Treason's one thing - but people who turn on their team just because we've appointed the worst manager in the English league and are hovering dangerously near relegation - they're scum.

My club, right or wrong!

And I’m not saying you should. My point doesn’t depend on the assumption that it is better to kill foreigners than countrymen. I’m only pointing out that any course you take that involves killing someone who is not responsible for a problem is hard to justify on moral grounds. That could include enemy combatants as well. In the case of one country committing unjust or evil acts, the ‘enemy’ is the leader(s) of that country. The thrust of you action should be towards changing your leadership, not killing your fellow citizens.

On the other hand, by many (if not most) moral systems it is not considered wrong to show some favoritism. I find it hard to believe that you truly wouldn’t value the life of a friend more than the life of someone you have never met. Could you kill to protect your family? If you could, then you value their lives more than the stranger’s who is attacking them. Even if you could not kill, you would have to be totally indifferent to the outcome of a fight between your spouse and a mugger to say you truly valued both lives equally. If I felt the deaths of all the victims of the recent tidal wave as keenly as the death of a loved one, I would be dead or totally incapacitated right now. I’m not sure I’m convinced that it is possible for a human being to truly value all lives equally. There are logistical problems as well as emotional and philosophical problems. For the vast majority of people on earth, you have no way of knowing, from moment to moment, if they are alive or dead. There is no way you can value lives that you cannot be aware of. I’m not trying to criticize you beliefs, I’m only saying that universal love is more an ideal to aspire to than a fact that can be accomplished.

For the vast majority of Americans, I have no way of knowing, moment to moment, if they are alive or dead.

I am not disputing that I emotionally value the lives of loved ones and even acquaintances more than I emotionally value the lives of people I have never met. Emotional currency is not the only one that exists, however, and I do intellectually, economically, politcally, and a bunch of other ways value all people equally.

No, I wouldn't. If I valued the mugger's life equally to a spouse's, I value the money of my spouse in our hands. I can value the health of my spouse over the health of the mugger. I can value the freedom from prision of my spouse over the freedom from prision of the mugger. There is more to value in a person than just a life.

There is no currency in which I value the lives of Americans I have not met over Sweds or Indonesians I have not met.

Nationality is an arbitrary grouping, while people known to me is not an arbitrary grouping. Some people might argue that I should value people from my culture more than people from other cultures, because I understand and "know" those from my culture. But there are a heck of a lot of cultures out there I like better than my own, so if it's an evolution of ideas sort of thing, I'd be willingly treasonous.

Essentially, the idea of "my country, right or wrong" is abhorrent to me. I could have an interesting discussion about whether I would go to the same lengths to stop, punish, or a kill a friend I thought was doing wrong as I would go to stop a stranger from doing the same thing. Such a discussion about country just seems silly to me.