Honestly, not much in my lifetime - I’m one of those young idealistic types. Living abroad made me appreciate certain things about daily life in America more, but I wouldn’t say it made me proud.
But Lawrence v. Texas was a start; same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and California were two other moments.
The preamble of the Declaration of Independence never fails to trigger something like pride. Ultimately Americans are the type who, when faced with injustice, reach a breaking point and say “that’s enough.” It might take a while and there might be a big damn mess by that point, but we can still trace our lineage back to a bunch of guys who committed treason and risked everything because they held those truths to be self evident, and they were tired of being told otherwise.
Talk about religious freedom reminded me of a profound experience I had a couple of years ago.
A particular pastor in our church was born in Romania and came to the United States some years ago. He always liked to drop interesting tidbits of his old-country life into his sermons, saying “Back in Romania…” — the kids joked around about it.
One day he brought an odd case with him as he went up front and I was quite curious as to the role the case would play.
At some point in his sermon he began to describe what life was like in a country without religious liberty, in a country where distribution of religious materials was a criminal offense.
He explained how he had on more than one occasion participated in smuggling materials through police checkpoints, as if bootlegging whiskey, always running the risk of prison should they be caught.
One point he focused on was the ease by which we can obtain religious books, and the difficulty of obtaining these same books in his homeland.
In Iron-Curtain Romania, those very same books were typed by hand, often by young girls, using ten sheets of extremely thin paper with carbon between the layers. The girls would type quite hard, penetrating the ten layers and making ten copies of the page. He said that the best copy was around the third or fourth sheet, since the bottom copies were much too faded and the top ones were cut through by the force of the letters striking.
It was at this point that he opened the case he had brought and withdrew a few thick books. These were examples of the very books he was talking about. He opened them up and showed how difficult it was to see the writing, since the pages were all fairly translucent, so one had to put a sheet of blank paper behind the current page to be able to read. He said that when he bought them, each one cost him what would be equivalent to several hundred dollars for us.
After the service he invited us to come up and see for ourselves. I was transfixed as I stood there holding a two-inch-thick book of rice-paper sheets written in Romanian that had been hand-typed by some unknown girl who risked five years in prison to do the work.
I was surprised at how few people did go up front. They missed out on a very tangible and memorable reminder of what religious freedom means.
I think it’s natural for the smartest of the primates to be proud of their group, which we have now organized on the largest level into “countries.” So I guess I’ve been both proud and really proud of the USA my whole life.
My country has given me precious little to be proud of lately, but I can think of one factoid I learned recently that made me pretty proud of my state. Namely, that Michigan was the first English-speaking gov’t in the world to abolish capital punishment. cite
I was proudest of the US, my erstwhile home, when we landed on the moon. I still choke up when I tell my kids stories about the Apollo missions. To be fair, I also choke up when I tell them about Laika, Yuri Gargarin and Valentina Tereshkova.
There are a lot of things about Canada (my adopted home) that make me proud, but the two that come to mind are the way the people in Gander stepped up on 9/11, and that Canada decided not to participate in the Iraq invasion.
The first time two years and four months ago when I swore in as a Peace Corps volunteer. I don’t know why it hit me so hard, but I was as proud of America as I was of myself.
The second was in Cameroon watching a DVD copy of “Little Bush.” It dawned on me that there would never, ever be a “Little Paul Biya” (president/dictator of Cameroon) and that we are a damn great country that we not only have this, but we play it on TV and nobody freaks out or gets arrested or killed.
There is a popular theory that Peace Corps secret mission is to make us liberal do-gooders love America.
A few times. First, the opening ceremonies of the Calgary 1988 Winter Olympics. More pride in Calgary than in Canada, but still, 20 years later I still get teary eyed thinking of what an amazing job all the organizers did, and all the thousands of volunteers who really put Calgary on the world map. I will always be fiercely proud of Calgary for that.
Second, when I attended a citizenship ceremony with my friend. What a beautiful thing it was, to see so many eager faces with excited family and friends there to witness our country welcoming them with open arms. It was very touching.
Third, at a Remembrance Day service a couple of years ago. As a kid anything war-related was ancient history. But now we’ve got troops in Afghanistan and many are coming home in boxes. Living or dead, I am so very proud of their desire to serve. Whenever we lose a soldier the usual groups are out there demanding that the troops be brought home. But the soldiers themselves, their loved ones, and those who mourn the lost, are all adamant that this mission is important and they don’t want to leave until their work is done. God bless them for their dedication! They do our country proud.
Personally I think its kind of stupid to be proud of something you had no control over. Unless you actually came to the US from another country and worked for citizenship then you are merely fortunate to have been born here. Nothing about your citizenship makes you better than anyone else…and people often use national pride as an excuse to say “I’m better than you are”.
Now, I’m able to feel some pride about the ideals that the US is supposed to stand for, but all too often the actions of the government and the people negate that with a feeling of disappointment. YMMV, since we don’t have the same life experiences, I don’t expect anyone else to understand how I feel.
My country: Finland (as some people might have noticed in the “Ask a Finn”-thread)
No, I can’t say I’ve ever been proud of Finland. Pleased and glad to live here, yes, but generally I find the concept of being proud of something that you haven’t accomplished by yourself extremely weird. It’s not like we get to pick which country we get to be born in.
I tend to consider myself an individual bound by a social contract that requires me to give the state it’s due and for the state to leave me the hell alone for the rest of the time. And I’ve found that many Finns think the same way. And before anyone whips out the socialism card, I’ll say that things here are the way they are because of a popular decision. There’s nothing wrong with socialized medicine etc. if that’s what the majority wants.
Saying this won’t probably earn me too many friends here, but the all the plastering of your country’s flag everywhere, pledging allegiance to it constantly and who’s-patriotic-enough-and-who’s-not games smell so much of fascism that it’s fairly disconcerting.
To this I’d only say that I think there’s a difference between being proud of one’s country, and being proud to be a member of one’s country. Both kinds of pride can be justifiable, the former especially so (the latter seems a little subtler).
I don’t personally find either of those very reasonable. Of course there are sociological and psychological causes for both. Being proud of your country is being proud of someone else’s accomplishments x hundreds of years ago, or being proud of x thousand people voting the same way as you etc. etc. Somehow that does not compute. And unless you live in some sort of a Starship Troopers-style meritocracy, there’s little reason to be proud of being a citizen. And that’s a whole new bucket of worms…
In my lifetime It was really cool to see the United States land on the Moon. But I would have to say that, Sweden aside, the US was the first modern country to establish Freedom of Information laws on a national basis.
Wouldn’t you better fulfill your potential in another country? You serve nobody including yourself with such a poisoned attitude. What country would you feel comfortable in and why?
When Reagan was re-elected in 1984, but not because of anything Reagan did.
Mondale was the Democrat, and he lost, badly. We had a missionary, from Tanzania, staying with us at the time. And Mondale got on TV after it was clear that he had lost, and said that the people had spoken, and that he would respect that, and he congratulated Reagan on his victory, and that Mondale would seek to work with the Reagan administration for the good of the country.
And the missionary was absolutely dumbfounded that a losing politician would say something like that. And I realized how lucky I was as an American that I could take that absolutely for granted.
I agree with the people who find it odd to be proud of something one has no control over. It wasn’t my idea to be an American, I didn’t do anything to become one, so IMHO, there’s nothing in particular to be proud of.
OTOH, I very often feel extremely lucky to be an American. Or rather, a citizen of a wealthy country. A small example: my counterpart in Bulgaria - the teacher I worked with; we team taught together - has never left the country. (Which is about the size of Tennessee.) She is, if anything, smarter than me, and yet she has a dead end job she hates that pays a staggeringly low wage and there’s no real likelihood that’ll change anytime soon due. Thanks to an accident of birth, I have had a really amazing range of opportunities available to me. If I were a religious person, I’d say I was blessed, but I’m not, so I won’t. I just really lucked out.
