The whole question is really in the title but just to flesh it out…
In my experience Americans are WAY more patriotic than the other people (mainly Euros and Australians) that I hang out with. They also (as a result of this?) seem to take everything about their country very personally, so that if the US is criticized it is taken as a personal offense. Why is that?
Um, most of us aren’t. There are a huge amount of us, most of whom just work, party, raise the family and keep on keeping on. What you see on the “news” are the nut jobs. Unfortunately for us/US and the world in general, the nut jobs are recruiting and reproducing us/US out of the market. So maybe stupidity is a winning evolutionary strategery. We will see.
Can please have a Canadian passport?
Something disturbing has happened to us. It’s not our level of patriotism that’s different, it’s our need to express it or worry if it is not expressed correctly that’s changed.
Growing up if a flag was at half mast it was Veterans Day or that day an exPresident died. That was it.
Ugh. You may as well ask why Europeans and Australians are so much more enlightened than Americans.
This sort of masochism is what tends to produce ultra-patriotic reactions and vice versa.
^^^
Now as for my actual thoughts, I think much of it is explainable by differences of history and geography such as the fact that the United States unlike most European countries aren’t part of a supranational union that’s broken down national barriers, the preeminent role of the American military in international affairs, the far less brutal experience of the world wars, and the like.
I think a factor is that Americans are defined primarily by their nationality. We don’t have the same kind of cultural identity that somebody who’s English or Russian or Chinese or Egyptian has. We’re a mix of various cultures that’s united by our common nationality.
My parallel is 19th century Britain,when Victorians walked the earth and nothing was impossible.
Britain ruled the seas, God was an Englishman and Rudyard Kipling knew it. For me, it’s looked like a particular brand of parochial nationalistic - physically or intellectually - that fosters a sense of pride, unquestioned entitlement and faux duty about empire.
Amongst much else, you end up with a militaristic society and a controlled population, tightly managed by those who profit from the empire: ‘The Times of London’, etc.
Ultimately it’s just anothers turn at the head of a hierarchy but it doesn’t make it any more bearable to the rest of us.
Early Americans wanted to differentiate themselves from those awful European aristocrats and monarchists. Manifest destiny and American exceptionalism were suitable excuses for taking over the place and exerting power over the Pacific and Latin America. There were both secular and religious angles to this civilizing mission, so it had something for everyone.
Modern American patriotism is the result of decades of Cold War propaganda and, more recently, the 9/11 attacks. For a long time it’s been impossible to watch TV, movies, and commercials without seeing references to the American way of life, the American dream, how lucky Americans are, and so on. Children pledge allegiance to the flag and receive a very flattering history. If you watch a military commercial a football game might break out. The amount of militarism in this culture is hard to believe if you’ve never been here.
Moreover, it’s a lot easier to be arrogantly patriotic in America than for most other countries. It’s the richest, most powerful country in world history. Its culture is absolutely everywhere, even when it’s not wanted. It defeated the Nazis (Eastern Front what?) and the Soviets and sent men to the moon. It has a countless number of inventions ranging from the polio vaccine to the KFC bowl. Millions of Mexicans risk death crossing a desert for the chance to work 12 hours a day washing dishes. People from all over the world come here to attend college. There’s so much food that everyone is fat.
“We did that, y’all!”
Disagree with most of the above, at least as far as it being The Explanation.
My take on it: in most countries, people’s patriotic allegiance is to the land. People may have a fair amount of pride about their particular form of government (or the people doing the governing) but, more often than not, I think, they consider the political landscape to just sort of “come with” the actual landscape which is what they think of when they think of “their country”.
We Americans are a peculiar batch of people in that respect. If you go to the science fiction section of the library and poke around you’ll find a double handful of stories in which some enclave of Americans has been isolated in some other-planetary or other-dimensional universe and they promptly set up a US Congress and start having elections and pick a President and as long as they have that, hey, it’s America all over again. What is distinctively American for many people in America is not the landscape, it’s our form of government. Or, more accurately, people’s often hazy and vague understanding thereof. But the patriotism is directly attached to our way of doing government, we’re extremely chauvinistic about it and often tend to speak as if we were the first (or only) democracy, the fairest, the system with the most freedom for individuals, the one and only system where people have rights, etc etc.
Even the more cosmopolitan and educated American, who may harbor a wry cynicism about American political realities, may still hold on to a strong sense that America should aspire to that kind of thing, that it’s how we’re supposed to be.
So a lot of American patriotism, to Americans themselves, isn’t about “our block is cooler than your block, our side of the street is better than yours”, it’s about ideals and principles of government that we were raised to be really really fervent about.
American kids are trained from Kindergarten onward to recite a Pledge of Allegiance, to worship the flag as a borderline deity, and to accept that money is worth what the government says it is. They have a somewhat different relationship to the police and the military than children of other nations do. They’re shown pictures of kids from other, less functional countries and admonished to eat their green beans because kids in Africa and China would be immeasurably grateful to get such a treat for dinner. And a lot of them go through life without questioning any of this.
Because the United States of America is The Greatest Nation on Earth!
(Gosh, I can’t believe no one had posted the obvious answer yet…)
Cite? 
I want to add to the opinion that what you see is a vocal but not completely representative group. Further, I think that this is a fairly natural tendency, but in the case of the US the size, weatlh, and influence makes it the most visible. I say this because, as I have mentioned in other posts, I’ve thad the fortune to have a really large number of friends from all over the world, as well as lots of business travel where I return to the same place repeatedly, which means I have friends in those places as well.
My point is that while these folks are much more low key about it, I think they get just as upset when they feel their nation is criticized. Americans are probably a more brash culture, which makes these things seem magnified.
One thing that I do see which I find interesting is that among my educated friends there is an awareness of this perception of Americans, and they seem to go out of their way to avoid such behavior.
The US media overwhelms the world. Hollywood and the Internet in particular and even our music especially in the past. Our movies especially reinforce the idea of the rah rah USA and our greatness. We export this to the world.
Also what MEBuckner said. 
I think the converse is as much of a factor as US dynamics, namely : nationalism/patriotism has garnered a lot of bad press in other Western countries over the past few decades. We French remember Vichy and French Algeria (or rather, we’d really rather not). The Brits also have some Imperial guilt to work through. Germany… yes. Same goes for Japan, Italy and Spain, all of whom had their brutal dictators putting a strong emphasis on nationalism.
So naturally, ardent patriotism is viewed with some measure of suspicion there ; not the least bit because that’s the far right’s hat still. Besides, it’s really tacky.
Not sure about the Scandiwegian countries, but then again they’re not really a huge international media presence. The only countries I can think of where die-hard nationalism is still very much a cultural thing are some of the countries of the old Eastern bloc (you do NOT want to diss Serbia, or should I say Glorious Eternal Srbja, in the presence of a Serb :)) and Russia. Maybe Israel too, but I’m not all too familiar with the culture there.
This is it, it’s a dominant empire that naturally produces a lot of pride and bombast. On the other hand the ideology behind the thing, from the 1700s, has been more intellectually advanced and shouldn’t be sniffed at.
Overcompensation. It’s a cheesy analogy, but the US really is a melting pot - off the top of my head, almost all of my acquaintances have some “other” factor in their identity (“My grandparents were German,” “My great-grandmother was Irish,” etc). Because there’s no thousand-year past of tradition and culture to draw on, we use abstract ideals instead.
Absolutely, although we temper it with copious amounts of self-criticism and endless arguments about what being a patriot really means.
Yeah, but her’s the thing-- you learn the pledge when you’re so young you don’t really know what it means, and so saying it becomes something you just by rote. To me, as a kid it was: I pleja lejence… Seriously, I had no idea what “allegiance” was when I was 4 or 5 years old.
Uhm… no.
Uhm… what? There are industrialized countries on the gold standard or something these days?
It might be that many of us get it from our older relatives who chose to live here, as opposed to just having been born here.
Hyperbole, I get that. But, yeah, you Americans sure seem to love your flag a whole lot. That was one thing that struck me when I first came over to visit y’all. Flags everywhere. In every public space, even on the subway cars. It was a bit disconcerting.
Just an observation. Not making any judgements. Overall, I like you guys. 
Scandiwegians, you say?
Well, for one thing, Norway is the bestest country in the world, Norwegians are the awesomest at absolutely everything, and if you come from anywhere else, starting with Sweden (in fact, *especially *Sweden) you are obviously some kind of moron or at best irrelevant. Oh, you didn’t know any of that? I guess that’s because you didn’t grow up in Norway in the eighties. I did, and that was the message I was getting from everywhere. (Oh, and yeah: It turned out to be wrong.)
I don’t think kids these days are getting that message as strongly, though. For one thing, we’re connected to the world now, by way of the interwebz and such, so there will be evidence to the contrary from an early age. Also, people travel more. But going by newspapers and people’s conversations, the idea certainly still seems to be around.
Also, we do this stupid shit once every year. If any other country did that, the neighbors would be worrying about impending invasion. (And, yeah, I know I just complained about the flags in the US. I’m sorry. We only do that one day each year, though. It’s not a year-round thing. And since it’s a public holiday, I can sleep through it.)
So, on the one hand, an inflated sense of self-importance. We’re totally schizophrenic about it, though, because on the other hand, we’re clearly also suffering from a massive inferiority complex. Any time anything Norwegian is noticed in the wider world (some pop star having fifteen minutes in the international limelight, some Norwegian scientist being mentioned in footnote in an international paper, fuck, anything will do) the Norwegian media is sooo happy. “They noticed us! The big, grown-up, proper countries noticed us! We love you, big, proper countries!” So, yeah, there’s that.
How can you have those two ideas - inflated sense of self, and a sense of inferiority - in your head at the same time? Well, Norwegians do. Some therapy is probably called for.
At least you Americans have reasons to be patriotic. For starters, you can actually invade places and get away with it. We Norwegians would obviously get our asses kicked if we tried invading a sandwich shop. We’re only a country because absolutely no one, starting with the Swedes (in fact. *especially *the Swedes) can be arsed to blow us off the map and get it over with.
Which, fellow Norwegians, is something worth remembering every now and then. And, while I’m on the subject, the other thing that needs remembering is that every aspect of our daily lives around here, culturally and materially (apart from the lutefisk, and if that actually is an aspect of your daily life - what’s wrong with you?) is imported. We don’t ever invent *anything *in this place, maybe apart from skiing and certain disgusting kinds of cheese.
Anyway, I’ll stop now, as I seem to be whipping myself up into an anti-Norwegian fervor. I didn’t mean for this to become an essay-length hijack. Apparently, I have some feelings on the subject. Maybe I should look into that.
As for the rest of the Scandiwegians, I think the Swedes and Danes have a more balanced and sensible view of their place in the world. They’re *on *the European continent, not basically falling off the edge of it like the drunk uncle leaning too far off the balcony railing at your Christmas party. So I guess it makes sense for them to be less messed up.
