and a bag of Mars bars. Having thus painted herself as a harmless, motherly type, she moved in for the kill. She asked if any of us would like to spend the night camping out in the replica covered wagons that she - I'm sure her version of events was accurate - had personally towed from Texas and affixed to the ground with her bare hands.

Clearly, a night inside a covered wagon was considered a special treat. "These are just like the wagons that the Ingalls family pushed West in ..."

Needless to say, you didn't see the Americans for dust the moment covered wagons were mentioned. They all scrammed up to the hostel proper, to nice, warm dorms from which it was impossible to see the covered wagons from any angle.

The New Zealanders, Canadians, Australians stayed put. We even tried to outdo each other with replica-covered-wagon insights.

"This would be the kind of thing that the Donner-Reed families travelled in, eh?" one of our group volunteered. The fate of the Donner-Reed party was one of the many obsessions of Joan Didion, the American essayist whose insightful, albeit plot-free, works were then considered compulsory reading for anyone planning a trip to America's West Coast. The fact that the Donner-Reed families got lost, ate each other and/or froze to death, despite spending time in a covered wagon, simply made the thing seem more exotic.

Anyway, any lingering doubts we had about staying the night in the wagons were dispelled by a handsome, mild-mannered, all-American boy who came up to us a little later, looking concerned. He asked us if we'd be all right outside in the cold. True to colonial form, we found this question, coming from an American and all, a bilious insult. So we dug in.

I'm sure you can imagine my horror when, the next day, I caught our hostess and the all-American boy laughing together. This may have been sheer coincidence, of course.

Nonetheless, it occurred to me that they were in cahoots - that she got antipodeans and other colonials into the wagons by thrilling them with patriotic stories of how the West was won in them, and he kept us in the wagons by insinuating that non-Americans didn't have what it took to stay.

Doubtless, the cold had made me paranoid. Still, it suddenly seemed possible that these people knew that overseas visitors were vulnerable to props that spoke of America's great nationalist spirit, and to insults.

And there you have it - the end of innocence. Well, maybe not. Let's not get too dramatic about it.

It was just the first time that I worked out that Americans don't take their image, their patriotism, their history as seriously as the rest of us think they do. Which isn't particularly important. It's just that I remember being horrified at the discovery that some Americans prefer making a buck to flying the flag.

So, why don't we think that way? Why don't we ask Australia if it minds if we join them - become Australians? What have we got to lose, apart from the rough end of the exchange rate and an ongoing fantasy about beating them at cricket? Weird.