People do not have to be divided in order “…to belong to a particular place, to a culture, to a story.” Each individual does come from a unique place, is immersed in their own culture, and is the author of their story. It is the individual’s right to either limit or expand the audience to which they choose to share their story with. To hinder this possibility, to create divides, is only to impede growth and progress. We gain ideas, inventions, innovations and so much more from interacting with other people, people who are different. If everyone was alike how boring would our lives truly be?

The term global citizen has been tossed around for many years now and does not have a unique definition; rather it is more of an idealistic concept of what could be when people reach out and explore other people’s stories, cultures, and communities.

We make our friends. We make our enemies. God makes our neighbors.
G.K. Chesterton

I like this post a lot. Here’s a key notion:
A prevailing trend of the modern world has been to create efficient administrative states that require relatively little, except taxes, from their citizens. The isolating, atomizing tendencies of the modern administrative state and of globalized capitalism may foster unhealthy forms of community.

I would add that the prevailing pleasures of us first-worlders are of the consumer variety, which demand little more than money from the individual (although it’s often more than a “little” money!). In each case it seems that freedom and pleasure are equated with abdication of responsibility, lack of obligation. In each case we see money as a universal solvent.

On the Left, there’s a lot of instinctive cringing at “patriotism,” but who could find fault with the definition you provide here: a love of place and a desire to improve it? Call me a patriot, then.

(But they had to call it the “Patriot Act”!)

Unfortunately, it’s those definitions that trip us up. We learn most definitions from alienated discourses, not from serious intellectual engagement. In many cases we lack the very infrastructure for serious intellectual engagement. We lack the community to engage in. The point is not to find the “true” definition, but to simply care about the definition, to take responsibility for it.

Am I wrong?

As you say, “The capacity to discriminate, to differentiate, to understand subtle distinctions is a necessary condition for judgment.”
I do not think that you are being inconsistent, I think we’re just starting from slightly different definitions of nationalism and patriotism. I’m starting at mine and ending at yours.

I also know that you do not advocate abstract ties to language, culture, or ethnicity, and I’d have to think you would have problems with Somin’s definition of patriotism as well. After all, loyalty to lofty ideals is far from loyalty based on habits and traditions.

The question begins with what makes for human flourishing. In this case, to “divide” refers to belonging to something particular and to take pride in it the same way that one takes pride in anything that belongs to him–by seeking to preserve it and improve it.

Peace is a laudable goal, but not the highest. If we gain peace by vacating our lives of spiritual meaning, by losing the personal, cultural, and historical connections that remind us that we inhabit a story that is not primarily about ourselves, then we lose too much. No, the goal is not peace or unity, it is to support the very cultural resources that give our lives meaning beyond our self-interest, narrowly understood. If we do not create healthy communities then it is likely that we will create very unhealthy ones that draw people together not by habit and custom, history and memory, but by ideology–cold, heartless, deracinating ideology.