patriotism

[low_delta]

I got two e-mails tonight, that had political themes.

One was a collection of quotes about patriotism. Like these:

Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above
principles. ~George Jean Nathan

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other
countries because you were born in it. ~George Bernard Shaw

A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by
common hatred of its neighbours. ~William R. Inge

I consider myself a patriot, but only so far as to say that this is a great country. I will not hold it above other nations. I will do my to keep this nation as it was intended to be, because that is why it is great. It is not great because Americans live here, it is great because it made us who we are.

I dislike the sort of patriots that the speakers above complained about. Those "patriots" are just blind flag wavers. America: love it or leave it.

The other e-mail was a grouping of "support our troops" messages. The last part was a photo of a Marine unit standing in a formation spelling out "9-11 - WE REMEMBER." You know that in order to be effective, our troops must have an enemy that they feel is worth fighting, right? Given that the proud troops pictured were in Iraq, what does that say about them? What did Iraq have to do with the attacks of September eleventh? Remember after U.S. troops entered Bagdad, and one guy placed the flag over the face of a statue Saddam? What was the story of that flag? It had come from the Pentagon on 9-11-01.

The message sent by our troops is clear: you ragheads better not fuck with us, and if you don't we're going to eradicate you.

Comments

[banana.livejournal.com]

Patriotism make me think "Where are all the crap countries?" Perhaps there is somewhere that just *nobody* is proud to be from...

Flag waving is on the increase here. English sport fanatics have finally noticed that England has a flag and that it's not the Union flag that people used to wave on the odd occasions that people used to get the urge. This is good, because the only group who previously waved the Union flag was racists and now we don't feel bad about it, but it's also bad because flag waving is pretty pointless.

The down side of having a clearly defined nation (a written constitution, a short and well understood history, etc.) is that it does lead to the "love it or leave it" attitude - you know what the "it" is. In an undefined country (and we're undefined in an alarming number of ways) you have to reach a concensus, or at worst sweep the issues under the carpet, and no one's getting worked up over the big idea because we don't have one.

Hi Kevin

[cherie.livejournal.com]

After reading your very thought provoking post the words 'gang mentality' came to mind. Also the word superbowl since it seems each country is like a national football league, always pumping themselves up to be the best, when in theory all the team members are made up parts of each other (just like we all came from different parts of the world to make up who we are).

Surprisingly, my brother did not use the word patriotism at when he told me on the phone the other day that my nephew had signed up to join the Marines because "well, you know he always liked guns".

I guess there is nothing else to say.

Re: Hi Kevin

[emschin.livejournal.com]

Your comment about the superbowl is right on target as far as I'm concerned. After 9-11 when everyone insisted on flags (or you weren't patriotic) I thought of fans of the Green Bay Packers. One year I bought a Chicago Bears jersey for my daughter (because she was a Bears fan) and the other customers kind of growled.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what I was thinking. Sometimes I see little difference between flag waving "patriots" and flag waving Packer fans.

[emschin.livejournal.com]

I saw an article on a group in Canada who had moved there at the time of the American Revolutionary War. They wanted to remain part of England and moved rather than become part of a new country.

[aki-dreaming.livejournal.com]

Thank you.
Important to remember.
It's really all a matter of perspectives and unless I'm looking at a map I can't see the borders.

[aki-dreaming.livejournal.com]

Grok.
I'm otherwise out of intelligent things to say at the moment.