When I read P.J. O’rourkes “We be bad!” rant.
“And we’ve got an American Express credit card limit higher than your piss-ant metric numbers go.”
from Holidays in Hell, highly recommended.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot, when I was walking past a butcher’s shop in Scotland and saw a sign saying they had Donner Sausages.
Seeing a late series 'Cudda especially if it has a 450 Hemi inside. It’s too loud, it wastes too much gas, and is too dangerous…not to mention its uneconomical in every respect, and that’s the point. Only in America would we honor a ruthless piece of steel just because it’s beautiful.
Occam, you obviously haven’t been to Italy 
Plenty of uneconomical, dangerous cars there. And they love them with an unrivaled passion.
I’m sure I won’t have to name the brand.
I have been feeling more and more like an American in the last few years. The only problem is that I am a Canadian. Here in the Great White North a lot of cross-boarder rhetoric has shifted the political spectrum to the right with regard to social services and health care.
One of the more interesting developments in our national election is that Stockwell Day, the leader of the party furthest to the right, has promised referenda if certain numbers of citizens sign petitions. Well, about three times the minimum number signed a petition to change the party leader’s name to “Doris Day”, so he changed his platform to requiring much higher number before a referendum could be had. The citizens more than matched this new target.
If you folks south of the border ever come across a fellow named “Doris”, please ship him back up here, for he might just be our Prime Minister.
Feel free to sign the petition at http://www.22minutes.com/
I feel the patriotic upswing during the usual moments; national anthem, voting, July 4th, etc.
But I feel most American over “here’s home” things. Every country has 'em; they’re the stuff that feels specific to a certain place.
I share neuroman’s lift of the heart tooling down an open highway and thousands of miles in any direction. It’s my such a blast, feeling like any horizon is mine to wander to.
Listening to the blues, or jazz.
Having total strangers wave to me in small towns and on back roads. We’re a damned friendly bunch.
And, odd as it is, some of the flakier news items. Not school shootings, etc. but bizarre, dingbat bits about real people. Everyplace has eccentrics and misfits, but some of ours are so happily, innocently, technicolor flagrant.
And the Grand Canyon. There are many beautiful mountain ranges, but the Canyon is unique.
Veb
- tooling down a country road, listening to “American Woman”, “American Pie”, or anything by CCR.
- just tooling down a country road. My ancestors were almost all farmers, and I often look at fields and think how lovely it is that they decided to come here.
- explaining American politics and government to my French boyfriend.
- defending the Pilgrims when the French boyfriend starts to insult Thanksgiving.
- I get CHILLS every time I hear “The Star-Spangled Banner”. What a powerful song: bombs can crash, guns can fire, and the flag will always be there.
- When I debate with my Chinese friends about Communism (“The first amendment of MY constitution says I can say what I want and I’ll be damned if I have to live where I can’t do that!!!”)
- reading the Declaration of Independence (Jesus, that took some balls) and the Constitution (a bunch of guys got together one summer, resurrected the ideals of democracy from ancient Greece, and created the finest and fairest system of government the world had ever seen).