Slate columnist Michael Lind criticized the identification of the leading character's actions with patriotism. Specifically, Lind stated that "this movie is deeply subversive patriotism. Indeed, patriotism is a concept that neither the screenwriter...nor the director...seems to understand". He further wrote that "the message of The Patriot is that country is an abstraction, family is everything. It should have been called The Family Man".[40]
In contrast, historian Ben Rubin argues that because the American Revolution was a conflict that as often pitted neighbor against neighbor—Whigs (advocates of Revolution) against Tories (loyalists to Britain)—as it pitted nascent Americans against the British, many people stayed neutral until goaded into taking a stand in reaction to perceived atrocities.[41] From this perspective, Benjamin Martin's joining of the militia becomes, according to commentator Jon Roland, a deep patriotism that "shows them being called up, not as an act of an official, but by private persons aware of a common threat...[reacting to a] militia duty to defend one another