I have no idea where to post this topic…but I would like just an opinion…
Are you proud to be an American?
I wonder sometimes if we have what it takes as a nation to pull together in times of strife…if WWIII were to ever happen…would we be able to pull it off? I can remember in younger days saying the Pledge of Allegiance to The Flag…how many of our children today even know the words…much less realize that it’s not the flag itself…but what that flag stands for that is important. Makes me sad. I post to people in other countries…they always say that America is the world leader…strongest nation in the world…a nation of freedom…is it? People who live here…only seem to be unhappy and disillusioned. I for one am proud to be an American…and regardless of what David B or any others say… I still believe that America is a christian nation.
Well I do not want to be identified as a Christian simply because I am an American; however, I am proud to be an American because we are the wealthiest nation in the world. It says something that goes beyond the inuendo and propeganda of communism, Nazism, et cetera. The way we do things works. Capitalizm works. Greed works. The American way works.
I will stop being so proud when Finland no longer does better in science testing but in real life.
You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.
–Lyndon B. Johnson
I just wrote this huge, long thing responding to this question and I just deleted it. What a moron. I will try to write it again here (notice the time I am writing this).
I think the gist of what I was saying before was that I am very proud to be an American. Basically because we are a melting pot of ethnicities and manage to be the only true superpower in the world. That is saying something. We work together despite differences. China or Japan can’t say that because they don’t really have a significant minority population.
If you live in the US, you have no idea the impact we have on other countries of the world. We set the trends in other nations, we influence style, sports, and just about every other facet of life. Being an American is something a lot of the world dreams about.
I think I am most proud of being American because it is the land of opportunity. What I mean specifically by that is that I am young and have the rest of my life ahead of me. I can do just about anything I want. Why? Because I live in America; I can work for NASA, become president, be a fighter pilot, be a janitor, a lawyer, a professional basketball player, whatever I want. Also, and probably most important in my opinion, whatever I need is right at my fingertips. If I need food, I can find it in several locations just a few miles from my house. If I was literally starving to death, I could just go steal some food from these stores. Someone in Zimbabwe has a different situation. If they are starving, tough bananas (no pun intended). They don’t get to go rob a store because there is no store to rob.
If there was a World War Three today, we would win, hands down, no contest. There is no nation that would rival us. China may be able to complete but after the war, they would be so poor and have so many starving people–so many economic problems too–that we would, in essence, win anyway. The US is so wealthy that we dropped well over 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles on I believe Afghanistan and Sudan or something like that over the summer, at a cost of 1 million dollars apiece. No other country could afford to casually drop 100,000,000 dollars worth of bombs over these nations without causing huge economic problems. We would simply have too many resources and too much money to be defeated or even challenged in a World War. Russia is out of the question becuase their economy is in the crapper.
All in all, I think I am blessed to be living in the US. I don’t know how or why I ended up being one of the lucky ones who gets to live here (I often wonder why I am American and didn’t have to be born in Qatar or something) but I sure am glad to be here. I think I have a responsibility, as an American, to help out the other people of the world who are not as fortunate as me (all of them). This is the wealthiest nation and for me to be living here means I am wealthier than almost the whole world–I have to help them out. People who can’t get clean water or food to eat, they need help. I don’t need that extra hamburger at McDonald’s, I don’t need that candy bar out of the candy machine, some person in India needs food with that money. So I figure I shouldn’t buy that crap and instead use that money to adopt a child from some other country. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I suppose helping out that one kid would be my single step.
I think you have to be crazy not to love being American. You can say all the crap you want about it, like maybe our morals need a tune up (and maybe we need to outlaw guns to stop these rampant school shootings), but by-heck, I live here and I love it.
I realize I’m generalizing here, but as in most cases, I don’t care.
-Dave Barry
yes, but who has the money?
take the often used example of bill gates with his umpteen billions of dollars, and put him next to the guy living on the street who died from the cold last night.
hmmm…
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox
I am quite proud to be an American. One of the things that I love about my country is that it provides me some protection from people who claim that America is a Christian nation.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
Well, I don’t want to start up a Great Debate here, but I’m proud to not be an American.
(But then, I guess the fact that I haven’t the feeling of belonging to the USA that a native born would have might have some bearing on that)
-PIGEONMAN-
Hero For A New Millennium!
The Legend Of PigeonMan - Back in the new year! Honest. I promise. No, really.
Well, we’re proud that you’re not an american, too!
Love my country…mistrust my government
remember the bumper sticker…
America…love it or lose it?
I prefer…
America…change it or lose it.
If you can’t convince them, confuse them.
Harry S. Truman
first of all, i’m sure you’re in the wrong forum w/ this. g.d. is more like it.
second, that melting pot thing is kinda conditional. it often takes several generations for people to completely assimilate &, having lived across the country, i can tell you the degree of assimilation depends on where you live. east coast & midwest people are far more likely to try to retain a feel for where their ancesters were from, more likely to refer to themselves as german or irish or whatever. southerners seem to consider themselves, well, southerners w/ a lot less of an idea of where their ancesters came from. westerners generally consider themselves from whatever state they are in. they don’t care where you came from; if you weren’t born in arizona or california or washington they aren’t interested in your heritage. you’re a ferriner to them.
and, in point of fact, we have many anti-melting pot laws now on the books. any law that mandates something like multi-language election ballots works against people wanting to assimilate. back ‘in the old days’, that is pre-politically correct, if you were new here, you were expected to a) get help from your relatives about stuff you didn’t yet understand and b) work at learning english. the laws make that kind of interaction no longer necessary & are not in the best interest of the newcomers.
esl classes help but only the people who go to them (duh!) & take kids’ time away from other learning. the ones who don’t learn good english (because they don’t have to) are doomed to low-paying jobs.
what is an aid to folks, wherever they came from, is that here we are legally protected from discrimination. that’s not saying there is no discrimination; that’s saying it’s illegal & you have legal remedies the likes of which are available in no other country in the world. you can’t legislate morality (tho many try, it’s also illegal here) or intelligence, but you can legislate fairness. & that’s probably more important than having a melting pot. you can be anyone here & still legally have the same opportunities.
&, yes, you can even be president. it’s one of the risks you take being born american.
(that was a joke, for those who are still hungover.)
as for the stuff above about being the most powerful, influential, & admired because of the wealth of our country, you are right on target. money talks. granted, what are the figures, 60% of the money is controlled by 10% of the people. it could be an even bigger disparity & it wouldn’t really matter. we have the largest # of millions per population of anywhere in the world & growing at some ridiculous rate. yeah, you stand a better chance of becoming a millionaire here than of being president. oy, but then the taxes you gotta pay!
& that’s how it evens out. you have the right to earn here, but you gotta pay for the right. lotsa loopholes in the tax laws, but the rich don’t get away free. but that’s not a place i want to go.
beyond the # of millionaires the stats say we average about 1 car & i believe a bit more than 1 tv per household. sure, lots of households have several of each, which means lots of households must not have them; but our census figures show that those who live in any kind of a home are amazingly wealthy by world standards.
the homeless? surely there are some who fall thru the cracks, but anyone who really wants assistance has it available @ the city, county, state, & federal levels; & the assistance includes shelters, rent subsidies, food stamps, free food, child & elder care subsidies, heating subsidies. & for those who live out there for whatever reason who don’t seek assistance, there is always that stealing thing (tho i must admit i would think of that as a dubious advantage). still, the variety of untainted, available food is like nothing you find anywhere else either.
proud? i’m way beyond proud. & i’m grateful to the point of tears that i was born here.
could we pull together? time & again in these ‘little’ 2-wk wars we have been in for the past 20 years we have proved we could.
like they say about politicians, ‘he may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.’
The purpose of life is to matter, to count, to have it make a difference you lived at all.
This might end up on the GD threads…but was not the point. And correct me…if America is not a basic Christian nation…then what is it? Yes being American means that you can say it’s not a Christian nation…but it also means that I can say it is…so what’s the point?
You could say that the majority of Americans are Christian (I’m guessing here, I don’t have the census numbers handy), but the nation isn’t Christian. If it was Christian it would have it as its’ official religion.
From Merriam-Webster:
na*tion (noun)
[Middle English nacioun, from Middle French nation, from Latin nation-, natio birth, race, nation, from nasci to be born; akin to Latin gignere to beget – more at KIN]
First appeared 14th Century
1 a (1) : NATIONALITY 5a
(2) : a politically organized nationality
(3) : a non-Jewish nationality <why do the ~s conspire --Ps 2:1 (RSV)>
b : a community of people composed of one or more nationalities and possessing a more or less defined territory and government
c : a territorial division containing a body of people of one or more nationalities and usu. characterized by relatively large size and independent status
2 archaic : GROUP, AGGREGATION
3 : a tribe or federation of tribes (as of American Indians)
I’m sure this will go to great debates - but whenever people start yammering about this being a christian nation its not a bad idea to remind them of the reason many of the settlers came here in the first place: to get away from people who want to nationalize or have nationalized religion.
fuzzy, you have the right to say anything at all (i ain’t going into the ‘yelling fire in a crowded theater’ place) in this country, including that it is a christian nation. or it’s an alien nation. or it’s an avocado nation! that doesn’t make it so. it isn’t great because of religion. that’s the point.
there are countries that claim to be christian nations & do have state religions, moslem, roman catholic, episcopalian, hindu. do you believe the christian nations among them are in some way better than the non-christian ones? or better than those that have no state religion?
The purpose of life is to matter, to count, to have it make a difference you lived at all.
umm, in looking back at that, it might have made a bit more sense if i had referred to ‘god-led’ or ‘god-oriented’ nations at the beginning of the second paragraph. but you probably got the drift.
The purpose of life is to matter, to count, to have it make a difference you lived at all.
Yep, closin’ here and moving to Great Debates.