wow...it's such a relief to know that so many people share your. Frankly, I find it annoying ad nauseam. One should be proud of something s/he put an effort into, something s/he deserves, not of something that happened to you accidentally.

I'm reminded more than anyone about how important it is to be patriotic since I'm a draft dodger living in a country other than my own....and this is coming from people who were born here in Canada, who have never seen said country nor have they ever lived in it....

Conscription is the culmination of slavery and involuntary servitude. This is what patriotism is, an excuse for tyrants and dictators to indoctronite people living under their rule so they become sheep...poorly trained, programmed, target practice to be used in some senseless war of aggression all under the guise of "patriotism".

thank you! -- it can be such an incredibly long, disturbing, demoralizing weekend -- thank you!

well-done, matthew - your article is a nicely-realistic viewpoint on how blind our patriotism, a good gauge of when and why we should question supporting an idea and practice that's usually reserved for the deserved.

Not true. The first people to die when a despot comes to power are the social democrats.

You either don't know what you are talking about or you are trying to confuse the issue.

MiMiCcS July 4th, 2008 7:41 pm wrote:

"Progressives chose the religion of Global Warming and anti-corporatism, pro-socialism,

Conservatives choose the Christian Zionist war on terror and anti-socialism, pro-corporatism.

Both paths lead to Totalitarian One World Government-Communism. National Facism is simply a stepping stone to Global Communism."

Your article is quite logical and the first two statements above make perfect sense but the third baffles me. Are you saying Progressives and Conservatives are working together at a high level to bring about One World Government-Communism?

MiMiCcS July 4th, 2008 7:41 pm wrote:

"Progressives chose the religion of Global Warming and anti-corporatism, pro-socialism,

Conservatives choose the Christian Zionist war on terror and anti-socialism, pro-corporatism.

Both paths lead to Totalitarian One World Government-Communism. National Facism is simply a stepping stone to Global Communism."

Your article is quite logical and the first two statements above make perfect sense but the third baffles me. Are you saying Progressives and Conservatives are working together at a high level to bring about One World Government-Communism?

russedav -

The New Testament Social Gospel admonition 'do unto others...' is probably the single wisest social rule ever preached. But it, and similar wise advice found in the New Testament, has been preached by many other sages and thinkers besides your personal god, Jesus.

Your personal belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ does NOT equal proof of that divinity for other people. People can believe in the wisdom of some or all of what is historically attributed to Jesus without believing in his divinity.

If you can't understand that, at least try to respect it - compassionately, as any decent god would want you to.

You are a human being like the rest of us, and you have no right to demand that others bow down before your personal understanding of diety.

If you ever mentally matured a little, you'd understand that what you are really saying to others is: 'Bow down before MY [russedav's] human opinion about God.'

Do you really think that any god worth believing in, would want you to be so cockey, smug, and angry (in It's Name) toward your honestly searching fellows?

Rothschild said:

"In an article called "Patriot Games" in the current issue of Time magazine (July 7), Peter Beinart, late of The New Republic, inspects his navel for seven pages and then throws the lint all around.

"'Conservatives are right," he says. "To some degree, patriotism must mean loving your country for the same reason you love your family: simply because it is yours.'

"And then he criticizes, incoherently, the conservative love-it-or-leave-it types.

"The moral folly of his argument he himself exposes: 'If liberals love America purely because it embodies ideals like liberty, justice, and equality, why shouldn't they love Canada-which from a liberal perspective often goes further toward realizing those principles-even more? And what do liberals do," he asks, "when those universal ideals collide with America's self-interest? Giving away the federal budget to Africa would probably increase the net sum of justice and equality on the planet, after all. But it would harm Americans and thus be unpatriotic.'"

I don't get it. Everything quoted in that article strikes me as accurate. From the perspective of someone who is supposedly "not patriotic", all the stuff Beinart says is right on. Only someone who was trying to cling to some watered-down, "progressive patriotism" (which is really just a partial leftist concession to social pressure; a compromise between what you know is right and the mindless nationalism of those around you) would find any reason to object to Beinart's characterization of patriotism. Patriotism is simply ingroup bias on a massive scale.

The b.s. about "recognizing America's achievements" is just that. If it weren't for nationalism, we'd be recognizing the achievements of Venezuela, or Cuba, or Sweden, or (fill in the nation whose political climate most closely matches your own personal preferences). Naturally America has done some good things, all nations have. The question is whose achievements you choose to focus on: those of the countries that have actually achieved the most in your opinion, or those of your nation simply because it is your nation.

Ultimately, though, I wish we would measure human progress in absolute terms rather than nation-by-nation.

Patriotism is a phony issue.

Nice job, Matt.

Jezees russedav

Somehow you just managed to make "me" feel a little progressive myself.

Did god tell us to wipe out the savage natives too or did we just come up with that one on our own?

Progressive indeed. The stupid people commenting here clearly don't know their history and it could well be fatal for them and the rest of us. Try suicide, not progressive. "Progressives" are only those too stupid to learn from history and they will die for it and kill the fools who listen to their perverted egocentric lies.

In his usual excellent form, Thomas Sowell at NRO (www.nationalreview.com) shows in his "Does Patriotism Matter?" (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDE2YmQwYmJlZTllMzdjNGQyY2FlZGZhMTM4NjAxYWE=) the painful FACTS of HISTORY (hard truth versus the above bogus mushy personal babbling) about how the traitorous French teacher unions (we have met the enemy and it is NEA fascist traitors) babbled the same bogus lies after WWI that resulted in the demoralizing of the technologically superior but spineless French military Hitler gleefully watched collapse like a house of cards after a few weeks because he knew how good a job the "progressive" cowards had done, horribly seen in WWI war hero Marshall Pétain becoming the vile puppet "head" Quisling traitor coward of Vichy France whose strings Hitler pulled (as he did many in the US, as did Stalin, no doubt with views similar to this paper), justly executed for treason after the war. God alone knows what the French, especially Jews, must have suffered from his cowardice, proving again the adage that war makes cowards of heroes and vice versa; the heart throughout history having always been, as it will always be, in the hand of the Lord (Proverbs 16:9 & 21:1).

If only He could give spineless America the backbone to start prosecuting such "progressive" traitors now before the same thing happens to us, as is certain and more thousands die the same way, those not learning from history repeating it. The same thing happened in the UK as it did in France, of course, poor Chamberlain nearly falling down the same hole if they hadn't had the Dunkirk miracle (despite bigots baselessly pretending it wasn't a miracle) and the English Channel and Churchill hadn't stepped in, though of course no good deed goes unpunished and the similarly spineless Brits tossed him out before the war was over, like the worthless scum are legally sodomizing their own kids as we speak, like the SCOTUS just recently announced its promotion of child rapists; execution is too good for these obscenities, and for the deranged egotists who foolishly imagine themselves my moral superior (like deranged fascist Injustice Kennedy who never wrote a coherent opinion in his life), we knew very well your hypocritical insatiable lust for similarly prosecuting Christians is well known and fully documented.

But of course by far the most fundamental issue is the centrality of God in the equation, something self-deceived "progressive" bigots can't stand. No matter today's spin, the irrefutable fact is that our Founding Fathers were CHRISTIANS, and unlike the modern delusion it meant something they would die for, the centrality of the Lordship of Jesus Christ without which they knew our country would die. How ironic that "progressives" are really the most regressive since they would take us back to the days of barbarism before devotion to Jesus Christ civilized the world. For all the lies that try to spin this to make religion in general and Christ-lovers especially supposedly negative or evil or dangerous (I avoid "christian" and "christianity" as mostly meaningless terms now) they have the "inconvenient truth," like the "global warming" fraud its daft supporters called "global ice age" in the '60s, that more were slaughtered in the 20th century in the name of "atheism" (from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot to Mao to fascist traitor Blackmun's deranged slaughter of forty million babies for the atheist abortion fraud, etc., etc.) than in the previous nineteen centuries COMBINED, proving "progressives" are by far the more dangerous group, as "progressive" lawless fascist FDR's fawning over the fellow fascist Stalin thug and opposing Churchill (with his government full of Communist agents, as McCarthy showed, newly vindicated by KGB archive corroboration of the identities of many of those he justly accused) proved. Yet still, even though the love of God is what founded this nation, as they well knew (but too often forgot), God is too great to be just an American (or any other) and all will bow before His Throne equally and if you miss Him you'll have missed the greatest joy. See www.desiringGod.org.

I loved all the posts! Good discussion.

Re being proud of one's country, though: I have noticed on my travels around the world, that the less people know about any other country but theirs, the prouder they are of theirs. Ignorance feeds patriotism.

As to the USA, I've had several memorable encounters which prove my point: Most Americans don't know anything BUT America, have never seen anything on TV BUT anything about America and have no idea what the rest of the world looks like. The level of self-inflicted isolation is only matched by that of North Korea, IMVHO.

Recently, when in a shop in a large town in the Mid-West, I was chatting with a bunch of young guys since there were no other customers.

One of them asked me whether I in my home country enjoyed all the liberties he did in America, "since my government tells me that I live in the greatest country on earth, but I don't know anything about any other place!", as he put it.

I refrained from telling him that the internet, which he undoubtedly used a lot, could have told him anything he wanted to know. His own country's CIA-Handbook with its fact sheets about other countries would have told him that his isn't the greatest country on the face of the earth. But I refrained from doing so. I just felt deep pity.

So I told him about other countries, their social policies, universal health care, I explained what proportional representation means and what it means to live in a parliamentary democracy vs. a presidential democracy (i.e. that there's a much better chance to get rid of your government in a PR system), I told him about publicly financed parties and proportionally limited TV-airspace for all parties in an election campaign in order to prevent any party from being able to dominate TV ads, I told him about places in the world where private schools were for those too dumb to make it in public schools, because the latter were deemed more demanding. We had a good talk.

But I felt really sad when I left the shop: It was indeed like talking to someone from North Korea. The only world he knew was his America which he had been indoctrinated to believe was the best place on earth.

As American corporations would claim, though: It is very unhealthy and bad for consumers to have no choice.

Well, most Americans have no choice. America is all they know and know about. (I find it obnoxious that Canada is so unknown in America, since Canadians are MUCH better informed about the rest of the world than Americans, I've noticed!!)

Oh and one more thing for all you stupid Obombunists
maybe you should look up Matthews family tree before you go about praising him.Goole: the Masters of Money
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936

And you Richchild to to start with
"in memory of George Carlin "

Well George isn't here to defend this abuse but I don't think he was including you and your ilk when he told US that "It's one big fucking club and you and me aint in it. It's the same fucking club they use to beat you with"

so for George I say FUCK YOU.

I would have flown a flag if I could have found one with 13 stars. Since I couldn't, I continued flying the one I fly routinely -- my State flag. The 4th of July is a day to celebrate our independence from England. It is a day to be inspired to reject tyranny over freedom and honor those who served to free us from tyranny's yoke in the late 1700s. Nothing more. It has nothing to do with Vietnam, Iraq, FISA, the federal budget or anything else. Nationalists will always subvert to be just another Memorial Day.

It's kinda funny that the question "where are all the righties at?" was brought up twice.

Since many here view anyone that is not a Marx's Communist a "righty"

I found this thread on an extremely Anti Communist site.

http://www.strike-the-root.com/

I for one must take Mr. Rothchild's comments with a grain of salt since he never once mentions the Declaration of Independence, United States Constitution,or The Bill of Rights as very powerful tools to be used in combating the very issues he raises in his rant.

Beware of the modern day "patriotism"

It's called Globalism and it's goal is to desolate ALL nation states and form a New World Order in which they, the ELITE of the world will dictate what your rights are.

No more fucking around questioning the Constitution because they intend to make it null and void.

I'm not flying a flag this weekend but I'm sure not buying into Rothchild's cleaver bullshit either.

"CARPE LIBERTATEM"

Colorful dialog. Too many posts to begin to respond to, so I'll share one thing:

Last night I was out on an old sailboat with a ragtag collection of people representing a number of ethnicities as we watched fireworks issue from 3-4 directions, almost a "Joshua Light Show" from the old Fillmore East, added to surround sound.

I had 2 strong impressions. First, I wondered what the dolphin and marine life made of this noise and fire-light spectacle? A friend remarked that Civil war ships had sent canon fire across these same waters, and I speculated on the genetic memory of the dolphin and would it make those of the present day wonder if "they're at it again!" (i.e. human beings making war over the seas, their seas, too.)

Second, (and this was introduced in a now self-published book) since people, primarily men, enjoy working with fire power and explosions, wouldn't it be GREAT if nations who intended war had to instead compete in their mastery of pyrotechnic displays of inordinate nuance, absolute proficiency with the ART of these fiery testaments to their god-like powers? Judges from different nations (Olympic style) would be on hand to rate the spectacles: 9.7, 9.3, etc... and the highest score wins the would-be war!

I mean given the rate of justice holding forth, and that even now in the U.S. we're being forced to fight the same battles already won... perhaps a new take on the creative use of fire power to render beauty rather than destruction and STILL finalize who gains the esteemed title of "winner" is the new way to go. War that comes through its creative alternative, yet satisfies the ejaculatory need for elaborate explosive expression.

I've agreed with that for decades. You just beat me to making all these points.

Only one additional point. That comes from the nursery rhyme "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

Words sure haven't done anythng to Bush and his kind. Isn't it about time to pick up those sticks and stones and get on with the revolution?

Now, that would be one way to celebrate Independence Day!

Independence Day Musings: Patriotism (from the Latin "patri": initially used to describe 'a family loyalty to the homeplace of the father.'

Most people seem to have a semi hard-wired NEED to feel good or even prideful about their country -- (to use Yogi Berra's phraseology: half of patriotism seems 90% instinct.) The chthonic impulse toward partiotism seems similiar to the need, most of us have, to feel good about our parents-- even if they weren't too enlightened in raising us.

Whatever the nature/nurture proportions of this energy, we have to admit that human's need to feel positive about their country has mostly been exploited by the worst kind of demogogues and moral monsters among us -- for thousands of years. It is one of the most dicey kinds of natural miind-energies we humans produce, have receptor sites for, and utilize.

Somewhat like religious energy, patriotism energy may be a kind of meta-mind hormone designed to fill transcendance receptor points in our brains, and like religion, its function may be wired into us for far saner purposes than we have yet put it to.

So far, the energy of patriotism has only been filtered thru our primitive, fear-based ego energies, from whence it tends to emerge as just one more cognitive constriction -- instead of a cognitive widening.

If we humans someday began interacting with cognate creatures of other planets, we would probably just as wiredly, also feel something akin to patriotism. But no longer, then, Against fellow our nations and races, but instead Toward our common human species and planet Earth. That advent, I suppose, would at least be a species step up for us.

Of course, why should it require something akin to the landing of space creatures to take this step us for ourselves and use the energy of patriotism for a higher purpose?

The Dick Cheney's of our world will certainly give you their answer.
But hasn't their answer fucked up this world for just about long enough?

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Samuel Johnson

At our community 4th of July celebration yesterday, one of the American Legion stalwarts who every year helps organize the flag worshiping ceremonies at sunup and sunset, read from a new law that was an obscure amendment to last year's Defense Authorization bill.

Apparently there is now legislation that defines "proper behavior" when the national anthem is played or the flag is raised or lowered. You are required by law now to "place your left hand over your heart" and "stand at attention" and other such rubbish.

I say "f**k you!" to such Stalinist crap.

This piece and many of the posts are fairly refreshing. People are correctly equating patriotism roughly with nationalism, but that is not the full story. When most people feel patriotic, they are celebrating the many good things that have been accomplioshed in their country, and setting aside, at least for a moment, the many things that need improvement. This is indeed like religion. E.g., Christians (sincere ones, that is...) focus on the love of Jesus, and set aside the many wacky elements of the Bible as noise or mysteries. In both cases, our strategy should be to build upon their positive, humanitarian inclinations, rather than dismiss their feelings as absurd throwbacks. Without a cogent alternative, however, we have little to offer them!

So, what is the way forward? I am no stranger to CD, and many know my harping on the poignant need to build a Leninist political party that has the will and program to lead an international proletarian revolt. This remains true.

It occurs to me today that people typically do not understand the criticality of having a party that controls its members. The party that takes us to the promised land of universal prosperity, equality, and maximal personal freedom cannot be a cult of personality. The Leninist party is an organ that crystallizes all of the lessons of history, and through democratic centralism, enforces their program on its members. We all know how success often kills idealism in an individual. Only with the superstructure of such a party can we hope to see a program implemented, not the quirks of an individual.

Let's do it!

PS - I was touched by the R.W.Moodey post that decried the anonymity of most CD posts. I partly agree, but at the same time, as an individual without a significant support network, what would become of me if I gave my name, or even my real e-mail address? I am calling for the destruction of many sacred idols, and at no possible profit to myself. I am not so naive as to think that CD is impenetrable, but at least my handle provides a little bit of a firewall. In fact, on the level of ego, I am starving to give my name, because I am proud to have risen above the lies! I must first survive, though, at least until the lines are drawn in blood.

Do not abandon individual conscience for a morally dubious nationalism.

massud writes: The communist circle jerk taking place here is…revolting.

Would that be in comparison to the hard core porn you spend the rest of your waking hours perusing? In any event, welcome to your newfound substantive relief station, and realize, the detox process is not for sissies. Hang on for the ride, massud, and feel free too use the barf bag whenever necessary.

GIL WILSON: I'm deeply saddened by the posts to this story. . . .
It's my country with ideals that I believe in and regardless of who trys to
hijack those ideals…I'm an American and proud of it.

R.W.: There is something else that saddens me by the posts I have been
reading and trying to respond to. So many of the posters use pseudonyms.
This saddens me because I fear that for some, at least, it represents an
unwillingness to take personal responsibility for what they write.
I realize that there is kind of a fad aspect to this, the romance of having
a clever "handle." But I think that one of the great weaknesses of U.S.
society today is a flight from personal responsibility.

R.W. Moodey, if you are saddened by the use of pseudonyms, then Ben Franklin and many of the other founding fathers must cause you much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. During the run up to the American revolution, it was common for writers and journalists to use pseudonyms, or false names, when they wrote newspaper articles and letters to the editor. Benjamin Franklin used this convention extensively throughout his life, sometimes to protect himself from arrest or bodily harm for expressing an idea that may have been considered slanderous or illegal by the British authorities and their Tory surrogates; other times to present two sides of an issue, much like the point-counterpoint style of journalism used today.

When Franklin used a pseudonym, he often created an entire persona for the "writer." Sometimes he wrote as a woman, other times as a man, but usually with a specific point of view. Silence Dogood, Harry Meanwell, Alice Addertongue, Richard Saunders, and Timothy Turnstone were a few of the many pseudonyms Franklin used throughout his career.

But then maybe your dismay is a ruse, and "Moodey" is a your attempt at a "clever handle" or pseudonym for a CD contributor who wishes to appear temperamental and given to frequent changes of mood.

xxxxxxx

Juliann, If you actually had the experiences and observations you claim, you wouldn't be quoting Wayne Dyer to support them. Unless you are referring to some other lesser known Wayne Dyer than the balding, snake oil selling dip shit who buys his way onto late night public broadcast programming to hawk DVD's on how to keep a smile on your face even after your brain has been marinated in woowoo.

( Juliann writes: This isn't the first time reading CD postings that I've thought of something Wayne Dyer said a few years ago … that if all the wealth in the world was divided equally, within two years of that happening - the originally poor people would be poor again - and the originally well to do people would be well to do again. I absolutely believe that.") ."

Since Dyer's example was actually pulled out of his butt, and nothing remotely like that has ever been tried in recorded human history, and since your first person experiences with the "welfare system" sound as bogus as the statistics you pulled out of your butt, I find no opportunity to agree with your reasoning. However, I do agree with that part of your conclusion where you acknowledge your need to get a life. Perhaps you'll be so fortunate as to find one that permits you to replace Dire BS with truthful examples, and one that affords you access to facts and figures that do not originate in your fundament.

xxxxx

The communist circle jerk taking place here is...revolting.

So many wonderful posts here and many other artciles I've read on CD today. I can't think of a better way to spend the "4th". However, I would like to comment about what I think makes the US great. It greatness is contained, at least partially, in it's ethnic and racial diversity. I have travelled to many other countries and lived in a few for a time and it was always obvious that I was a foriener. Anyone in essense can be "American", that cannot be true of anyother place I'm aware of.
There are many compelling arguments here and I agree with most of them, including the original essay. But I'm afraid that too many "Americans" would not get past even the title and that is a very sad thing.

"Now, what's taking those righties so long to rant against what this man has said?"

A lot of 'em can't read.

oops, in last paragraph meant to say

America does have at least a spirit of freedom and liberty that other countries DO NOT HAVE.

And my meaning here is compared to, for example, European countries where class structures are centuries old, America at least has the simulacrum of classlessness. Of course we do have a class system but in a weird way I do think our denial of its existence creates more opportunity to reinvent oneself than in Europe.

As an anarchist-leftist I find reason to celebrate the built-in libertarian streak in America, a defiance against centuries-old systems that has been expressed in America's greatest artforms.

Excellent essay Matthew!

I agree with everything you have put down here.

I am not a patriot. I consider myself to be a citizen of the earth. A human being first and foremost. The country I was born in is of little significance to me.

I think Chomsky does a pretty good job on this: you can love things about your country, you can love the PEOPLE in your country, love some of the cultural and political accomplishments but you can't love your government. Your government is a violent institution.

There is much to be loathed about America and our history of genocidal crimes against humanity but to be fair there are things to love about America.

You've left out some questions to ask at the end.

Is America the greatest country in the world because it gave the world the blues, jazz and rock and roll?

Well maybe that doesn't make it the "greatest" country in the world (far from it when you consider the horrible abuses of human rights that have occurred under the American empire) but it's still a pretty good accomplishment worth mentioning.

It's also worth mentioning some pretty great people like MLK, Malcolm X, Woody Guthrie, Emma Goldman, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, Cesar Chavez, the Wobblies, Mother Jones, Samuel Gompers, Big Bill Haywood, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman ... etc etc

I think that if you are an honest lefty you also have to ask yourself the question--why do so many people from around the world still come to this country? Why do people often risk their lives to come here?

Is it just the dream of economic betterment? Is it just the desire to be at the heart of Imperium rather than be subjugated by its rule? Are these people who come here deluded? Is it just the closest best option available?

Maybe.

I have lived in other countries and while I know that there are clearly better countries to go to in terms of quality of life etc. America does have at least a spirit of freedom and liberty that other countries do. Perhaps it is the relative youngness of this country but I do believe there are traces of classless free-spirited freedom that de Toqueville recognized. The problem is that these traces are fading quickly and they are often the flip side of what is ugly and uniquely evil about this country.

Patriotism is :

Blowing up 970 million DOLARS on 4th of July Fireworks EVERY YEAR, while your fellow Americans are loosing thier homes, not able to buy gasoline , or feed thier families.

Patriotism is :

Spendig 4.76 billion dollars on Halloween EVERY YEAR, while your fellow Americans are loosing thier homes, not able to buy gasoline , or feed thier families.

Patriotism is:

A bogus 9/11 report , not investigation.
[13] suspected hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates

So lets ATTACK at Afghanistan and Iraq.

Patriotism is:

Taking controll of the 4th largest oil reserve in the world (IRAQ)and the largest Heroin producer in the world. AFGHANISTAN.

WITH THE THIRD LARGEST OIL RESERVE SITTING BETWEEN THOSE TWO COUNTRYS.
IRAN. NO WONDER THEY WANT NUKES. WHO IS KIDDING WHO????

Patriotism is:

Joining a private army of USA gangstalkers that can crush anti-war groups or anti-oil groups nationwide.

Armys funded by big Oil and Mob drug revenues. ( Heroin )

Patriotism is:

A government that is accountable to large corporations, Oil companys, and Mob drug money.

Patriotism is :

Putting a "Support Your Trops " bumper sticker on your car next to an American flag sticker that says " United we Stand"

And not knowing what the hell you are supporting.

Patriotism is :

" Freedom Isn't Free. "

Yes it is , WE GIVE IT AWAY EVERY DAY . STUPID FOOLS.

I couldn't agree with you more! Great article....

Tolstoy would agree...

"Patriotism is slavery..." Lev Nikolajevic' Tolstoy - On Patriotism (1894)

http://www.panarchy.org/tolstoy/1894.eng.html

What are you people saying here? I live in the greatest country in the world: Australia! My previous (right-wing, slightly fascistic hued) government, led by the G W Bush-worshipping little monkey, John W Howard has assured me in each and every one of his speeches.
Happy 4th of July, enjoy your day off work, have a great BBQ (barbie, as we say) and a good laugh at pollie (politician) speak!
cheers from Down Under - THE Greatest Country on Earth!!!!!

USAn; Darn you post with a sharp pen (read switchblade).

Persians are nationalistic.

If they are attacked, their nationalism, their patriotism, will grow a hundred fold that they might survive intact.

A good thing.

USAn Thanks particularly for your 2nd to last paragraph. That made me laugh-a poignant little detail.

Mr. Rothchild,

While appeals to Patriotism have indeed been the enabler of outrage after outrage, I find you analysis (like it's sister one about religion) to be simplistic and coming from the point of view of white western privilege.

I agree that the arrogant US patriotism, and the global north's current form of nationalism, economic neoliberalism, is quite vile.

But this is an entirely different thing from national pride that sustains so many people's struggle against western/northern imperialism over the past hundred years to the present = from Ireland to India to South Africa to Palestine and Latin America and hundreds of other struggles.

Are you going to tell a Palestinian or Iraqi that he of she should eschew Patriotism, or for that matter Islam - which is the heart of the Arab Peoples culture and traditions? Can you not see the arrogance and cultural imperialism in such an attitude?

Then there is the little matter of you and your friends at The Progressive hounding Norman Finkelstein out of his livlihood because he has demonstrated the use of the Nazi Holocaust as bludgeon used on critics of the most pernicious form of nationalism/religion of our time - Zionism.

Might you be suffering from some of the same pernicious patriotism that you railed against here?

Julieann:"I'm a left leaning libertarian who believes that one of the worst things going on this country is the WELFARE SYSTEM."

I couldn't agree more. So...let's start with corporate welfare. Welfare for the "poor" has never amounted to more than $45 billion/year while corporate welfare has not, at least to my knowledge, dropped below $350 billion. Some examples: Bear Stearns bailout by taxpayers for fraudulent lending practices, Halliburton's no-bid contracts giving them BILLIONs for continued incompetant work in Iraq, Medicare Part D prescription drug plan which benefits the big pharmaceuticals and insurance industries in lieu of Medicare recipiants (how many prescription drug plans out there give you a benefit to $2,400 then stop while you and the taxpayers continue to pay premiums), $15 billion in tax subsidies to the major oil companies (royalties that they have been exempted from when drilling on public lands)...that's just the tip of the iceberg. Are you opposed to Social Security and disability benefits? Are these welfare? Tell you what, just get injured or sick to the point of disability and see just how well you fare in this country.

Javarunner, good post. I too grew up in the late 50's to early 60's and was indoctrinated to believe that the U.S. was the greatest place on Earth to live. I was taught how our heroic forefathers killed off the savage indians so we would be able to live and prosper (remember those good ol westerns?) What I didn't think about was that the reason the indians were attacking us is because we were stealing their land and resources and wasting them at the same time (buffalo herds wiped out by indiscriminate killing of them, just for the sake of killing them, etc.) I was taught that capitalism is God's way, communism and socialism (which I was basically taught were one in the same) were evil. I wasn't taught that capitalism, unregulated, would make the greedy rich richer and greedier while the rest of the population starved (banks borrow money from the fed. @ 2% APR then loan it to the credit card holders for 28% APR.) I was taught that life in the U.S. is the best on the planet, but I wasn't taught that this applies to a select few.

One thing I do stand by are the written principles (doesn't mean they are practiced) that the Constitution and Declaration of Independence establish. These principles are the very reason that made the U.S.A. what it is renouned for. Unfortunately, we don't practice what we preach. If we did, there is no doubt that this would/could be the greatest nation ever.

"Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism.... Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others."
Emma Goldman

" If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue? "
Martin Luther King, Jr.

"We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had -- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it, all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism."
Howard Zinn

"fascism - A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
The American Heritage Dictionary, 1983

"The U.S. record of war crimes has been, from the nineteenth century to the present, a largely invisible one, with no government, no political leaders, no military officials, no lower-level operatives held accountable for criminal actions... Anyone challenging this mythology is quickly marginalized, branded a traitor or Communist or terrorist or simply a lunatic beyond the pale of reasonable discussion."
Carl Boggs

To oppose the policies of a government does not mean you are against the country or the people that the government supposedly represents. Such opposition should be called what it really is: democracy, or democratic dissent, or having a critical perspective about what your leaders are doing. Either we have the right to democratic dissent and criticism of these policies or we all lie down and let the leader, the Fuhrer, do what is best, while we follow uncritically, and obey whatever he commands. That's just what the Germans did with Hitler, and look where it got them."
Michael Parenti

"To criticize one's country is to do it a service .... Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism - a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation."
U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright

"Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
John Maynard Keynes

There are several different assumptions about the meaning of patriotism, and the meaning of country. Does country mean a government; or does it mean a land and its' people. Most people believe in the latter, especially in Europe where they have a longer historical perspective. In the USA, I'm afraid too many people believe the former.

On 4 July we are bombarded with praise for "our brave troops", ignoring the fact they have killed more US citizens than the military of any other nation, and have incited and/or participated (as attackers) in every major attack on US soil. If we believe the "land and its' people" definition, that makes the US military not patriotic, but treasonous.

Matt, you don't like us patriots. I'm disappointed in you and the convoluted strife you created here in our room. I just want to know one thing, Matt, and the rest of you also. When the next president -- and it does not matter whether it's Obama or MacCane -- starts bombing Iran and the Patriots hit the streets in protest, WHERE WILL YOU ALL BE?

I can tell you right now that Rush, Sean and O'Reilly will be saying "Locke 'em up! Throw 'em in FEMA camps! Shoot 'em all!" But where will you anti-patriots be then? Will you be side by side with those who love the original vision of America as expressed by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights? Will you be siding with the Rush gang? Will you be silent, out to lunch?

Where will you be when push comes to shove? Will you stand up and fight for your liberties or will you lie down like the Democrats did when we voted them back into office and they did nothing?

Think about it. Think about the difference between authentic patriotism and phony patriotism. That's what Matt seems to miss. And Matt, if you won't fight for America, what will you fight for? Some New World Order governed by a group of elites who want to place us all in a Panopticon? Just what will you anti-patriots fight for?

Leisure Elf July 4th, 2008 8:29 pm....The proof is "in the pudding"...the CONgress has stripped YOUR supposed Bill of Rights (for the most part) and trashed that "GD piece of paper". Homeland Security is now searching innocent civilians with "papier bitte!"... WHO gave THEM that permission? THEY gave it to themselves and we had nothing to say. As for the rest...do the research.

Excellent perspective on nationalism and its place in the world. George is going to be sorely missed, but often remembered, and played again and again, to help preserve sanity in a mad, mad world.

The list of questions asked is a good one, the answers are important for Americans to read and register, and they are an important statement of what characterizes America and how it is currently viewed.

While my own perspectives on America are often harsh criticisms, I think it's important for Americans to realize that any harsh criticisms are an important component to cracking the complacency and the apparent inaction of the American people to govern their country according to their stated ideals. Ideals which are made lies, when they do not deliver, but instead lead to answers such as those Matthew Rothschild has stated. This is why I have said:

"The daze of bait-and-switch and bullshit are over. This is the 21st Century. Apple pie will kill you."

Apple pie is the American myth, the myth of the American Dream, that is in reality more of a nightmare, and that is what Matthew Rothschild points up. America uses euphemisms and the majority of Americans are complicit in buying into that duplicity. What we're really saying is, put the ideals in place and make them real, not bullshit.

Amerika: Land of the Greed, Home of the Slave

This is a great sentiment. Patriotism is like religion. No justification, no proof, just blind, unquestioning belief.

Patriotism doesn't mean supporting your rulers come-what-may even when they are killing your country.

Patriotism doesn't mean you have to be insensitive to the needs of people outside your own country.

Patriotism doesn't mean you have to take up weapons to invade another country (though you may indeed need to to protect your loved ones and your neighhbours when a misguided nation attacks yours with intent to wipe them out).

What it does mean is not surrendering your sovereignty to the faceless ruling elite of the world who have no national loyalty of their own and whose goal is to wipe out national sovereignties for their own Godless end - the accrual of power and money and the progress of the occult agenda of which the United Nations, world Freemasonry, the Vatican, the Illuminati, the CFR, the Bilderbergers etc etc etc are all willing authors and participants.

Articles like this, while embodying much reasoning that is true, and of concern are dangerous in that they form, whittingly or unwhittingly part of the program of brainwashing citizens to hand over their national sovereignty and, at the same time any evanescent residue of democracy that might still exist.

Moodey, above at 1.26pm well said, "Don't blame abstractions when there have been real human agents who have done the killing.

Don't blame love of your country and its sovereignty, and desire for freedom for the sins of war. Blame the lies, distortions, obfuscations and ambitions of those who manipulate the unwary. And become aware! Let go of the preoccupation with the gods of sport, TV soapies, entertainment idols and their sex lives and spend some time in learning about good and bad government and what you can do to protect the Constitution (the only law that restricts your lawmakers) and the sovereignty of "We the People..." .

Note to Juliann: you describe yourself as a "left-leaning libertatian"; I'd like to know which of your ideas you'd identify as "left-leaning".

Your rant against entitlements is redolent of the same old angry right-wing denuniations of "welfare queens driving Cadillacs" that I've heard for the past forty years. I'm really not sure what views libertarians hold that are any different from those who identify themselves as being on the far right. You seem to be someone who'd like to drown the federal government in the bathtub, who considers government the problem, not the solution. Those ideas, which became widespread under Reagan, are anything but left wing. I suppose if the right veers towards fascism, libertarians towards anarchism, then the left tends in the direction of communism. It's common for people who identify themselves with any of those three positions to see the others in extreme terms and themselves as centrist or moderate. But of those three viewpoints, the libertarian one causes me the most difficulty because, though the rationale may be different, the result seems to be the same: abolish or strip down the ability of the government to regulate private or corporate conduct, abolish agencies such as the EPA and the ICC, eliminate the income tax, and the result is the same: corporations prosper and the majority of the population suffers.

I have a feeling you've fallen into the trap so sadly and wisely described by another commentator here, in which the middle class blames the poor for the taxes imposed on them by the wealthy. Making the poor the enemy of the middle-class distracts the attention of both from the wealthy, who determine the conditions all must live under.

The old argument that the poor are in that position because they're lazy, incompetent, stupid or otherwise incapable of making smart choices is an ancient one with its roots in Calvinism: the idea that wealth is a sign of God's favor and that poverty, like other afflictions, is the fault of the poor themselves, which they have incurred as punishment for their sinfulness or weakness. If you want to subscribe to that point of view, that is certainly your perogative; just don't call yourself "left-leaning" if you do so, or you risk being called a walking oxymoron.

"It is time, it is long past time, to put patriotism back on the shelf-out of the reach of children and madmen."

I agree. I've long been wary of patriotism/nationalism. While I realize this country has much going for it, we have to see it for what it is - good and bad. Patriotism, as it is commonly known, is nothing but cheerleading without critical thought.

Of course, common wisdom would have it that patriotism is blind love of one's country, right or wrong. We should turn this around and say that patriotism is actually caring enough for one's country to take the initiative to pick up the corners and deal with the dirt too.

Dear Willybill,

You have twice provided a link that is intended, I gather, to explain to us why Americans are deluded in thinking that the documents known to us as the Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantee and protect our rights as citizens of the United States.

I have tried to understand the article to which the link directs us, but find it impossibly confusing. It begins with the assertion "First off you have to understand that the UNITED STATES is a corporation and that it existed before the Revolutionary war"; then goes on to assert, among other things, that "King George funded both sides of the Revolutionary War", that "King George was not just the King of England, he was also the King of France" and (as if this were not confusing enough)that "We are living under the Babylonian Talmud... brought into England in 1066 and... enforced by the Pope, Kings and the various religions ever since".

Please, could you provide us with some sort of precis of the article. As far as I've been able to gather, the author's principal argument appears to be based on something that happened as a result of the 1871 Act of Congress that established a government for the District of Columbia. However I, for one, find it impossible to follow her argument, since she tosses out "facts" such as the above, like fish, without reference, explanation or context.

There may be some validity to her assertions (obviously you think so), but on its surface the content of her article is so outrageous and so completely contrary to the historical evidence that without further elaboration and substantiation (by reference to specific, verifiable facts) it becomes impossible to evaluate her central argument, which necessarily invalidate her conclusions.

She cannot simply make a bald assertion such as "King George was not just the King of England, he was the King of France" without supporting it with some sort of evidence, which she does not, as far as I can discover, provide, for that or many of the other things she says.

What can you contribute? If you believe her thesis, you should be able to explain it to us.

This isn't the first time reading CD postings that I've thought of something Wayne Dyer said a few years ago ... that if all the wealth in the world was divided equally, within two years of that happening - the originally poor people would be poor again - and the originally well to do people would be well to do again. I absolutely believe that.

Most of you could have the mythical pot of gold drop into your laps and you'd still whine and talk about how shitty America is. Fine. Either work to make it better or go live somewhere else.

I know people on welfare. Regrettably I'm related to some of them. I've worked for nonprofits and met a lot of welfare and other government aid recipients in those places. I would say 80% of them work very hard at not having to work - at being able to receive handouts paid for by the rest of us.

I'm a left leaning libertarian who believes that one of the worst things going on this country is the WELFARE SYSTEM. Get off your chair and go motivate those people to get off their azzes and make something of their lives, to stop being so pitiful that the CD posters have to stop stuffing their faces and sit in front of their computers and whine that geez mom - the guy next door has more toys than I do. Sob sob. (Maybe the guy next door made better education and employment decisions than YOU and I did, sucker!)

I'm feeling rather PO'd at reading all the CD posters who have nothing to do but whine about their lives and the lives of people they don't even know.

And like most of them - I need to get a life.

PS ... the only reason they got any freedom at all is that they all pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to the cause. They were all willing to be considered traitors to their King and risk the hangman's noose. It didn't begin with that, they marched and they protested and they acted in defense of their freedoms. And when the King told them to submit or be hung, they choose resistance.

I wonder what they think of us today?

I consider myself very patriotic. But its a patriotism towards what I believe America was meant to be. Not the phony BS that's defined as patriotism. But the real original patriotism of the patriots who wrote these words ...

"We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,
that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights,
governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends,
it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it,
and to institute new government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form,
as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Prudence, indeed,
will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer,
while evils are sufferable,
than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations,
pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism,
it is their right,
it is their duty,
to throw off such government,
and to provide new guards for their future security."

It all depends on whose A** is roasting on the July 4th barbie!

As someone once said.. "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, .. Plymouth Rock landed on us."

I say that unless this Nation is a great Nation for most if not ALL its people, it cannot be a great Nation!

What we have here is...
ONE
NATION
UNDER
GREED

Namaste

Globalists by definition are anti-patriotic, since they oppose nationalism and independence. The Rothschilds, surely not related to the writer, have worked against nations for 200 years by controlling their money and central banks like the Fed and BOE, and starting wars between nations while financing both sides.

Thats the problem with America today, our government is run by globalists who are unpatriotic, or some might say traitors, and our money is controlled by the international financial elite through the Fed. Thats why you are seeing Americas decline as a world power. It is by design, not accidental or through incompetence. In order to Globalize the world, the nations have to be equalized and weakened through interdependence and free trade, and immigration. This means America must be diminished, and it's citizens living standards must be lowered, and it's cohesiveness diluted through illegal immigration.

There is a war going on, it is against the non-elites of America. The people sense this, but refuse to believe it and enter into denial while selecting from the menu of myths the myth that suits their ideology.

Progressives chose the religion of Global Warming and anti-corporatism, pro-socialism, Conservatives choose the Christian Zionist war on terror and anti-socialism, pro-corporatism. Both paths lead to Totalitarian One World Government-Communism. National Facism is simply a stepping stone to Global Communism.

Progressives and Conservatives have a common enemy, but their denial of reality and blind acceptance in their myths prevent them from seeing this, so they stay divided as the Globalization movement marches on, fighting among themselves, and America crumbles at the hands of the enemy within.

Over in Seoul, people hit the streets over American Beef imports. America meanwhile simply sleeps while it's government commits international war crimes, and steals the wealth of it's citizens while telling the noble lie.
Must be the fluoride.

Exactly!

And, food for thought:

Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
Ambrose Bierce

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.
Guy de Maupassant

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
Oscar Wilde

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
Howard Zinn

And my favourite:
Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.
Arthur Schopenhauer

I humbly posit that a country can be great. This based on the same measuring stick for an individual; how one treats others.

If we aspired to greatness our 854 military bases could be 854 American Hospitals around the world.

Our Army corp of engineers could be irrigating farmland around the world instead of walling off Sadr City (freaking stupid)

Our Air Force could drop food to cyclone and hurricane victims and protect Manhatten Air Space, instead of dropping bombs on women and children.

On this July 4th Greatness of Nation is not impossible as Rothschld states. We've worked hard to become a nation so deserving of self-loathing.

Doctors Without Borders (French) might be an example for the US.

Or much of Europe's treatment of Refugee's might be an ex. for the US.

Canada's treatment of it's own people might be an example for the US.

Nationalism is toxic for us because of what we are on this 4th of July; unable as a people to look ourselves in the eye.

Unable as a people to feel pride of country without evoking comparisons to Mussollini and Germany in the thirties.

But not true to be a country is to know shame; It's how you treat others.....

Patriotism was how Lenin and Stalin were able to take over the Soviet Union, corrupting it from an idealistic (though misguided) collectivism to the epitome of a military state. That same unquestioning 'love of country' that, in its heyday, came close to burying the U.S. in a thousand ICBMs.

Its OK to love your country. Just have a list of reasons handy. And that list better include 'habeus corpus', 'secret ballot', 'separation of church and state', and 'right to free speech and free association', things polite societies have fought and died for for 800 years, or its not worth the paper its written on.

For too many Americans, 'these colors dont run!' while the CONCEPTS they represent have been bruised and battered by the same 'stay-fast' patriots defending the colors.

There are indeed concepts to be proud of in this nation. CONCEPTS...not colors. Colors were never something to be proud of, and its a sure sign of a TiVo nation that Americans would think that they were.

"It is time, it is long past time, to put patriotism back on the shelf-out of the reach of children and madmen."

Very well said. Yet, tragically, our oil wars have re-ignited patriotism, along with a hybrid "culture" called Judeo-Christianity, and both are trained squarely on Islam, which it is okay now to be bigoted about. Patriotism is on the rise, and behind it will rise, as inevitably as the tide floods in, an ocean of blood.

willybill - ENOUGH already with your spacegoats! Nice flowers though...

Professor 4:44PM :(You fail to appreciate why you have the freedom to be a public blowhard)
Dear Professor - even though I would bet we agree on 90% of issues, you appear to be the epitome of public blowhard. Put another quarter in your soapbox.
Go back and read your post... then take a deep breath and degass your ego a bit.

iwarrior comments: "I won't lie. There are times when I wish I was elsewhere. I've toyed with the idea of just moving to Sweden or Norway or some other such nation. But doing so, I feel just gives the elites more strength. If all of our malcontented leave, there will be no one to oppose them."

Every time I read comments like these, or comments like "America -- love it or leave it", it makes my blood pressure spike. Iwarrior, are you one of the wealthiest 1% of this country? Or even one of the wealthiest 5% or 10%? Do you have any idea what is involved in "just movng to Sweden or Norway or some such other nation"? Do you think it's as simple as getting a visa, having your passport stamped, packing your suitcases and hopping the next plane out to your preferred destination? Most countries, certainly most member countries of the EU or the British Commonwealth, require substantial proof of assets and/or employment skills for in-demand occupations, before they will even consider issuing a visa for anything other than a short-term stay. We are the only country in the industrialized "first world" NOT to offer health and extended unemployment benefits to all citizens/permanent residents. Countries such Sweden and Norway are not open to all comers; they're highly desirable places to live and intend to remain that way; they are not open to anyone who thinks they might like to pull up roots and emigrate.

it used to be common to hear hyper-patriots to say "If you don't like it here [in America], why don't you just go live somewhere else? [aka "America: love it or leave it."] The short answer is to those people is: you CAN'T go live somewhere else. That's the scary part. If the economy and civil liberties continue to deteriorate further in the US, most Americans don't have the option of moving to Canada or Europe or anywhere else we believe would be more congenial to either our political beliefs or our bank accounts.

If you're too poor (meaning you lack substantial, six-figure bank account), above a certain age (usually somewhere in the early 40s, in some cases even younger than that) or don't have specific job skills in such high demand that your target country can't fill open positions with their own citizens -- if you do not, in short, fall within a very select group of young, highly skilled workers, you can forget about leaving the US to live ANYWHERE else, at least not any place where conditions are BETTER than here.

You see, a country such as Sweden, Norway, France, or England or Germany, ALSO instill notions of patriotism in their citens; many of them no doubt also believe THEIR country is "the greatest country in the world" -- probably with more justification than the US can muster at present.

Get real. I only wish it were that easy. And if you've "toyed with the idea" of emigrating, you'd better speed things up before whatever window of opportunity you might have closes; unless, of course, you're rich, in which case things you're probably perfectly happy with the way things are here, since everything in the US is being run explicitly for your benefit.

The rich can afford the luxury of patriotism; they have much to be grateful for.

Once again........

http://www.fourwinds10.com./siterun_data/bellringers_corner/people_of_the_lie/news.php?q=1206983637

"This is the 4th of July! This is my country and I truly believe in the principles and ideals that it stands for."

I truly believe it does not stand for any of the principles or ideals it claims to.

I'm deeply saddened by the posts to this story.

This is the 4th of July! This is my country and I truly believe in the principles and ideals that it stands for.

Ideals take time to grow and mature. "All men are created equal." Wonderful statement for its time but Thomas Jefferson would never recognize what we have built on that framework. It's always growing and always challenged by those that would take it away.

I grew up in the 60's. I was part of the anti-war movement then as now. I was a community action worker when that still meant something. I always taught school in disadvantaged inter-city areas. My childcare business is a non-profit about as radical as you can get with all employees paid the same, etc. I lived through Katrina and saw my community forgotten by this administration. I know of the civil rights that were trampled on the bridge to the West Bank where people were trying to escape to.

Yet I fly my flag and I'm proud to fly it. I flew it after Katrina for almost 5 months and it's flying today. It's my country with ideals that I believe in and regardless of who trys to hijack those ideals...I'm an American and proud of it.

Patriotism or Nationalism is just another one of those things that humans use to try and show they are better than others.

"If liberals love America purely because it embodies ideals like liberty, justice, and equality, why shouldn't they love Canada-which from a liberal perspective often goes further toward realizing those principles-even more?"

**gah
what tripe. Canada had an indian problem but unlike the US, which did its massacres in the open, Canada did it by rounding up children and sticking them in church run schools, using the RCMP to enforce the laws. They killed them slowly, and appointed collaborators into chieftan status.
Under Canadian law, Indians are still considered wards of the state.
Indians cant sue people for having killed their children in these schools.

Hell, animal rights activists cant go after researchers for the tortures they commit. The government appoints an industry run watch dog group to handle things. Apparently we cant be trusted to make decisions for ourselves.

The government isnt that liberal.
In fact, the Canadian motto is Peace, order and good government.
Whether we have that is really debatable.
Justice?
How about the farmer who had to pay Monsanto for its polluted seeds getting into his land. The Canadian supreme court was just as corporate as the US one is.

haha
that writer is on drugs or needs to read up on Canadian law.

The real difference between Canada and the US is a matter of population, climate, and having a boring culture. The US may be many things but it isnt boring.

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
Samuel Johnson, April 7, 1775

Well enough said, alright; but with at least two very important revisions.

Patriotism is supposed to be to principle, not to country; so indeed, and to your credit, you are patriotic:

"A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle." - George William Curtis

The "American superiority complex" is something only the ignorant among us have not only gotten over, but have been concerned about for some 40 or so years at least, first seeing where all the compromising of principle *would* lead; then finding indeed that it led there.

Patriotism to principle is vital to preserving justice. It is vital to representation. It is a lack of patriotism which has led to all you complain of.

I am offended by the "white boy" comment. I wouldn't be IF I could so freely say "black boy."

Having said that - I love America. I simply do. I've been to many other countries and have always been very happy to return home to THIS one. I am thankful that my grandparents all came to this country from Hungary at the turn of the last century. I know my country has faults - more than ever during the last 7-1/2 years. I'm 57 and have had hundreds of faults. I'm glad my family and friends didn't give up on me, just as I don't give up on them OR my country.

MarkMarshall, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, okay. Married to a Turk for a 1/4 of a century, have house on the Agean there we got for $25K >20 years ago. he said, "Unless the life of a nation is in peril, war is a crime.", but he also fought alongside the Young Turks, and he was known as a man that fought like no other in battle. Everyone always speaks of Zinn, he was a a Second Lou and a Bombadier. Please as so many seem intent on blaming all persons in the Invasion Of Iraq and all soldiers, remember we, many of us, learn from doing it that it is indeed wrong, unjust, mass murder and try at all costs to stop it. So if they're are those that only want to spit in our faces we are some of the loudest, outspoken critics, rabble rousers of Congress that are trying all we know to stop this. None of my Vet friends celebrate the Fourth as some grandiose spectacle, we will though tomorrow have the backs of ivaw at Independence Hall as they make their Declaration Of Independence, We as Veterans and soldiers withdraw our consent from the government, since the government derives its power from the consent of the governed. Time to leave Iraq and let the Iraqis write their own history.
we are trying to make amends as puppets, as targets of predatory recruiters, as enlisted personnel not stars and bars.
I do so like Article.II.Section.4., though.....

"White boy," you say. Denigrating by skin-color is the tactic of a racist. Who cares if or why a bigotted Matthew Rothscild is "Not Patriotic?
Maybe you are trying to emulate George Carlin, to whom you dedicate this piece, and mean to be hip, gutty, cutting edge.
But, this piece does not bear scrutiny either as writing or thought; the narcissism of its style and the sweeping generalizations which substitute for thought, are of a type familiar to college freshman teachers of composition. They spend a lot of ink trying to impart some respect for readers through the development of style and reasoning.
A comedian like Harry Anderson has worked hard to make it look easy to juggle incongruous objects, like a bowling ball, sledgehammer, and double-bladed axe. And the discipline extends to a likeable personality, who punctuates things delightfully.
You, Mr. Rothschild, seem blithely unaware of the mess you make of trying to juggle the 4th of July, patriotism, nationalism, colonialism, and random leaders and events. He fails to grasp the significance of and differences between what the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, and the Constitution of the United States of America, mean as opposed to "Hitler and Mussolini and Imperial Japan . . . Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot."
Moreover, in place of style you offer self-righteousness; of insight, insult.

You ought to try to understand why the Tuskegee Airmen risked their lives to protect you--since it is clear that you believe yourself to be superior to them in citizenship and morality. You lecture them: "don't befoul nature's sky."
"Nature" could be spelled with a capital; brave men and women who risk their lives, who sacrifice themselves, for others, are due honor. Insulting them is stupid and cowardly.
You could make an effort to comprehend why, for example, Nisei enlisted from such unjust circumstances as the incarceration at Manzanar.

You fail to appreciate why you have the freedom to be a public blowhard.

Since you and I appear to be on the same side of most of the issues you cite or imply, it galls me that you don't hold yourself to a higher standard of discourse than the Rash Limburgers and other befoulers of public discourse.

Geo Bush and his cohorts have done great harm to the nation and represent the worst kind of hypocrisy. Rejecting their jingoism doesn't necessitate rejecting intellect.

Phil Dow, Napa CA

Actually, patriotism IS something you're born with. Just like love of family, love of one's team, xenophobia, etc. etc.

We humans are pretty much wired to love those we regard as extensions of ourselves, and to hate and fear everything else.

A good instinct for hunter-gatherers, but something we desperately need to outgrow.

Patriotism means accepting what your government has done in your name. I am definitely not patriotic. The last seven years are reasons. The sixty years before that and the US involvement in Central America, Vietnam, Korea, and other places in the world are some more. The turn of the last century and the US war/massacre in the Philippines, that was never even hinted at when I was in school, is a big reason. The continuing thefts from the Native Americans is a reason. The 3/5 clause and slavery is another. And on and on and on. I learn more and more about the crap that the US has flung at the rest of the world and not only am I disgusted and angry, but I am deeply ashamed to be an American. The fourth is not a day for celebration for me. The damn flag that conservatives love to warp (intentional misspelling) around themselves only serves to remind me of the continuing atrocity that is the United States. The biggest problem to ever confront humanity, the very future of our planet and all that live on it, not just humans, is in jeopardy and the biggest election in our country's sad, sorry history is upon us and the biggest issue for the "mainstream" media is whether someone not wearing a flag pin is patriotic. We should be talking about what we can do to right the centuries of wrongs that have led to the rising of global temperatures, directly and indirectly, and which candidate has the vision to lead us down that path, not some damn lapel pin. And until that happens, all of us Americans can go take a flying leap over a big cliff like the ignorant lemmings we've become.

Bread and circuses

"It is very important for the Establishment to maintain the historic pretension of national unity, in which the government represents all the people, and the common enemy is overseas, not at home, where disasters of economics or war are unfortunate errors or tragic accidents, to be corrected by the members of the same club that brought the disasters. It is important for them also to make sure this artificial unity of highly privileged and slightly privileged is the only unity- that the 99 percent remain split in countless ways, and turn against one another to vent their angers. How skillful to tax the middle class to pay for the relief of the poor, building resentment on top of humiliation! How adroit to bus poor black youngsters into poor white neighborhoods, in a violent exchange of impoverished schools, while the schools of the rich remain untouched and the wealth of the nation, doled out carefully where children need free milk, is drained for billion-dollar aircraft carriers. How ingenious to meet the demands of blacks and women for equality by giving them small special benefits, and setting them in competition with everyone else for jobs made scarce by an irrational, wasteful system. How wise to turn the fear and anger of the majority toward a class of criminals bred-by economic inequity-faster than they can be put away, deflecting attention from the huge thefts of national resources carried out within the law by men in executive offices." (Zinn)

"Conservatives are right," (Peter Beinart) says. "To some degree, patriotism must mean loving your country for the same reason you love your family: simply because it is yours."

But that does not mean you look the other way if a family member starts lying and cheating and stealing and illegally invading countries and killing and maiming millions and torturing and illegally spying and rigging elections and the rest.

Unless you're a conservative, or a member of the other "family"...

I often wonder what combination of nature and nurture caused me to be a profound skeptic and iconoclast since childhood. Oh, I was suitably infatuated with comic book and teevee heroes: Superman, Zorro, the Men from U.N.C.L.E.

But I still remember feeling that the nuns in parochial school were too quick to demonize the likes of Krushchev and Castro. I came from a generally apolitical middle-class family, and certainly wasn't precociously following politics or anything like that. I just sensed "methinks they doth protest too much", years before I encountered that expression.

All that to say that I've never swelled with pride at the notion that Amerika is the Greatest Country in the World. Just lucky, I guess.

I would be pleased if, beyond my expectations, some day Amerika simply became an OK country among other OK countries. Happy Fourth!

Excellent article Mr. Rothschild - I hope you are not a gatekeeper for the banking ubermensch, teasing us with sweet bonbons. Nevertheless - well said!
Mordechai - your $$$ in a safe deposit box will soon take on the appearance of Weimar Geldt.

"A crowd can do nothing. It does nothing even though it be every single person in the crowd who does it, because a crowd is an abstraction and has no hands"----Kierkegaard

I attended school in the 60s', so I remember well being taught about how different our democracy was from communism. The usual issues were addressed, including freedom of speech. "In Russia, the govt. lies to it's people in the newspapers & TV. You can't even SAY a WORD of criticism or you'll be arrested. Isn't it GREAT that here, you can say what you want? Our news is the TRUTH, our govt. doesn't lie to us!"

Somewhere along the line, I clearly remember secretly wondering; Is that really true? I mean, you say they do it there, but how can we be SURE they don't do it here as well?! Sadly, I was SO right, as recent events have proved.

From programs like COINTELPRO, MK ULTRA, & OPERATION NORTHWOODS, the real truth is stunning! You can also add to that list OPERATION OPEN EYES, that produce "Mancurian Candidate" agents that do the wet works for their masters.

Let's get real, folks; the PTB are those that have been pulling the strings all along. The Bilderberg Group, the Jesuits, & the Illuminati have been busy all along pushing us to the NWO. Both Bushes, as well as Clinton & the UN have been brazen enough to actually include it in their speeches. I really don't hold out much hope for mankind.

Welcome to the Matrix, brothers & sisters. I weep for us all.

R.W., don't be so naive. Watch the Academy Award winning documentary "Hearts and Minds" and re-read your comments on "abstractions". As if everybody that lives here makes decisions on cold-hearted facts and logic.

Patriotism has the linguistic root of patriarchy, from the father. If you don't believe the father should guide the family and that the process should come from the family as a collective, then you're luckily not a patriot.

Patriotism is the conviction that your country is superior to all others because you were born in it.

George Bernard Shaw

"I can train a monkey to wave a flag; that doesn't make the monkey patriotic."
----SCOTT RITTER

"Patriotism is nationalism, and always leads to war."
----Dr. HELEN CALDICOTT

"My country is the world."
---THOMAS PAINE

"This planet is deeply troubled, and the biggest cause of that trouble is our own government."
------RAMSEY CLARK, former U. S. attorney general

"Patriotism is loyalty to one's country, not loyalty to one's government."
----HOWARD ZINN

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."
-----THOMAS JEFFERSON

"It is our sense of conceit that fortifies patriotism."
----BENITO MUSSOLINI

"No flag is large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."
----HOWARD ZINN

"To overthrow militarism, it is necessary to depreciate the idea of the fatherland. So long as there are fatherlands there will be militarism."
-----BENITO MUSSOLINI

"Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles."
----GEORGE JEAN NATHAN

Good article. Good comments all. Mr. Rothschild says it all with the single line "Patriotism is a form of idolatry". He is right of course, and the true God over against which patriotism stands is called reality.

It should be obvious that being is like a flowing stream or a dust storm: in constant motion without any real change. The rocks and the trees, like me, are something the universe is doing right now. Soon we will be gone and the elements from which we are made will start doing something else.

I just finished spending the morning with my granddaughter. When I see all two year olds as being equally responsible to me and for me, then the world created by the human animal will be a fit place in which to live. Everybody reading this has the same feelings toward pain, success, disappointment as everybody else.
Everybody reading this bleeds red, feels sad, is lonely.

The gas I put in my car has blood in it---my blood. Every object I touch has my blood on it, whether it was produced by Chinese slave labor or an expert artisan. Anybody who can't see this is refusing to look.

Considering how brief our stay here in this form really is we could choose to be happy. I will have nothing to do with flags, slogans, riots, or wars----or the patriotic fervor that produces them and tries to convince me that any other person is not really me, but a rival to be vanquished if my needs are to be met.

I agree with the above comment condemning all abstractions. Surely this is not merely one opinion among others, but the truth that could make us free.

The existence of every state depends on our unwillingness to see the truth. If we choose God rather than Mammon the state will laugh at us, then ignore us, then imprison us, then we win.

Perhaps we can be "great" again, like every country is capable of being great at times. The definition of greatness is most definitely askew in the minds of the American people. Some consider 'great" being militarily powerful while others consider greatness dependent upon morality. Greatness has often been supposed to come out of "freedom." We are as great as we are free. Try living without a home in America. No room at the inn, just the jail. I haven't lived in another country so I can't really compare the amount of freedom between America and other countries. Perhaps we have more freedom than others. This would make us "greater" in a way, I guess, but what about the myriad ways which we look away from our needy, how we praise the corporate gods at the expense of everything (even the possibility of having nothing more to hold our heads high about). I guess we will have some greatness until we allow those in control to deceive and consume us completely. After we destroy ourselves for individual, not collective, good, the question of greatness will no longer be pertinent. We will only have the memory of formerly great ideals.

I grew up in the fifties loving the American flag and pledging allegiance to it. I admired the American revolutionaries who fought for independence from European monarchies and for freedom of religion. I thought it was the greatest thing since Jesus refusing to back down before Pontius Pilate and Imperial Rome. I loved both America and my Catholic faith. They seemed consistent to me.

Then came Vietnam. I believed in the war and joined Army ROTC at Brooklyn Polytech. But within 12 months I had heard enough about the war from the neighborhood vets and left ROTC. Within another year I was joining marches against the war and cheered as we shut down our campus. Within another two years I was Anti-American, seeing America as fundamentally flawed, an Imperial blemish upon history of the worst sort. At that point Marxism seemed like a worthy alternative. I stopped pledging allegiance to the flag and winced at the Star Spangled Banner.

This is kind of how it was with me for the ensuing decades. I was becoming an internationalist and a child of Mother Earth. All nation states stood in the way of human progress. We needed a new way and a new religion. We seemed headed in that direction during the Clinton years. The world was coming together under One Mother, One Market, under the kinder, gentler UN and WTO. We sighed a collective sigh of relief as America was gradually surrendering her sovereignty. Even the post-Vatican II Catholic Church was joining in the New Universalism. Soon we would enter the New Age and a New World Order of peace and prosperity for all. Poverty and war would be a thing of the past and together we would all serve Mother Earth and nourish Her back to full Green health. And most wonderfully of all old-fashioned patriots were receding into the darkness. They would no longer offer much resistance to the merging of nation states under global governance.

Then came 9/11. At first I played along with both the Democrats and the Republicans and the mainstream media. 9/11 was an attack on freedom everywhere by spiritually retarded Muslim fanatics. We would have to embark upon a sixty year war in sixty countries and surrender our freedoms to our own government in order to preserve them. Huh? Suddenly things were getting all convoluted. Was this a War on Terror or a War of Terror, I asked myself. Just how did these lunatics evade our entire NORAD and bring the WTC down like it was a house of cards, I wondered? And why were the Democrats going along with a fake "war" in Iraq based on phony "intelligence" and refusing to impeach Bush when the Republicans impeached Clinton for a trivial private affair? You had to ponder: What in the world is going on?

Well, after much reflection I began to see what was happening to America. We were surrendering everything that I loved about America when I was growing up in the fifties. And we were offering this surrender based on a gigantic hoax that both parties and the mainstream media and organized religion were foisting upon us. The whole movement of the past two decades -- from Waco to 9/11, from Peak Oil to Peak Water, from Global Warming to Islamofascism -- is a movement from individual freedoms to collective security. Was this Marxism? Fascism? Or just plain lunacy?

Today I think it's just plain lunacy. I am no longer willing to surrender my freedoms and rights for security. That's what maximum security cells are for. There you can have all the face-scanning cameras and tattooed guards you want keeping an eye on you. You can do what you're told when you're told to do it. You can enjoy forced psychological testing and close observation. And the government will keep you safe from "the terrorists" lurking everywhere. They will even reduce your trans-fatty acids and carbon footprint for you so you can love Mother Earth more properly. And you won't have to go to Iran when they finally begin their assault on that nation's sovereignty. Heck, you'll even get free health care, clothing and shelter -- a good deal in a receding economy. The rest of the work force, those lucky enough to have jobs, will be your police and guards and parole officers. Enjoy it, slave. And have a Happy Interdependence Day!

As for me, I'm going back to celebrating the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and Independence Day. Has America sinned? Yep. But tell ya what: You can have your New World Order based on fear-mongering of every sort. I'll take America...and fight for her independence again, if need be.

I have already several times expressed the thought that in our day the feeling of patriotism is an unnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of a great part of the ills from which mankind is suffering, and that, consequently, this feeling--should not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, be suppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men. Yet, strange to say--though it is undeniable that the universal armaments and destructive wars which are ruining the peoples result from that one feeling--all my arguments showing the backwardness, anachronism, and harmfulness of patriotism have been met, and are still met, either by silence, by intentional misinterpretation, or by a strange unvarying reply to the effect that only bad patriotism (Jingoism or Chauvinism) is evil, but that real good patriotism is a very elevated moral feeling, to condemn which is not only irrational but wicked.

What this real, good patriotism consists in, we are never told; or,if anything is said about it, instead of explanation we get declamatory, inflated phrases, or, finally, some other conception is substituted for patriotism-- something which has nothing in common with the patriotism we all know, and from the results of which we all suffer so severely.

from Patriotism and Government By Leo Tolstoy

The USA would be a very different country if its citizens identified with their class instead of their nation.

Being Canadian, Celine Dion must be referring to the continent when she sings "God Bless America." Notwithstanding this minor point, the song was originally written about the USA, so I'm sure she would have felt comfortable during WW2 belting out some uniquely crass rendition of "Deutschland über alles."

Thank you for saying what has been felt, thought and stated a million times outside your borders. As a Canadian, I am miffed when baraged by American narcissism from Bush to Oprah to the Star-spangled.

Patriotism is a naive provincialism that strikes many non-Americans as absurd, if for no other reason than obvious contrast. We do not hate Americans, and we do appreciate much of what the US represents, but we are perhaps more aware of both our strengths and weaknesses than many Americans are because we have the benefit of broader exposure.

May America be truly great, hopefully built on timeless ideals rather than on greed and guilt, guns and belligerence, fear and blindness.

The world stands by in hopeful anticipation on the eve of this disgusting administration. It will be an ominous task to begin to chisel away at the plastic creation of myth fashioned by the sick mind of Mr. Rove and all those complicit in the successful perpetuation of the FIG principle (fear/ignorance/greed).