This whole flag burning thing is an interesting phenomenon to me. The flag acts as a symbol for some and simple cloth to others. In either case it certainly should not be illegal to burn the flag. Nor should anyone feel they need to but a boot up anyone else’s ass. If you hold the flag as a symbol of your love or patriotic feelings toward America you need not concern yourself with what another person does to it. Your convictions are enough to keep the flag sacred. It is a matter of opinion. It seems to me that those who would kick someone’s ass for burning the flag have no understanding what it stands for in the first place.
Being a patriot is not related to supporting your government and it is not an act of bravado. A patriot is someone who loves their country. The actions they take, whether you agree with them or nor, are patriotic.
I am a patriot yet I despise Bush and his administration and do everything in my power to educate people concerning his actions. I will not tell them what to think. I also supported Bush Sr. in the first Persian Gulf war at the time it happened and served in that war in the U.S. Army. If I choose to burn a flag or harshly critisize the president it acts as a commentary about the state our country is in. Burning the flag, to me, means that the flag has no more symbolic worth due to the misguided acts of the person who represents us to the world.
I must have missed this … when were public elections shut down and martial law declared, again?
Hold up…
It’s unpatriotic to support another country’s national team in a sporting event now?
Man, if this is mainstream opinion over there, it explains a whole hell of a lot!
It’s a good job I swore off patriotism until someone unified the world under one government. It means I only support things I agree with. There are plenty of reasons to like living in England, but the fact that I was born here isn’t a very compelling one. If it was the only one, you could eat my dust.
I guess you missed that judicial coup d’etat in 2000.
I think that the military might clear the outgoing info and “preferrentially” place and inform troops that have embedded journalists so as to influence the potential info available to the journalists. I really think our news coverage will be “safe” for us.
A nearly 50-50 split that could have gone either way, where the election was decided only because the Supreme Court prevented yeet another round of recounts, hardly qualifies as a coup d’etat.
When two candidates are that close, you might as well just flip a coin.
Yes.
And ElJeffe, Bryan Ekers and the likes,
Your solution to criticism is always this; why don’t you just leave the country?
or
If you like Saddam so much, why don’t you just move to Iraq?
Man this is childish.
And by the way. Patrotism is just faschism. At least in the extreme perverted way it is paraded around in this country. These days everything has to be patriot- (insert whatever) Patriot cookies, patriot chips, etc. I would not be surprised to hear of a child named Patriot Johnson.
There is no such thing as unpatriotic. It’s a rhetoric made to intimidate the public. Either you are with us or you are with the You Know Who.
I think it is unpatriotic not to send me a case of Guinness.
More seriously, patriotism is a love and respect for one’s country. That love can be expressed in many ways. Even flag burning can be a patriotic act, if it is inspired by a desire to benefit one’s nation and its people.
Unpatriotic acts, then, are those inspired by hate or disrespect for one’s nation, and those acts certainly include speech.
As with so many human endeavors, motivation is important. Any test that focuses exclusively on actions is unlikely to be correct.
I disagree. There is such a thing as unpatriotic.
I understand, I think, why you would say such a thing. There certainly are people who take the “love everything we do or be branded unpatriotic” approach. This is unfortunate for many reasons, not the least of which being that there are some citiznes of this country who are “against us”. It does nobody any good to confuse that small minority with the larger segment of the population who simply does not agree with some current policy or another.
Hlujarn:
Well, I’ll give you 3 months to find a Doper who has been arrested for one of his/her posts. If not, I’ll look forward to your retraction.
If there is no difference between patriotism and fascism, then words have no meaning. Just because someone disagrees with you, doesn’t mean they want to throw you in jail. Lighten up and enjoy the liberty we have in this country (assuming you live in the US).
What if you criticize your country’s actions not out of loathing or disrespect, but out of frustration because you believe they are capable of doing so much better and therefore should be expected to? That’s pretty much the place I’m in right now.
Eva: I doubt anyone would call that unpatriotic. Intentionally harming your country is unpatriotic. Trying to improve it… Well I’d call that patriotic. I think many war protestors are patriotic, even if the media tends to focus more on the unpatriotic ones–and you know who you are!!
Spluh? Here I was minding my own business reading a GD thread and suddenly I see my name being dropped in a derisive way.
Well, I may as well toss in my own opinion, then. To me, an unpatriotic act is one in which you criticize or denigrate your nation without reason. Yelling that what the U.S. is doing is wrong for X reasons is not unpatriotic. Yelling that what the U.S. is doing is wrong because the whole country is just plain evil is unpatriotic.
Heck, if you want to rip apart every action taken by the U.S. goverment, be my guest, but if you do so for no real reason but seemingly out of some knee-jerk instinctive unthinking hatred, then my response could easily be along the lines of “Well, if you hate the country so damn much and are unable or unwilling to work for its improvement, why not leave?”
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with criticizing your government, and doing so because you perceive that the government is violating the moral principals on which the country was founded (i.e. they’re violating the constitution) might even be a very patriotic thing to do. But ranting and raving and generally making dumbass statements that have no value other than being negative serve no purpose but to hurt the nation, i.e. unpatriotic.
P.S. I’m a proud Canadian.
You’re gonna be waiting forever then, because this country never was a democracy.
Now when its restored to being a constitutional republic, I’ll turn my upside down flags upright and stop being tempted to burn the flag.
Some things I consider unpatriotic, if not downright rude:
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refusing to remove one’s cap during a rendition of the national anthem. I understand if you’re not a citizen, or just don’t feel patriotic that particular day, so I won’t care if you don’t put your hand over your heart while it’s being played, but for God’s sake, take off your cap for two minutes and show some respect.
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people horsing around or making cracks at war memorials. Most kids are pretty good about this, but there’s always the smartass who has to pretend like he’s just been shot or whatnot. I, one of the most unpatriotic people I know, have been known to hiss “Show some respect!” at kids when they do it.
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I also think burning a flag in protest is a terrible thing to do, but like other posters, I’ll support someone’s right to do it. I just won’t watch.
In my OP, I mentioned the Montana Freemen.
Let’s now assume that I have organized the Northern Virginia Free-thinking Men, and equipped them with rifles, grenade launchers, and given each platoon leader a strong white stallion to ride. I march my group of 500 or so into downtown DC and storm the US Capitol, because I can see that the war is wrong, and Congress has abdicated its constitutional duty to declare war, instead spinelessly leaving complete control in the hands of the President. My goal is to restore Congress to the hands of true patriots, men who would never let Our Boys be sent off to die in a foreign land except upon legal action.
I’m a patriot, yes? I’m acting in the face of clear government illegality, and doing so out of a love of my country.
- Rick
And since it hasn’t happened, and isn’t going to, it proves that your ideas of the absence of democracy in America are nothing more than paranoid wet dreams.
Regards,
Shodan
Patriotism always seems like such a commie thing to me. Giving up yourself for the sake of the majority, the nation being more important than the individual. I’m smelling reds.
Any patriotic American should not be patriotic.
As far as I’m concerned - and I consider myself a British patriot - patriotism consists in recognizing the good things about your nation and dedicating yourself to its highest ideals - and in recognizing the bad things about it, and dedicating yourself to fixing them. Therefore, decrying one’s nation without good reason, or allowing abuses to persist because they’re “traditional”, would both constitute unpatriotic acts.
And, on a tangent; recognizing the good things about one’s own country does not imply denigrating others. Hating foreigners because they’re foreign is not patriotism, just bigotry.
I would say no, because I think that “love” is an emotion for which we cannot always accept a self-description. A man might kidnap his ex-girlfriend, beat her into submission, and hold her captive to his desires all the while claiming that he does so for love. In his mind this might be love, but it is not the emotion that I mean when I say the word.
You cannot restore a legitimate legislature by ousting the current one at the point of a gun, nor can you save a democratic ideal by imposing your will on the majority through violent acts.
Tim McVeigh was not a patriot, and neither is your hypothetical “Free-Thinking Man”. They may each cry out about love and country, but it is neither the “love” nor the “country” that I recognize.