Any is too many. How was that unobvious?
[QUOTE=HurricaneDitka;20358582
pulykamel you said it was “generally espoused as patriotism”. What led you to that conclusion? If we want to base our sweeping statements about people on some actual facts, why should anyone take your “generally” with anything but a truckful of salt? Is this just you painting with a broad brush, or is there actually some data out there that shows that “my country right or wrong” is actually the ‘general’ view of patriotism?[/QUOTE]
You are absolutely welcome to take it with a grain of salt. It’s only meant as my own personal observation, and do note that I say it “teeters” on that, not that it is that. It’s just one asshole’s opinion.
We had a thread around the 4th of July with some of those sentiments. Someone offered an analogy about pointing out the flaws of one’s spouse during your anniversary dinner, or something like that. I don’t think “maybe the 4th of July is not the best day to harp on America’s flaws” is really the same thing, or even particularly similar, to “unquestioning support for the actions of my country regardless of whether those actions are right of wrong” / “If you somehow dared to think that there were things that were wrong with our country, you were a damn commie” / “thinking that the US can do no wrong and that we must support the president, so long as it’s a white male” / “my country right or wrong”. In that thread, I personally wrote this:
I don’t know if I’ve ever heard someone say the phrase out loud, but I’ve seen a handful of bumper stickers with that printed on it before. Seeing it once or twice a decade on someone’s rusting-out bumper has given me the personal impression that it’s not a particularly-widely-held attitude. I haven’t read any studies or surveys that have attempted to quantify how widely-held it is. Have you?
That’s a good question. I certainly hear the sentiment expressed in those words fairly regularly (but I do live in a fairly conservative part of Chicago. Yes, Chicago has plenty of conservatives.) Maybe that’s why we have different impressions of “patriotism.” Hell, twenty-five years ago I probably would have been saying the same thing.
Studies no, just personal observation. I have certainly heard the phrase out loud, and I have seen it quite a bit in print.
Back in the late bush years (which is very relevant to the poll, as it was taken shortly after the bush years), it was a very popular sentiment in my circles. Any criticism of the Iraq war, any criticism of our “interrogation methods”, any criticism of questionable surveillance issues were met with that phrase.
My experience may be different from yours, as I am a left leaning moderate in a moderately right leaning state, in a more heavily right leaning area, so there are more opportunities for personal politics to clash with your neighbor’s or co-worker’s. I have no idea what Utah politics are like, but I assume they are further to the right, a bit more homogenous, and that you fit more closely in with the mainstream of thought in your area.
Point is, if you have not expressed criticisms of your country to those who disagree with those criticisms, then you are not going to have that phrasing thrown at you. Those of us who are a bit different from our communities, those of us who do express a difference of opinion from the mainstream do hear this sentiment quite a bit. The “love it or leave it” crowd sees that you love it, and does not invite you to leave, so it is actually unsurprising that you have never had it directed at you.
Yes, if changing the country to match your vision of what it ought to be is patriotism (and I can imagine several valid definitions that include the concept), and your vision is stupid, then yes, patriotism would not be a virtue in that case.
While I consider the movement away from the racist / sexist accusation about white males to be progress, you didn’t really answer my question. How did you conclude that patriotism means to Republicans “the US can do no wrong”? Did you read some other poll or conduct a bunch of focus groups where Republicans told you “the country can do no wrong”? Some personal anecdotes again? Or did it just sound good when you typed it?
“They think that the US can do no wrong internationally, for sure” is almost as ignorant as your earlier post. Do you think that Republicans generally thought the Iranian nuclear deal was a good move? That the Paris Accord was the right move for the country? That the Syrian “red line” wasn’t a misstep? I think it’s obvious that loads of Republicans felt that those sort of things were mistakes / bad moves internationally. You probably disagree, but please try to differentiate your disagreement with them from this slander of them that “They think that the US can do no wrong internationally”.
When Obama seemed to want to bomb Syria for crossing his “red line”, do you think Republicans were generally supportive of that potential war effort, or not?
I’m just going to offer how I would respond to this poll. There are a lot of “American” principles that I believe in. Equality for all, freedom of speech (albeit I think hate speech is a thing), freedom of movement, classless society, and I’m sure a lot more. But I don’t see any reason that these things have to be exclusively American, and I do not see Americans as better than anyone else, or the United States as inherently better than other countries.
So, given that, I would at most answer “somewhat patriotic.” Because, to me, “very Patriotic” or “extremely Patriotic” mean those last things, and I don’t want to be associated with those. I’m not tribalistic. I think tribalism is the root of all bigotry, and something people should fight against.
But I do love that I live in a country that gets so much right. Maybe there’s another country I’d be happier in. It often seems that way, but I mostly hear the good parts of those countries and not the bad parts.
Do you think this makes me a bad person? Are these other “very patriotic” people better? Or is it just that patriotism has a lot of meanings, and a lot of people don’t want to be caught up in the bad parts?
I never claimed that Democrats were not generally patriotic, which seems to be the thing you are trying to refute. My OP said that Rs are generally more patriotic than Ds. 91% > 62%.
My answer to the poll would probably be either ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ depending a little bit on the day and the mood I was in when the pollster asked.
Thanks, and you are correct that you are correct about “teeters”.
No.
That doesn’t strike me as a common, or even uncommon, definition for patriotism. Simple “love of country” in isolation strikes me as a neutral sentiment, neither good nor bad. Compare the following:
A: “I love this country way more than you. I’d even love this country if it brought back slavery.”
B: “I love this country. If there was a movement within it to bring back slavery, I’d fight it, because that would hurt the thing I love.”
Who is more patriotic (if such can be measured)? Whose patriotism is more positive (if such can… etc)?
If the premise of this thread is comparing Group X’s patriotism to Group Y’s patriotism, are the qualities of said patriotisms of any relevance?
Personally, I would label A as extremely patriotic, and B as very patriotic.
Heh. Nice.
Self-enhancement is a tendency to rate oneself more favorably than others. A lot, perhaps almost all, people do this in one way or another. I think someone mentioned earlier in this thread the study where 91% of drivers rated themselves as above average.
Of course, not everyone self-enhances with the same frequency or to the same degree as everyone else. Interestingly a recent study shows that “the tendency to make overly positive self-evaluations was positively associated with general political conservatism, social conservatism, economic conservatism, and conservative patterns of moral foundation endorsement.”
So when you have a survey question of the type, “Do you consider yourself to be X?” More conservatives will consider themselves to be X or to be X to a greater degree when X is something positive regardless of the specific value of X.
See also: Maybe Conservatives Just Think They’re Happier Than Liberals
Patriotism means you are willing to do what’s right for your country.
Nationalism means you’re an asshole about it.
What colors are on the flag of Dunning-Krugerland?
Coincidently, the paper I referenced in my previous post cites a paper from 1989 coauthored by Dunning.
From the study:
:eek:
I read both the study and the 538 article and they were quite interesting. Thanks for sharing. I’d encourage others to read them too, and get the context (demographic-controlled analysis of ~12,000 volunteer respondents on YourMorals.org and ~400 from another Internet site), but it does offer at least a partial explanation to the differences Gallup found.
Why did you just do that, H-D?
Why did you use that specific quote out of context with the entire paragraph or section in which you found it (Abstract)?
Why did you not bother quoting the section from the Conclusion/Discussion which states the following:
[QUOTE=Study]
(PDF) Relative to liberals, conservatives were more likely to endorse favorable but unlikely self-evaluations, to provide socially desirable self-reports, to view themselves as better than average, unique, and ideal, and to rate family members and fellow countrymen as superior to others. Meta-analysis confirmed that self-enhancement was associated with general, social, economic, and moral dimensions of conservatism, above and beyond demographic variables known to predict self-enhancement.
[/QUOTE]
Were you hoping nobody would bother reading the cited study? A study which suggests Conservatives exhibit exaggerated (some might even say delusional) tendencies about themselves and their identifying ideologies, in contrast to liberals who appear to be more realistic about theirs?
I do agree that everyone who is interested in this discussion ought to read this study. It’s pretty short. No more than 10 minutes required to read all of it.