 Some of these objections can easily be countered. Even if full-fledged patriotism does involve a belief in one’s country’s merits, it need not involve the belief that one’s country is better than all others. And the fact that a country is not a collection of “discernible individuals” and that the social ties among compatriots are “largely invisible or impersonal,” rather than palpable and face-to-face, does not show that it is unreal or imaginary. As Benedict Anderson, who coined the term “imagined community,” points out, “all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact … are imagined.” “Imagined community” is not the opposite of “real community,” but rather of community whose members have face-to-face relations (Anderson 1991, 6).