Proud to be an American.... why?

On the way to work, constantly I see pickup trucks and SUVs emblazoned with "Proud to be an American" stickers all over its bumper.

Just once, I'd like to go up, knock on their window, and ask "why?"

Why, exactly, should we be proud to be an american?

Our leaders are inept (Bush is a moron, Ashcroft is a moral looney)

Our economy doesn't make anything of substance (name 5 useful, everyday things that Americans make better than anyone else)

Our military is antagonizing the entire world (the Iraqis don't want us there, just as they didn't the first time around... the same can be said of Somalia, Panama, Nicaragua, Vietnam, and so on)

Our political system is a wreck (Our Presidential elections are among the lowest in any democracy ANYWHERE)

Our educational system is worse (Any system that requires students to become burdened with tens of thousands of dollars in debt just to get a piece of paper is a bad system)

In general, America is a mess. We consume but don't produce, we terrorize the world, we erode our own civil liberties in the name of safety, we pollute while telling others not to, we have an inconsistent foreign policy, and we're the laughingstock of the world.

So why, indeed, are you proud to be an American?

LF

Lordfly, I'd have to point out: 'we' are not neccessarily the administration. "The government for and by the people" was a great idea, but it isn't neccessarily true.

There are still some ideals left in America that haven't been stomped out yet, and the current agendas of those pulling the strings today are not neccessarily representative of that.

We aren't all the same. I don't neccessarily feel guilty when the administration or federal government misbehaves. Sometimes I do feel like explaining to folks, "No, we don't all agree with what just happened", but all too often, it's either you're completely with 'em, or you're an apologist.

I'm really neither. It'd be a fallacy to say that America has done NOTHING right. The wrongdoings are nowhere near representative of how the citizenry neccessarily feel.

The concept that America provides nothing to the table is a popular one these days. Of course, we do. Intel, Motorola, AMD, Apple, to name a few. Edison, Bell, Goodyear. Boeing, Lucent, Cisco. Landing on the moon. Nvidia. Linden Lab.

I have very close friends all over Europe, and, as much some folks would like to think that the culture is polar, it isn't. It could degrade into an "Is Western Culture Bad" debate, but that one won't come to a conclusion.

Yeah, we've got some screwed up stuff going on right now. But saying that America is inherently evil, does nothing positive, and all of its citizenry is guilty by association, is pretty brazen, Lordfly.

Personally, I'd rather see this country get back up to spec, than throw it to the wolves.

i've wanted to move to Amsterdam for awhile now.

oh.. and Lordfly, about this..



5 things we're better at making:

1. Second Life
2. Xbox
3. cheese steak
4. auto-inflating airplane escape slides
5. fun of ourselves

A little more on that. Texas Instruments, arguably, makes some of the most advanced and highest performance digital signal processing components in the world..

Sony CD players that you use, every day, use *Texas Instruments* digital to analog converters. Because they're the best around. Japanese and Taiwanese DACs like AKM and Crystal consistently underperform them.

I know that this is a technical caveat, but that was a simplistic statement. Some of the best engineering happens here, not in Japan. That's because our engineers -are- allowed to think outside of the box more than in other countries.

I sure hope you aren't running an AMD Athlon in your computer, either, Lordfly. Or an Intel processor. Or if you're on a mac, a Motorola processor. And hopefully not an Nvidia video card. Or Crucial/Micron or Mushkin memory. (Mushkin's headquarters is literally 500 feet from where I'm sitting right now.)

Then there are the institutions. MIT. Cal Tech. Harvard. Some pretty good stuff happens at those places, Lordfly. People from other countries even come here to go to those schools.

I could go on.

I think the other replies answered your economic problem with America. I will try to tackle the social and military issues you raised.

Social:
Name one country, of equal population size or greater, that is better off, socially, than the US.

There aren't any.

Many European countires have great social programs like free college and health care.

But they also don't have 230 million people!

Social programs are expensive. Income tax rates of 35% or more aren't uncommon in Europe. Plus high sales tax on everything you buy.
This is all with a relatively small populations. The large centralize governments needed for these social programs don't scale well. The larger the population, the more expensive things get, meaning higher taxes as your population increases.

Military:
I'm the first to admit, we never should have attacked Iraq. It was a mistake that I fear will rival Vietnam, but now that we are there, we are kinda trapped. It would cause even more damage just to leave Iraq in an anarchy state. We are in for th elong ride now and there is not much we can do about it.

On the other hand, past efforts like Somalia and Bosnia were for the right reasons.

Somalia you have 10 year-old boys being brained washed to hack off the limbs of their former neighbors. You have warlords blocking shipping ports and airdrop sites, so the U.N. can't send relief to the tens of thousands starving people. Something has to be done about this.

Bosnia, you have Milsovhich commiting ethinic cleansings on scales not seen since WW2. People trapped in their homes because snipers have orders to kill anyone they see on the streets. Again, something had to be done.

There are many more cases like this ...

How about the peace efforts in Ireland during the 90s?

Iserel/Palastine peace talks?

For every Iraq or Veitnam there are also good uses of miltary force.

Personally I'm proud of many American military actions ...

In closing,

The world is a messed up place. Humanit in general as a lot to learn, and a lot of growing up. If you are going to live in this crazy world, you could do a lot worse than America....

There is no such thing as a "good" military venture. At best, it's "required" (fighting off the nazi menace in world war 2, and that was only after we got bombed).

If we're so high and mighty about getting rid of dictatorships and spreading democracy, as it were, then why do/did we support dictators all around the world?

Batitista in cuba. The Shah in Iran. Any of a dozen tinpot dictators in africa and central america. Hell we still support some dictators while seething at others. This is due to our crappy communist 'containment' policy.

What pisses me off the most about US foreign policy is we don't take a "all or nothing" stance. We get rid of some dictators (saddam), while leaving others entirely intact, and in fact, helping them survive (food and money aid to North Korea, while it builds nukes)

If we're going to knock out dictators, make it a foreign policy goal, and kick some ass worldwide. Don't hen peck at everything.

But then, any democracy that was forcibly installed has collapsed within years (haiti, for instance, or panama, or venezuela, or cuba, and soon to be iraq).

Democracy needs to come from a country's own people, not the United States.

LF

We dont' have the military to do it all at once, and all of the peace activists would protest it even more.

The only possible way is one at a time... Don't worry i'm sure bush has plans for Syria and Iran.

JV

But again, the question remains... what plans, and why? Why is it OUR god-given right to storm into a country and tell it how to run things? It smacks against the point of "national sovereignity".

If WE can do it, what's to stop, say, China from invading california and stating how it should run things? Nothing, after all, they had plans for california.

Let countries do their own thing, and let us worry about our own citizens.

LF

Because they were not communists

EDIT- lol need to finis entire post before replying

We let countries do their own thing and now we are short 3000 people and a couple buildings in NYC.

I'm not saying we should lord over other countries, that makes us no better then their current rulers. What we are doing is slowly making it so the people can rule themselves. Is that such an awful goal for a country that has been given so much?

LF, since your so insightful on how awful we are, let's see your plan to remedy it.
If you distrust and despise your own country (and from your post I guess it spans several administrations) so much, why don't you simply leave? Does the reason you haven't left have anything to do with a job? Or income? Dont be half assed. You were obviously disillusioned with this country long before Bush, taken from your own examples.

Let me sidenote that I hate this war. People tearing apart our history though, who live here and benefit from that same history, then turn around and basically forsake their own country in musings such as this do more harm than good.

Explain that to the hostages that were rescued in Grenada.

Or to the families of those whose lives were taken/ruined on 9/11.

Find an old Jewish man with a number tattooed on his arm, and see what his response is to that statement.

Explain that to the millions of service members & veterans who volunteered to risk their lives to defend your right to insult them.

"I am an American, fighting in the forces that guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense."

We let countries do their own thing and now we are short 3000 people and a couple buildings in NYC.

I'm not saying we should lord over other countries, that makes us no better then their current rulers. What we are doing is slowly making it so the people can rule themselves. Is that such an awful goal for a country that has been given so much?-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Can't agree with you on this one...so little is being done to actually get at the source of this attrocity and the source is not in Iraq. That is dubbya's daddies war grudge being played out like a bad, drawn out game of who sunk my battleship.

We have not closed our borders to possible terrorists instead we take away the rights of law abiding citizens under the guise of national security. If our gov't wanted to protect the citizens they would have closed the borders down and rounded up everyone here on an expired visa and sent them home untill this was figured out or hell they would have kept better track of those visa's in the first place.

I know for a fact that I would not be able to stay in anyother country on an expired visa. And if I were in that country on a student visa they would make damned sure that I actually attended school. The Government is lax. They have sacrificed the freedom of the majority for the comfort of a few when all the time the solution was staring them in the face. Stop letting everyone come here on false visas and stick around when they expire. Stop giving every person who comes here a free ride while the people who work here and live here and want to be American Citizens get the shaft.

The men who did this were not from Iraq. They were part of an organization that planted people in this country for the purpose of attacking it. They were allowed to stay even though they were know terrorists...even though the government was informed about their actions. And what answer do we get for this....Oooops we forgot to send the memo to the CIA duh...sorry we'll fix that by taking away a but load of your civil liberties to over compensate for our big whoopsie.

Just to let ya know though...I love my country...I love it so much that when I see an administration let something like this happen it really pisses me off. And when I see that document that my fore fathers drafted to ensure my liberties being used like a peice of quilted northern, I get really pissed off.

Blame this on those who think that illegals and non-citizens should be afforded the constitutional rights intended for citizens of the United States.

Hint: As a general rule, these are the same people that protest military actions, regardless of the reason for the action.

Well, I am happy about that NO female circumcision policy and that my taxes aren't half my money and that everyone doesn't have bad teeth and that I can eat until I am full and still have food to throw away and that I can complain about how stupid my leader is without getting snatched from my bed at night and I can do it in a rubber suit if I want and its no ones business but my own and I can meet people with different cultures and upbringings just by stepping outside my door.

Its not saying that the US doesn't suck, its just that is sucks WAY less than a lot of other places.

I mean instead of trying to convince you that we have it pretty good and the potiential to make it even better I could be sitting in some third world country without the energy to bat a fly off my eye.

Do you have any proof of this or is it just your opinion. If you do, I'd be interested in hearing it.


I agree, the government is fat an in-efficient. The borders need to be made more secure. I thought that I read a news story that we now have or will have unmanned spy drones monitoring our southern border

Amen to that

No, but they trained there with the permission of the current leader

While the Patriot Act _could_ effect our civil liberties, it hasn't. That is why we need to be very careful who we elect into office.

I'm neither proud nor ashamed to be American on the grounds that my American-ness was a mater of fate (I was born here) and not any personal acomplishment.
but that's just me....

Yes, that is true of many of us but you make America what it is today. You are the deciding voice. You are the infrastructure. I would hate to see that people would become frogs in tepid water caring neither way about thier country just because they happen to not be a refugee or 1st generation transplant. You have more responsibility than most then for what America will become. Not being a jerk just saying that Americans not caring is what got us into this mess in the first place. Being human was also a matter of fate but it is better than being an amoeba...well maybe.

I think if it is perfectly acceptable to be ashamed of something that wasn't your doing then its perfectly acceptable to be proud of things that aren't your doing.

Few people would think a pedophile would have no right to be ashamed of his attraction to children because he didn't create it. So why can't a person be proud of what they are even if it was only fortune that made them that.

When people are proud of their actions, are they really proud of what they did? Or of what they did says about them? If you get an A on a paper are you proud because you got an A or because that implies you are smart?

Ben Franklin said "I am a revolutionary so that my son may be a farmer so that his son may be a philosopher" or something to that effect. What we do will resonate throughout generations of people much like what was done before us resonates through who we are today.

The sum of all parts creates the whole...

I agree to the extent that it is acceptable to be proud/ashamed of something you weren't responsible for. If you're proud/ashamed to be X, feel free. I associate pride with acomplishments, but that's my personal definition and not the default.

No, but they trained there with the permission of the current leader

Actually they were trained by the US initially...so should we then attack ourselves? We can't go around attacking people for being affiliated with a group that has done harm to us when we were just as much to blame and did the same exact thing.

Man who lives in glass house should dress in the basement or else expose his own dirty bum...

As to Dubya fightin his daddy's lost war...well it is just odd to me that during a time when we should have been seeking out the killers of American Citizens we instead started a war against somebody who was doing...well nothing at the time and at the most may have dabbled a bit way down the line. I dunno looks like fish, smells like fish...must be fishy. But saying well we havn't got the guys that did it but this guy over hear let them train there once so lets go get them just doesn't fly with me....then again I could be an idiot....it has been pointed out to me before.

A good reason to be proud to be an American is that the USA is the only country in the world founded on ideals of personal liberty and freedom rather than the whims of kings and vagaries of war.

So true Wednesday....and to add to that the freedom to say that you are not proud to be an American is a wonderful reason to be proud to be an American.....Now when they take that away I may have to shift my POV

Lordfly, I am very proud to be an American!

Why? Because the U.S.A. is truly the standard bearer for freedom in the world. This may be a propaganda line, but it is also quite true.

Without us Americans, it is doubtful that human rights and democracy would have gotten anywhere near as spread as they have been. Without us, much of the world might today live under the same tyrannies they suffered under for ages.

You can decry the injustices and infringements of rights our current administration is engaged upon, and you should! You can argue that our current wars are senseless and destructive, and perhaps driven by some ulterior motives. I'm sure for some people they are.

But I truly believe our primary motive in these things is the same one we have had, in ebbs and flows ever since our founding. That is to say, freedom and justice for all. We've struggled and fought repeatedly to achieve and maintain these in our own country, and occasionally we've backslid. But on the whole, the story of America has been one of an ever increasing scope of rights, and freedom not only for us but for the whole world.

So I am very proud to call myself an American.

I am not sure what the pick-up truck thing is all about.