Artists and the Nation

My question is simply this: "Can an artist be nationalistic and still claim to be an artist?" After our discussion the other night about the place of melody in song I began to think more broadly about art. I do not claim to be an expert on the subject but as far as I know artists have had on significant dilemma, that being, should the artist reflect life as it is or as it should be? I do not see any tesion in the dilemma because what life should be is contained in life itself. Even, for argument sake, what life should be is only contained in the artists mind then it follows that the artists experiences have helped shape the ideal. Most of the experiences of the artist is shaped by sorroundings including people and environment or to put is more broadly the nation. Thus the artists' vision is shaped by the nation. But there are many nations containing various people and environments; is there anyway to translate between boarders?
This problem confronts both the artists' earlier dilemma: should the artist reflect the world as is or as it ought to be? The world as a whole is a patchwork of experiences sewn together by politics and economics; what the world ought to be is clearly anyones guess, although, the answer is most definately contained in politics and economics! So if the artist wants to somehow describe reality through art then it is imperitive that the result reflect the economic and/or political spheres. Every nation on the planet is tied it other nations politically as well as economically creating both a global political and economic system(s). The artist comes to a new dilemma: should the art reflect the reality of the nation or of the global systems? If the artist chooses a particular nation then the result will be myopic at best since the work would not be able to resonate to other people thus not reflecting upon reality as a whole.
I believe that we have entered into a new age where there are two common languages that the world shares: politics and economics. These two languages are highly complicated and translate very differently in different parts of the world. I believe that the role of the artist is to provide a forum whereby different people can come together and talk about different experiences only with a common language. Comming back to our discussion about melody I fear that melodies distract people from thinking about politics and economics etc. Music has shown to be very valuable and is often seen as a common language that cuts across barriers but it can also be easily highjacked rendering it useless. I believe that the role of the artist is much more important now than years past simply because of how politics and economics are controlled. In order to depict what is going on in a particular nation the artist needs the vantage point of the world and that is where the artist should be looking.