A better patriotism

Here’s a thought. Martin Bento says in comments:

Particularly in the US, where the country is almost synonymous with the government (most countries have existed under various governments), it makes people feel that the government may be wrong, but its motives must be good.

Where the country is almost synonymous with the government is the part that made me think. Patriotism in the US is constructed on an unbroken chain of governance since the inception of the country - with a possible exception made for the Civil War? - with the added weight that the country itself did not exist prior to the formation of that governance mechanism. This leads many Americans to view that governance mechanism as one of the essential attributes of the country, as well as locating it in the mostly unquestioned belief that the American Way (of life, of politics, of economics) is the right way of doing things.

Other countries lack this unbroken chain of governance. Moments of interruption, whether long or short; complete and wholesale changes in regime; a story as a nation that goes back further than the story of the country itself; borders that change and shift with historical fortune; competing subnational narratives within the attempt to construct a new patriotism. All of these things influence the nature of patriotism (read: nationalism?) in the rest of the world (compared with the New World, and particularly compared with the US) and consequently give us a radically different historical perspective on issues like governmental authority.