and, if you look through history, there's a common thread, all over the world - a country, as we see it in the world around us, is strictly a construction of the landholding class, which is primarily rooted in family allegiances, coming out of feudalism. historically, france was the land administered by the family that owned the land we called france, and changed based on what land that family did or did not own (due to warfare, infighting or marriage alliances) at any given time. the people that lived in france were the property of that landholding class, which is why they were forced to speak the same language as it. and, so it was in england and spain and russia and the other feudal countries, if less so in the less centralized realms, like "germany" and "italy", neither of which existed throughout most of history.
what we call a nation-state arose out of that, as a reaction to it, but remains a function of it. the slow expansion of democracy following the glorious revolution in england is great and everything, and necessary to build on if we want to get to communism in the end, but the point of it all was to act as a check on the landholding classes, because getting rid of them wasn't likely any time soon. we can't lose sight of the fact that the point is to get rid of them in the end and that this compromise can't be permanent.
so, i have no love of country, no romanticization of anything and attach no purpose to upholding the interests of the landed class. true democracy requires doing away with all of this as feudalistic and backwards.