My post was more a comment on the error in that website than anything you said more recently. There are still some people out there who consider themselves Yugoslavs.
Leaving aside that I’m not necessarily an advocate for feeling proud to have born in your native country…
Am I understanding you right that you’d be proud to be a scion of Latvia, but not Lithuania? Why, pray tell?
No, your views are subjective, and not anymore objective than, you know, the people who actually were born, live, and work in their countries. It is some sort of weird perverse reversal of this thread.
Even though my pride is directed to a different country than olive’s, I agree with her first paragraph. That feeling is not unique to a single country or group of countries. That feeling can be present everywhere.
No, they are objective because I have been dispassionate and applied unbiased criteria. You can complain they are arbitrary perhaps.
The *Baltic *states are Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The states that formerly made up Yugoslavia are *Balkan *states.
Another vote for the third option. I don’t particularly care for group rituals of any kind but I try to be polite; e.g. stand but not sing.
I haven’t been getting a lot of sleep recently, mea culpa.
It’s not a meaningless ritual to me. Rituals in general are meaningful to me as reaffirmations of group membership identity, both to oneself and to the group.
I always stand for the anthem, remove headgear and (in general) sing the anthem as well. I don’t always do the hand-on-heart thing, except when I’m holding a hat I’ve removed, in which case the hat does go over the heart more often than not. But if I’m bare-headed I think more often I hold my hands together behind my back.
I can’t remember the last time I recited the Pledge of Allegiance, but would do so in the given context without hesitation, right down to saying “under God” even though technically I don’t believe in such a thing. Because we ARE a “nation under God”, whether I like it or not it is a fact of the society I live in. I’d prefer the government to be 100% secular and that clause (not original and inserted in the 1950s I think) to be dropped from the Pledge, but I won’t let that get in the way of declaring and reaffirming my identity as an American.
Sporting events are a more unifying force than Nationhood. How many of those people who fill out the larger stadiums do you think would stop going to the game if they stopped doing the national anthem?
So God exists because public opinion in the US says he does?
I answered “no” because there wasn’t a “Aw, Hell, No! Catch me doing anything that shows support for the State” option.
Are you one of those “sensitive” atheists who go catatonic at the “G”-word? :rolleyes:
Anyways I do all the patriotic ritual not because its ritual but because I stand for the principles of the American Republic.
The whole nine yards. I still remember the few stories of WWII that I had to beat out of my father toward the end of his life. When I see the flag I see he entire history of what went into making it.
What Olives said. I <3 America and feel the little rituals are the least I can do, and I enjoy them.
I do all the patriotic stuff, including waving a national flag out of my car window for the World Cup! To me it shows respect and solidarity, as well as (must be odd for you Brits) non-racism.
Let me guess, cynical and absolutely apolitical? But do you really not even sing the national anthem? 
I stand quietly and respectfully during the pledge and national anthem, and I do the same for the rituals of any country. I don’t attach any particular significance to the rituals, but I don’t feel a need to antagonize those who do.
I believe Mr. Dibble is South African. Given the history of that nation, his position strikes me as anything but apolitical.
Considering the current government is being run not like a nation that was considered a part of the civilized world for the last hundred years he has even more justification.
I… don’t even know how to take this.
Institutionalized racism is civilization and full participatory democracy isn’t? Are we living in bizarro world now? I must be misunderstanding Curtis’s intent. Come back and clarify, Curtis.
(Not that I’m a fan of Jacob Zuma, who strikes me as a total scumbag.)
On second thought, don’t, Curtis. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s sick of seeing threads derailed because other participants have these naive notions about how worthwhile (or even, I dare say, how interesting) it is to indulge some of our more notorious posters and their hobbyhorses.
So, don’t come back and clarify, Curtis. Start your own thread if you like, but I’ve enjoyed this thread and I have no interest in the all too boring-and-predictable outcome of Kyla’s invitation to go off topic.