One of the signatures in my profile is a quote from Giuseppe Mazzini, Italian nationalist and staunch Republican and Democrat.
This is it:
''God has given you your country as cradle, and humanity as mother; you cannot rightly love your brethren of the cradle if you love not the common mother.''
Speech, July 25, 1848, Milan, Italy.
This is an excellent paper.
http://ssai.interno.it/download/allegati1/instrumenta_29_11_viroli.pdf
It is too long for me to translate the whole thing, but I will make a quick, poor attempt at a rough translation of some of the analysis of Mazzini's views.
For Mazzini, the defense of liberty is the supreme obligation. The moral obligations toward humanity come before any obligations to country. Before being citizens of a particular country, we are all human beings. National barriers cannot be invoked to justify an evil morality: the voices of suffering people can still be listened to...However great the cultural differences, the love of liberty makes understanding possible. The suffering of other people may not have the significance for us that it does for them, we can understand it only in part, but this doesn't impede us from participating in their struggle, if we have in our hearts the love of liberty. The love which sustains our commitment to the liberty of our own people sustains also the commitment to defend human dignity.
For Mazzini, there is no contradiction between national politics and international politics. Both must take their inspiration from the love of liberty. Mazzini judged intolerable the situation where the European powers, in the name of patriotism, venerated the liberty of their own countries as sacred, while they systematically violated the rights of other peoples. The love of country, unlike other passions, must proceed from the universal to the particular:
"Adoro la mia patria perché adoro la Patria;
la nostra libertà, perch'io credo nella Libertà;
i nostri diritti, perché credo nel Diritto"
I adore my country because I adore all countries, our liberty because I believe in Liberty, our rights because I believe in
the Right.
For Mazzini, proper patriotism stimulates a sentiment of solidarity with all the victims of all oppression.