Are you a patriot?

[SlowwHand]

are you a patriot?
You have already voted on this poll.
yes

[Kidlicious]

Dang. Slow is the tie breaker.

[SlowwHand]

The 2 whackoffs that voted banana should be peeled.

[LordShiva]

Yes

[Adagio]

I'm just as much a patriot than I am a famous rap-star

[Sandman]

Patriotism is a waste of time. It offers a load of easy answers to the big questions in life, but these are based on little more than ingroup-outgroup social psychology. Even religion is better.

[Salyut]

I consider myself an Australian patriot, but at the same time I consider myself a world citizen.

[Pekka]

Depends what you mean by patriot. Would I defend my country against aggressors? Yes, not only would I have to, but I would also do it. This I'm certain of.

Do I trust or like my government or politicians? No. I don't care about that really. Do I like my countrymen? Not particularly, no.

Do I consider my nationality as something that is a bond? No.

I'm a patriot in a sense that my friends are here and my home is currently here. THat's all. I like my friends and I like my home. I don't have any kind of altruism towards my country. I'm most likely a dissident, I'm definitely against many things that are mainstream beliefs and opinions in here. My style of governing and handling things is not welcome in here. Many of my opinions are not welcome in here either.

So in that sense, I'm not a patriot. I just like my friends and my home, that's purely it. Nothing more, nothing less. The most patriot bone I have is that I want our hockey team to succeed. I won't be waving any flags, I won't be praising my country, it just is. Gives me no emotion for or against. I have as much love for my country as I have for Bolivia. If all my friends would move out of Finland, I wouldn't have any reason to even be here or visit. I don't love countries. The only thing the separates a country from another is the degree they suck.

[Dis]

One thing I am proud of my country for is the Marshall plan. It was just a great thing to do.

And sometimes I do get a funny feeling when I hear he national anthem. I'm not sure what that is . It's just a moving song, what can I say.

So maybe I have like 1% of patriotism. For me, america is a way of life, even if I have no respect for the goverment.

[Alexander I]

I find that I have really mixed feelings when people start gushing about how great America is and/or how bad everywhere else is.

I love America and the rights we have here, but that doesn't mean that everywhere else is bad. That's really unfair. I want to be patriotic, but not at the cost of fairness, or justice, or truth.

I don't think it's right to gush about how great the US is when a lot of the rhetoric is simply not true. I heard my brother-in-law's high school choir do a rendition of a song based on the Pledge of Allegiance where they throw in how the Pledge represents "America's four great freedoms."

"Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion." Okay, I thought. These are good, I like those. And then... "Freedom from Want, Freedom from Fear." What? I mean seriously, what the crap? How deluded is that? Sure, we're fairly well off in the US, and fairly well-protected militarily, but Free from all Want and Fear? No way! And I won't even get started on how that relates to the current administration.

And so many people are deluded about US history too. All they know is that Public School propagandistic garbage that they get spoon-fed in their formative years. Some people actually think America is perfect. And that scares me.

Maybe I'm biased because of my own dual citizenship (with Germany), but I think it's more important to be a "World Patriot" than a national one.

[Wiglaf]

YES

How can I respect a country that claims the constitution is the all important document, but almost never follows it?

Do you dress yourself in the morning? How can anyone who isn't a ****** make the statement that America "almost never" follows the constitution?

[Alinestra Covelia]

I am not a Patriot.

I have never been much into American Football

[Straybow]

OMG, I agree with Wiglaf!

Originally posted by Dis
It seems that freedom of religion didn't really exist in america for almost all of its history. ... The thing I was researching recently by the way, was Joseph Smith and the mormon movement. Yeah they are a bunch of crackpots, but shouldn't crackpots be allowed to exist in this country? Seems to me the majority has the right to do whatever it wants to the minority, just because they are the majority.

Oh, Gawd. Whining about poor Joseph frickin' Smith and the frickin' Mormons.

Wiggy's right, what the Mormons suffered wasn't at the hands of the constitution, unless you mean the insistance that Utah Territory illegalize polygamy in order to become a State in the Union.

[Zoid]

Originally posted by quantum_mechani
Patriotism is flawed in any case, being devoted to rights is commendable, but that does not translate to being devoted to any particular nation.

QFT

[Alexander I]

Originally posted by Straybow

Oh, Gawd. Whining about poor Joseph frickin' Smith and the frickin' Mormons.

Wiggy's right, what the Mormons suffered wasn't at the hands of the constitution, unless you mean the insistance that Utah Territory illegalize polygamy in order to become a State in the Union.

I think he's talking about the pre-Utah movement. The attacks the Mormons suffered in Missouri and Illinois, especially. I guess you could count sending the Federal army to Utah on the eve of the Civil War if you really wanted (but nobody ever said James Buchanan was a bright president). Joseph Smith never actually set foot in Utah, btw.