Is patriotism a good or bad thing..

"Support for the principles upon which your country is founded," is my definition of patriotism. Under that definition, I am proudly patriotic. It's the policies that often get in the way..
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Brian

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PATRIOTISM(noun): love for or devotion to one's country. lets make sure everyone understands what the exact definition of patriotism is before you decide to condemn or condone the idea.

The country to me means the people in it. Not just the fat, overpaid, white cocksukers that run the congress/white house/supreme court. It's all of us. By the way, if more than 30% of us would fucking stand up and cast their vote then MAYBE this might be a better place to live. People around the globe would kill to have a say in their own government and here we have a voice and 70% choose not to use it. Why do our politicians suck? Why is our government so lousy and corrupt? Because we made it that way!

 

Someone explain to me how a person can be a patriot of a specific country and still espouse globalization? How can the two coexist without contradiction.

 

bad thing bro

 

if you are going to love a country, love the immaginary one inside your head, because whatever you are surrounded by as a country, nation, government, is never what you immagine it to be, is never anything but a constantly shifting defacto consensus of priorities, the majority of which have never been objectively examined in the light of day, let alone the light of what their consensus truely motivates.

love loves what it will of course, but it is still good to bear in mind, that whatever you become attatched to, is what you immagine it to be in your mind, and none of us ever sees completely clearly. nor is attatchment itself harmless or innocent. and replacing one attatchment with another doesn't make it less so either.

what is good, what patriotism is mistaken for when it is promoted, is indeed the idea of putting shaired experiential conditions, on at least a par, with your own gratification.

if that sounds too altruistic, just remember, whatever kind of a world you contribute to, just by your choice of what is important to you, if nothing else, is the same one you have to live in also, at least some of the time, and probably most of it.

but putting a government, or an idiology ahead of the kind of world we all have to live in, is no better or different, then putting any other kind of arbitrary self blindness ahead of it.

it's good to dicipline yourself too, but only if what you are diciplining yourself to, is the avoidance of causing suffering. after all, the more there is, the more each of us is likely to get the short end of it. not even a god is insulated from its own effects.

=^^=
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This is why I love you man. You tell it from the heart. People are too busy chasing a buck when the only true precious commodity is TIME. Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimmmmmmmmmeeeeee!!!! You can make money bending over, but you can't get moments back. They're gone!

Themnax! I understand you and I think you are a person from the future. You're one of the wisest people in this forum dude and you are my guru:

You are Plato and Aristotle combined! No one could have summed it up better.

centuries ago, people used to fight and get killed fighting below a banner of a royal household, eg. a boar, a lion, or a stag, etc.

then some bright court accountant had the idea of making a nationhood flag so that sheep can go and sacrifice their lives thinking they're fighting fot their country.

When most of the wealth is owned by less than 1% of clobal population, then who are we fighting for, and does it really matter who governs us?

I expect there will be a few replies

 

I just can't in the way of thinking, and careing for a country that dearly.

 

I thought it was Lincoln who said that.

 

but what is demanded by the current administration today is faith, not patriotism. i hear it all the time from people around me, ditzy pop stars and countless others that we should have faith in our elected officials. it's not faith we should have but skepticism. our government was designed with checks and balances because our forefathers didn't have faith in humankind. they understood how power corrupts and sought to keep each branch in check by the other two. although i can only paraphrase him Thomas Jefferson wrote that perhaps we should clean house every few years to keep the riff-raff out of the government. to all of you that voted no to patriotism, perhaps you did so just because you don't have faith that things can change. i believe that we can change the world but we all must stand up together.

"we must learn to live as brothers (and sisters) or die together as fools."

 

I'm a patriot for North America, not the U.S.

 

umm jfk???


I used to say I was a canadian patriot, I even punched out an american gutter punk because He said canadian beer sucked...( we like our beer up here)

but then we elected a minority conservative GOV and the country has majorly changed, the country true north strong and free, isnt as free anymore, the values I have are not represented anymore by our leaders,

and I have started to drink imports ( not american )
:nopity:



so err yeah, im not a patriot anymore.

a man without a country.........thats how I feel

 

actually it was Kennedy

 

Are you serious? I'm going to go round to my teacher's house and kick him in the nuts! The fucking education system is a sham. We'll become as thick as Americans if it carries on like this!

 

I don't think it makes a difference. I think if we must fight for freedom from tyrany to keep up living our lifestyle, then lets do it. If someone hits you, you hit back or walk away. A patriot will fight for a cause, so if you are into getting into fights with your enemies, then patriotism is good for you. If you want to turn the other cheek then it's not. It's just a matter of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. I am a patriot for liberty, thus I am a libertarian. I definately love American ideals.

 

If you love your country your a patriot. However the extreamest right is trying to combine it with nationalism (Nationalism, in its broadest sense, is a devotion to one's own nation and its interests over those of all other nations.)

To want to fix your nation is bing a patriot.
To say that amerika is 100% right and if you dont agree your a trator is nationalism.

I want to see the bush goverment overthrown, the cluster-fuck in Iraq end. I am a patriot.

Bush is not, he only loe the money he and his pals can make off the deaths of others.

Peace

 

I think there is something wrong with my computer. I seem to be getting a lot echoes of the same people, but with the letters of their names getting jumbled up, so that they appear on my screen as someone else.

 

not to get too far off topic,

though!!!

american ideals?

I think thats the greatest issue here. what once truley was american ideal isim, liberty freedom, that to me is noble.I think I would want to fight for that.


You can not tell me invading anothers country creating havok in the world and multiplying the terrorist population is defending liberty freedom...or fir that sake defending america itself.......

The IDEA of american ideals keeps families willing to throw there children into battle
The IDEA that they are fighting for something noble keeps the children signing up

The IDEA that following blindly, murdering others and policing the planet is bieng a patriot, nationalist whatever........
NOW THAT IS AMERICAN IDEALOGY!!!

ignorance to there own cause saluting a fucking flag that IS the tyrany in the world today!

babylon is not freedom, its slavery, yet for those here in N america many have never tasted true freedom...so they think they are free, yet continue to live as slaves!


k Ill stop now before I end up in guatanamo bay!

 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA LMFAO

I was in illinois (america) a year or so ago, and playing dumb asked what independance day was, what are you independant from I asked

uuuuuuuhhhhhh those people who made us there slaves....

that was the answer I recieved...you have a long way to go before a brit is as thick as a yank

 

it is/was, one of the most famous and oft repeated quotes from his inaugeral address. which i watched live on television. (the other was HIS quoting of "miles to go before i sleep, miles to go before i sleep", from a poem, that i'm not sure but might have been by carl sandburg) i think it was the year i started high school. (we didn't have 'middle schools' in those days. 8 years of grade school, starting at age five with kindergarten, 4 years of highschool, from which i graduated in 1966).

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(bows humbly to the scorp to be so honored)

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Dude, when you went to school they actually used to teach things. Nowadays they don't teach anything. Not just America either, everywhere. Britain is catching up fast. Now they keep kids under a blanket of ignorance, on purpose. Ignorance grows dependency. Dependency leads to enslavement (shit I'm turning into CrackdEggz, too much time in forums).

Every opportunity we get, we have to teach and learn. Be open minded. This horrible social order is doomed, because of the damage we have done to our planet. The rich who want to use globalization to separate themselves from the poor even further, have harboured all the best brains, and talent in the land to sustain their power over us. Through commercialism they have swindled those who can't get a job to think that they are patriots and ship them to Iraq and Afghanistan. If these poor kids manage to survive, they look around at the corpses, and they realize that they are not patriots. They're just doing a job, a very dirty and horrible job that Mr. Rich Person doesn't want to do.

This is the reason why the shambolic political system will eventually collapse. Those who think that America will improve with the next government are... actually are there any Americans out there who are naive enough to believe that? Sometimes we joke, and take cheap jibes at each other, but at the heart of it we must not underestimate people.

I think that a human being will turn the other cheek up to a point.