Well said, Mr. Rothschild.

Amen!

We know what Matt Rothschild is not for. But his writing, including this article, shows what he is for: life, liberty, justice, and equality for Americans and for all people everywhere. That may not be patriotic in the traditional sense, but it is consistent with the values upon which our nation was founded. Bravo Matt!

Very well said.

Now, what's taking those righties so long to rant against what this man has said? Perhaps they're gassing at the barbique.

"God Bless America!" Does that mean "Damn the Rest"?

Patriotism has simply replaced religion as a means to control the masses. Patriotism is a type of expanded racism. However patriotism can also rally people around progressive as well as evil causes. It would be wonderful for example to bring the people of nation together to advance our society as a whole through an enlightening experience or by fighting an imminent threat to us all. Unfortunately though, this is the exception rather than the rule.

Well said...check this out...and weep for the American citizen who is in reality an indentured slave..............

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

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

I thought most of 'em were scared to come to our neighborhood. :)

I agree with the article for the most part. I won't burn a flag, but I won't fly one either. Patriotism like love, can make you blind.

However, I still like to believe that things can change for the better. I don't want to abandon this country. America is more than the worst things she has ever done, and I am hopeful that we can overcome those sins.

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.

I am patriotic. I don't wear a flag lapel pin, or fly it on my front lawn, though. But today, as I was driving down the street, my patriotism welled up in my eyes, as I heard Celine Dion sing "God Bless America." It gave me pause, as I truly abhor those loudmouths who claim a hold on patriotism, while shouting down dissent. So I guess it to be the real thing, as no one was watching.
Where is that coming from? I asked myself. Unlike the author of the above article, I think that it is natural to love the piece of earth on which you were born, but I do agree that it doesn't necessarily negate understanding that those born on this same earth, but at different parts of it should love their country, too. But there is more to it than that.
When I was a little kid, my father would sit at the kitchen table after dinner and recite the Declaration of Independence, and discuss the meaning of democracy. But he also painted the mountains of the old country with such love, that it made clear to me that he loved it as much as these United States, which he taught us is a special place because it guarantees freedom and opportunity. So there are in me today, two reasons that I am patriotic, and Celine Dion was singing about the one that I have seen with my own two eyes. I cannot paint, but if I could, I would do so as lovingly as my father painted the mountains that he remembered as a child. I think the lump in my throat grew noticeably when Celine sang, "stand beside her, and guide her . . ." because we, who have suffered so much with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are at a great moment in history where our country can go either way toward becoming a truer democracy, or fall further behind in our evolving as a nation. And so I discovered that the tears are also angry tears of someone who stubbornly holds on to the hope and the promise of these United States of freedom and justice for all. There may be people who have a much deeper sense of what a democracy should be, or at the other end, who truly believe that only the wealthy and the powerful deserve the good that this earth has to offer. But, all I have today is the memory of my father, who worked hard all his life, and sacrificed and took a chance on a promise, and I choose to remain faithful to that memory today.

The 4th of July does not conjure up positive images for the native Americans or African Americans. The native Americans probably rue the day they saved those pilgrims from starving and the Africans were important enough to help the paleface to acquire great wealth and they got nothing in return but misery.
I'm not patriotic either. This nation was built on the blood of others who were never included in the great independance from Europe.
Read Howard Zinn's "A Peoples History of the United States". It's a real eye opener.

re SandyK's comments:
We native americans love the land, we don't own it. So we are all standing on the same mother earth, even if we are separated by water. Plus the native Americans taught Ben Franklin about democracy; it's in Zinn's book.

It is possible to be a critical patriot as well as a blind patriot.
Mr. Rothschild has listed many of the reasons I am ashamed of my country,
but I still love my country.

He is asking something impossible. Just as I love my parents because they are
mine, and I love my children because they are mine, so also I love my country
because it is mine. Just as I can be ashamed of some of the things a parent or
a child has done without ceasing to love them, so also with my country.

Mr. Rothschild is mistaken when he says that religion and patriotism, especially
in the form of nationalism, have killed millions. People have killed other people,
motivated by religion or nationalism, but it has been living people, not the
abstract notions of religion or nationalism, who have done the killing. Natural
disasters and diseases kill people, of course, but abstractions do not.

Neither American nationalism nor Christianity has killed innocent Iraqis. American
military men and women did, along with the "coalition of the willing," and some
hired mercenaries. They did this under the orders of a corrupt "commander-in-
chief," and his lackeys. Don't blame abstractions when there have been real
human agents who have done the killing.

I believe we need to hold individual human beings responsible for their actions
and for the consequences of their actions. Blaming abstractions such as
nationism, patriotism, and religion takes away from human responsibility. Nor
should we blame "corruption" in the three branches of our government. It is
corrupt government officials whom we should hold responsible.

Happy Independence Day to all Usanians!

As we commemorate the independence of the third largest state in the world and the world's second-largest democracy, people of all nations would do well to contemplate the wisdom of their ancestors:

"So likewise a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification."

George Washington

"Unless a nation's life faces peril, war is murder."

Ataturk

George Wanker Bush. G.W.B. Greatest White Boy. Greedy Witless Bastard. Gutless Wife Beater. Guns Want Bullets. God Will Bless. Yes, America, God Will Bless us all this 4th of July. Just make sure you have your money in cash in a safe deposit box.

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).

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."

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

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

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.

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.

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.

"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

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

George Bernard Shaw

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.

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.

"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

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.

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!

"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"...

"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)

Bread and circuses

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.

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.

"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

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.....

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

"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.

Once again........

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

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.....

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

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.

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

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."