Patriotism and what it means to be Amerikan

I don't feel pride, but I feel gratitude. I'm an immigrant, a 'naturalized' citizen, and I am so incredibly happy that this country took us in.

I look at photos in the newspaper with captions that say "Iraqis" or "Afghans" do this or that, and there's not a single woman in the photo. So right there, I'm glad I can drive, read, live alone, fuck who I want, drink when I want, eat what I want.

I'm also glad I didn't grow up in communist Czechoslovakia. I was at the library in downtown Los Angeles when Chernobyl happened. However they say it was contained, my relatives in the old country all have cancer.

Given the choice, I'd be a Mexican, Canadian, or Spanish instead. But I could never be an expatriate now. I have too many loved ones here and I don't want to see them only one or two times a year. Even if I had a private jet, I'd still live on the West Coast to be near my friends and family. I'm especially glad we didn't settle any place that has winter. I grew up driving to see snow and I like it that way.

I've got a take on this, being your neighbor. Not so much from looking over the fence but from living a life where everybody else has always been looking over the fence. From the time you're a kid and you try to a buy a comic book in a store and the American price is lower, that additional slap in the face when everything better is already American. You see a commercial for a toy you want, a cereal you want, the newest Pepsi with Lime, Mark Messier on the new Fries and Gravy potato chips--it's American first, and we get it sometime later. The shows and movies we watch are American, and most of the music we listen to, and the majority of clothing we wear.

You have baseball, we have hockey, but you still win the Stanley Cup year after year, even if your hockey team consists of 27 Canadians and three Russians. New York trumps Toronto, Starbucks trumps Tim Hortons. You ask ten Canadians who our Prime Minister is, and unless they're conservatives over fifty they haven't got a clue, while anyone can tell you who the President of the Unites States is, and if you turn on CBC news right now, it's likely to feature something about Obama. We watch the same late night talk shows as you, except we're out of the loop when Letterman is talking about how much New Jersey smells or making some gag on republicans.

Our national IQ average drops every year, because our most educated people can make more money if they cross the border. Our best actors go to Hollywood; Canadian film is as big a joke as the Canadian army, and yet neither are really bad, they just seemingly pale in comparison. It was Canada and France, I think, who got the world's shit together on the Rwandan genocide, but nobody here even knows what that is, they're all too worried about Iraq and Afghanistan because when the towers fell it hit us like that was our own backyard. I remember the entire school was shed of its educational regime in favor of absorbing the now, kids thrown into classes cooped up together because there weren't enough TVs and the teachers were silent, grave, and nobody said shit when we were watching the news broadcasts and seeing it again and again, the planes hitting the towers, living proof that the shit we read about in history books can happen here.

I've no grudge with my country, and no pride. I don't feel as you do, that this was never my homeland. I love the wilderness of Canada, it beats in tune to my soul, but of all the political and sociological issues, I'm somewhat indifferent. I think it's cool how fair a nation we are, what we've given back to the aboriginals, our free health care (I would have to read more to state a solid opinion, but I don't think I agree with the free health care by the way, because everybody pays the tax and too many abuse it while I haven't been to the hospital in about a decade and our doctors are border jumping as well because the pay is better for the best of them), our careful, considerate involvement in world affairs, our lack of crime, our pleasant respect for the flag we cut up and sew on backpacks, a silent sort of Canadian respect rather than blatant American pride.

I need only flip the perspective that all the Canadians I knew growing up had, of America, of it being bigger and better and stronger in every perceivable way, to see how a child growing up in the United States could so easily be consumed with pride for a Nation that never lets them down, be it in the Olympic Games or in war, or on the cover of a comic book when Superman is holding up an American flag. Canadian kids love Superman, too, but he don't love us back even though we made him.

I believe nationalism is all about what you put on your fries.

If ya love Superman so much then why don't ya marrryyyyy 'im!

I don't like Americans, they're just freakin' everywhere, work, the grocery, post office...

Hell, I can't even walk down the street without running into a damn American...

I actually can't stand Superman.

I think a lot of countries do things that benefit you some way or another, but it's the things that make us shameful, the things that make us not so full of pride. I like america for our democracy and the freedom to enjoy a lot of freedoms. Other than that, there is just so much that I would change.

I'm very fond of America. Not the sort of thing I'd be expected to post, I imagine, but yeah. I dig not the idealized version of the country, the Horatio Alger version where the streets are paved with gold and we're all good god-fearing protestants who pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, but the actual, material reality of the country. It's a massive, improbable mash-up of dozens and dozens of cultures and landscapes and people. It's almost a historical accident, comprising mainly immigrant groups who, one way or another, wound up here.

I have every intention of traveling the world, and living abroad for some time, but I've always just assumed I'd wind up spending most of my life in the US.

Sometimes I sit and wonder how cool it would have been to be there when Washington , Jefferson and Franklin were gettn there freedom on and fighting the Brits and hanging out in cool secret Mason clubs.
Then I come back to current times and shed a sad tear that nothing that cool happens anymore.

*American
*America

/endthread.

Secret meetings with lobbyists, back-room deals, secret off-shore bank accounts while publicly claiming to be for the common man while selling them out.... how is that not AWESOME!

It means I eat ketchup on everything and play beer pong, or that's what I gathered.

America is wonderful but I always think we're cheesy

i like getting a sticker when i vote. i like stickers, and voting.

I'm a patriot. I spent July 4th in our nation's capitol (Washington DC), took in a baseball game and watched the fireworks later that night. All I was missing was some apple pie to eat and a hate crime to commit. Had I done so, I would've been the most patriotic fucker ever.

George Washington never attended a single baseball game. So you got that over on him at least.

it's really a shame DC didn't provide free apple pie and homosexuals as part of some sort of tourist incentive. i mean, everybody likes apple pie, and everybody likes gays - be it for friendship & fun, participation, or beating.

they're leaving a real hole in their holiday festivities!!

Again, you're going to the wrong bars.

HA!

Hate crimes- making holidays fun since 1776!

Good thread, Eddy. And great posts Mirka and Night.

If it wasn't obvious, it'd be against my religion to consider any one government-controlled area better than any other government-controlled area. Though I wasn't always an atheist of the State. Back when I was a "conservative", I loved the ideas of the framers of the Constitution. Granted, the Articles of Confederation were a far better "governing" document, but no public school would ever teach you that. That said, I've never heard any romantic facts around the framing of the Articles of Confederation, so they may have been accidentally (or incidentally) pro-liberty.

So loving the ideas...I still do, but I was confused into believing the ideas were identical to the actions of the founders. There was limited consistency in the theory and practice of the founders, but limited consistency is better than no consistency, as is common among politicians.

Those ideas are imperfect as I find them self-destructive. To paraphrase Rothbard, 'the idea that limited government would remain as such is the truly utopian myth'.

Stefan Molyneux (a Canadian Anarchist) had a line that struck me as to the absurdity of nationalism, which he defined as a belief that one is superior to another due to the proximity of sanctioned dirt to a mother's vagina during birth. It truly is that ridiculous. I may find my backyard nicer than my neighbor's, but there is nothing intrinsically superior about it, I am the one who gives it value. The same goes for nations, states, and cities, I suppose. That you fancy the designated area does not mean its designation deserves credit. If some really nice section of Ethiopia became the 51st state, it would not all of the sudden become inherently fancier.

To me, it breaks down like this. Other people (not you) have designated some area to be ruled by whoever. The ruling class may be more or less tolerable, the land may be more or less favorable, and the company may be more or less enjoyable, but it is still just a man-made geographic designation. What has been done upon it cannot be changed, but what individuals choose to do with it need not be controlled.

I've said all I cared to starting this, but additionally, despite considering myself an Anarchist, I feel I'll forever be an American Anarchist. The constitutionally limited government ideal is what my beliefs sprouted from, and are as inescapable as the sex drive in an entity created by sex. I noticed that when I reference Molyneux earlier, I pointed out that he was Canadian even though his idea is that origin should not matter. It still does, unfortunately, so long as the public, the consumer of ideas, considers the origins of an individual's thoughts. The whole world without borders thing is mentally a ways off, despite that physically I'm ready for it now.

I guess you were in the ladies' bathroom when we got the menus, but I'm pretty sure that one place had apple pie

I love America but this country often frustrates me. When I was a child America was the world's superpower. We were ahead of everyone. Unfortunately everyone bought into the idea that manufacturing could support us forever and we're losing rank fast. I know so many uneducated people who have no incentive to do anything productive because they bought into our poisonous culture of "cool, tough, and lazy." To compound this problem is our two political parties which both contain a mismatch of so many constituents that appeasing them all is impossible. I believe Obama is doing his best, however, so I don't blame the current government for all the screw ups of Bush, Bush, and Reagan. I was full of optimism and hope in the nineties (I'm a huge Clintonite) and Obama is bringing that back.

It's easy to look at our problems and be discouraged but America is still a great place. In America there is a wildlife reserve close to pretty much everyone. I like to walk around the woods with my guitar and notebook and you just can't do that in Europe. Everyone owns everything there. Woodlands are usually owned by some Duke or Baron or whathaveyou. I think a reason a lot of people are conservative, especially those who live in rural areas, is because they don't want us to advance to the state the Europeans are in. They'd rather spend their life hunting and fishing and working with their hands.

I'm confident that when Obama leaves office the freedoms which make America so great will still exist while our weaknesses such as education and health care will be amended. I've been a cynic for eight years but I owe it to the man I voted for to have some faith. Canada is the only other place I'd live anyway, and they're like the 51st state

What are these "freedoms" you speak of?

Also, I don't mean this in a dick way, but did you read the rest of the thread? It's not that I suspect you did not and are Goroding, but I'd be interested how/if the above written stuff made you think.

There are No Cats in America!

I'm so lame, but I won some type of Scottish Rites Award for American Patriotism when I graduated. (How that works, I'll never know.)

I think I'm patriotic in the sense that I'm proud to be a part of the working-class patchwork that makes up a large portion of the US. I'm not this redneck, shotgun shootin, beer-swilling, 'merican. (Although I've got great marksmanship and drink beer on occasion.) I'm not proud to be (or have once been) part of a superpower or capitalist country. I love America in spite of it.

I'm glad that I'm a citizen in a country that, like Mirka said, gives you the freedom to do all these things women in some other countries would get murdered by even considering.

I'm just glad I was born in a country that has indoor plumbing.

touche

I never much cared for apple pie, but I do love a good hate crime here and there.

Have you ever been to Europe?

If he has, he clearly didn't learn much.

His post is like one massive boner pointing at a porker.

I'm pretty sure you can do whatever the fuck you want in any woods, so long as you find woods.

On a more serious note:
The place I'm from is different than any other part of America, I think. I was born and raised in the swamps and near the gulf in the southernmost tip of Louisiana. A crazy Cajun family, all speaking french and catching things in the canals to eat. Listening to zydeco music and swimming in most likely alligator-infested bayous. That was my life, and it was my American experience.
Moving to Arkansas was such a drastic change, and there seems to be such a lack of culture here, for the most part. I guess that's where my pride waned. I carry my heritage with me, even though I'll probably never move back to Louisiana.
I think that's a big part of my patriotism, bringing my piece of the puzzle to wherever I land, not brandishing a flag or slapping a "God Bless America" bumper sticker on my car.

edit: messed up a word.

there is actually a nice little handful of culties on board from the same place. :]

I live in Puerto Rico and it's an odd situation and how people here define what is like being an american.

We are the only americans that can't vote for the president while residing here (yet we can vote for presidential candidates)

For me it's plain weird when you celebrate being an american when you don't have a basic right to vote. Some people still do celebrate their citizenship regardless of that.

I'll be prouder to be a whatever-can once the whole system of voting for masters vanishes. I don't wanna even be able to vote.

So now you're for TAKING AWAY people's rights?

Voting isn't a right, its a privilege. Just like the 'right' to a lawyer only exists because the court system exists. If there weren't 30 feet of bookshelf space of law, one would not need a lawyer. Thus, there is no 'right' to a lawyer, yet it is a necessary privilege once in the system.

Voting is the same, absent a government, you wouldn't choose masters, you'd be your own.

I'm making bumper stickers. "Giggan doesn't want black people to be able to vote!"

Or have lawyers, either!

Yes.

Was it in this century?

the last century was only 10 years ago.

I can get behind this.

this went all crazy.

i live in the woods AND vote. i like to fish AND read.

and i'm also living in ohio.

Yeah, the wooden teeth and lack of firewood/food/safety seem awesome. What a shame we missed out.

I think it's even cooler now. They took down the foreign tyrant way back when, now we're on to dismantling the domestic one.

www.freestateproject.org

www.freekeene.org

The Keeniacs are the most 'revolutionary' but they don't meet in secret, they get together Sundays at Vendetta's restaurant/bar in Keene, all are welcome.