As sort of an aside: I'm living in England, and have a friend with a very (English) nationalistic bent - and he actually identifies far more with, say, our Indian or Polish communities than he does with the angry, ignorant, BNP style person that would have them "go home", as he sees them as having a far greater sense of their heritage than the baseball-cap wearing, drum-and-bass club-frequenting, take-away chomping thralls that have "lost all sense of their national identity".

How important any of this is is definitely open to debate (we argue about it all the time, actually), but he's a smart guy with an interesting point of view, and I think he serves as a good example of why you shouldn't automatically associate patriotism/nationalism with racism, protectionism and bigotry.

That said, though, he is probably quite an exception in this regard.