Well, it’s been a year, and I’m still not patriotic. But I still love blowing things up.
More later..
When you're defending nazi salutes, you're telling me that you're a nazi.
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Gosh.. I went to the fabric store on the 3rd and bought 4th of July fabric and finished the edges for a new table cloth and towels. The flag is up! Fun!
I had a strange view of patriotism growing up.
My Grandfather, a native-born American, a police officer, a veteran of D-Day, flew a flag outside of his house.
It wasn’t the American flag. It was the Lithuanian flag. And he flew it at half-mast.
He was first-generation; my great-grandparents escaped Vilnius while the Tsars were still around. Evidently, they considered going back during the inter-war period when Lithuania was independent, but decided America was better for their children, for economic reasons. And then came WWII and the USSR takeover.
Grandpa told me he had cousins that he’d been corresponding with that just ‘disappeared’ after that.
It was kind of strange, and probably shaped my worldview quite a bit–that my Grandpa, a ‘good American’ by anybody’s definition, was driven by a nationalism that wasn’t that of the country he was born into. And, in piecing together what he told me, I think the reason for that was being an American Nationalist was ‘easy’. Remember, this was a guy who was at D-Day and was always proud of it. But he still understood that Lithuania was being obliterated in the most basic of ways, something we haven’t had to worry about since 1776.
I think that’s why I don’t have a jingoistic bone in my body. Being an American jingoist *is* easy, and 9/11 didn’t change that. I remember one day, as Grandpa raised the Lithuanian flag, him telling me that in Lithuania the act he was performing was illegal.
Grandpa died in 1980. So, he missed Lithuanian independence, sadly. He would’ve enjoyed the party I threw :-).
Wow. Great story, ChurchofBruce.
Hmmm… I think that if patriotism means loving some abstraction of the U.S., embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the constitution, then i’m not a patriot. Though for me, the U.S. isn’t an abstraction, but the land I’m sitting on, my friends, my house, the culture I enjoy, the language I speak, etc. I am a patriot if patriotism means loving all of that.
I guess it all depends not on how you actually feel, but on how you define, “The United States of America.” I think of it as me and the life I live, but some think of it as an abstract set of ideals. Of course, some in the latter camp are patriots too, loving the U.S. precisely BECAUSE of the abstract ideals and 200+ year old documents. I’m not really patriotic about that, though, because, frankly, abstract things like democracy, free speech, etc… I can get ’em in Germany too if I want. I just can’t get the life I have here. :^)
I remember your post from last year, and it surprised me as much then as it does now. To me, saying you don’t understand patriotism is like saying you don’t understand love. Patriotism is not a rational feeling, anymore than love is. Patriotism can bring out your ugly side, and it can be used to exploit you, but in those ways it’s no different from love.
A country is not a place on a map, it is a system of reciprocal duties. I grew up dirt poor, poorer than most people realize you can be and still live in the U.S. The people of the United States put me through elementary school, middle school, high school, college, graduate school. By being born an American, I have been granted a fantastic privilege. I am the beneficiary of a system that allows me immense freedom, freedom that in many other places I would be denied. If I am killed by foreign attack, it is the people of the United States that will bury me, mourn me, and yes, even avenge me. What have I done to merit this level of sacrifice from total strangers? I don’t know. But it makes me love my country, and fills me with a sense of duty to these very same strangers.
True patriotism is not exclusionary. The fact that I love America doesn’t mean that I begrudge that the French love France. It doesn’t even mean that I can’t also love other countries. But it is my country that sacrificed for me, and that I feel duty towards.
That’s why I feel worse about what American soldiers did in Abu Ghraib than what Saddam did there, even though Saddam did worse things. The acts of Saddam sicken me, but the acts of Americans _dishonor_ me. I feel not only disgust, but _shame_.