Are you proud to be an American?

[mommaDONEraisedaTHUG]

Or are you ashamed or indifferent?

Has the ongoing war and rising price of living made you want to take a trip up north to Canada?

Let me hear your thoughts on this.

[Cry Havoc]

All you have to do is look at the spectacle (read: disaster) of the Olympic games that haven't even STARTED yet in what is supposed to be the crown jewel of the new world economy to see that it is a huge privilege to live in a country such as this.

So yes. I'm proud. I'm proud that I can discuss the failings of my government, on this board and in public, without fear of incarceration or execution.

I'm proud that even though we are in recession, we are still, by far, the single most powerful country in the world. That doesn't happen by a fluke.

And I am definitely proud that, after being labeled lazy, the American people are paying attention to politics again.

Screw everything else. I have freedom. That's all that matters.

[smeagol]

Freedom does rule. I would be proud of American if I were an American.

Nevertheless, America has many flaws. It is retarded not to admit that.

[PixelPusher]

Pride is a sin.


In almost every list pride (or hubris or vanity) is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and indeed the ultimate source from which the others arise. It is identified as a desire to be more important or attractive than others, failing to give compliments to others though they may be deserving of them,[citation needed] and excessive love of self (especially holding self out of proper position toward God). Dante's definition was "love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbor."

I am grateful to be an American.

[Spurminator]

Usually, unless I'm watching MTV.

[xrayzebra]

Freedom does rule. I would be proud of American if I were an American.

Nevertheless, America has many flaws. It is retarded not to admit that.


I am proud of my country. Warts and all. And why must be admit to
anything? What you may call a flaw I may call a good thing.:nope

[hater]

I am proud being an american when I'm overseas and meet a girl. "I'm american" is the greatest pickup line in history.

[boutons_]

I'm lucky to an American.

It's not unlucky to be non-American.

[bobbybob0]

I am proud being an american when I'm overseas and meet a girl. "I'm american" is the greatest pickup line in history.

You obviously don't know what it's like to be a French guy in a foreign country :toast

[Cry Havoc]

Pride is a sin.


I am grateful to be an American.

Different kinds of pride. Failboat.

[PixelPusher]

Different kinds of pride. Failboat.

"being an American" is not an accomplishment.

[hater]

You obviously don't know what it's like to be a French guy in a foreign country :toast

French? I am actually trying to get the girl, not scare her away. :king

[Spur-Addict]

"being an American" is not an accomplishment.

If you escaped persecution from others countries it may be. Leaving one country to come here where others have failed or died attempting to do so. In that case, I would say that is an accomplishment.

[hater]

actually being an honest working illegal immigrant in America is way, way more of an accomplishment than being born an American

[Oh, Gee!!]

go team!!

[johnsmith]

an honest working illegal immigrant



:lmao

[lefty]

I'm not American, but anyone should be proud of his origins, wherever he's from

[herzlman]

Since I'm liberal, I'm not proud of America. I hate this country and I hate the flag and I'm part of grand conspiracy to bring America down.

[Spur-Addict]

I said nothing of illegals, in fact I was referring to recognized legal American immigrants. So yeah, ah huh.

[lefty]

Since I'm liberal, I'm not proud of America. I hate this country and I hate the flag and I'm part of grand conspiracy to bring America down.

http://passionbasket.free.fr/photo/mar/AbdulRauf31496.jpg

[balli]

Thomas Friedman wrote a column a few weeks back about Obama and the muslim world. His essential thesis is that normal, moderate people in Arab nations who have an amount disdain for the America George Bush has unleashed, are in absolute marvel that we might be electing a man with the background and ideology of Barack Obama. They don't just look up to Barack, but rather the ideal that America, for all it's faults and all it's VERY RECENT and blatant faults, still has the freedom and moral wherewithal to turn itself completely around. The open and democratic capacity of our citizenry is an enviable trait; it's one this country was founded on, it's one the rest of this world looks up to and it's one to be proud of.

That said, this country is going down the tubes on almost every level imaginable and I'm not proud of that. Although I'm proud of the idea of our republic, I'm not proud of the portion of our citizenry who enabled the powers that be over the last 8 disgraceful years. I'm not proud of our history since post WWII. Since then three liberal icons, MLK, JFK and RFK have been gunned down and meanwhile conservatives have ruled through manipulation and destroyed this country through two failed wars (vietnam, iraq) and one scandle after another (Watergate, Iran Contra, The entirety of Bush 2). A third of our populace is made up of dangerous Christian idelogues; anti-intellectual moral zealots with twisted notions of what it is to be human. The environment is done. We're billions of dollars in the red. Our culture is more shallow and money driven than ever. We've turned raw, unbridled capitalist profit into a golden monument at the top of our policy and agenda. Our country and world is fucked as a consequence and sadly, a lot of us think we're doing a good job.

It is the end of America as it should be and it is not something I'm proud of.

David Simon has some good things to say about the end of America, I highly recommend these videos:

JhPZYjRgqTI
LJNkL12QD68
8z42m_J8t18

Thomas Frank- from The Wrecking Crew


Introduction: Follow This Dime

Washington is the city where the scandals happen. Every American knows this, but we also believe, if only vaguely, that the really monumental scandals are a thing of the past; that the golden age of misgovernment-for-profit ended with the cavalry charge and the robber barons, at about the same time presidents stopped wearing beards.

I moved to Washington in 2003, just in time for the comeback, for the hundred-year flood. At first it was only a trickle in the basement, a little stream released accidentally by the president's friends at Enron. Before long, though, the levees were failing all over town, and the city was inundated with a muddy torrent of graft.

How are we to dissect a deluge like this one? We might begin by categorizing the earmarks handed out by Congress, sorting the foolish earmarks from the costly earmarks from the earmarks made strictly on a cash basis. We could try a similar approach to government contracting: the no-bid contracts, the no-oversight contracts, the no-experience contracts, the contracts handed out to friends of the vice president. We might consider the shoplifting career of one of the president's former domestic policy advisers or the habitual plagiarism of the president's liaison to the Christian right. And we would certainly have to find some way to parse the extraordinary incompetence of the executive branch, incompetence so fulsome and steady and reliable that at some point Americans stopped being surprised and began simply to count on it, to think of incompetence as the way government works.

But the onrushing flow swamps all taxonomies. Mass firing of federal prosecutors; bribing of newspaper columnists; pallets of shrinkwrapped cash "misplaced" in Iraq; inexperienced kids running the Baghdad stock exchange; the discovery that many of Alaska's leading politicians are on the take—our heads swim. We climb to the rooftop, but we cannot find the heights of irony from which we might laugh off the blend of thug and pharisee that is Tom DeLay—or dispel the nauseating suspicion, quickly becoming a certainty, that the government of our nation deliberately fibbed us into a pointless, catastrophic war.

So let us begin on the solid ground of these simple facts: this spectacular episode of misrule has coincided with both the political triumph of conservatism and with the rise of the Washington area to the richest rank of American metropolises. In the period I am describing, gentlemen of the right rolled through the capital like lords of creation. Every spigot was open, and every indulgence slopped out for their gleeful wallowing. All the clichés roared at full, unembarrassed volume: the wines gurgled, the T bones roasted, the golf courses beckoned, the Learjets zoomed, the contractors' glass buildings sprouted from the earth, and the lobbyists' mansions grew like brick-colonial mushrooms on the hills of northern Virginia.

Democrats have tried to explain the flood of misgovernment as part of a "culture of corruption," a phrase at once obviously true and yet so amorphous as to be quite worthless. Republicans, for their part, have an even simpler answer: government failed, they tell us, because it is the nature of government enterprises to fail. As for the great corruption cases of recent years, they cluck, each is merely a one-of-a kind moral lapse unconnected to any particular ideology—an individual bad apple with no effect on the larger barrel.

Which leaves us to marvel helplessly at what appears to be a spectacular run of lousy luck. My, what a lot of bad apples they are growing these days!

…

The truth is almost exactly the opposite: Fantastic misgovernment of the kind we have seen is not an accident, nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversion and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society. This movement is friendly to industry not just by force of campaign contributions but by conviction; it believes in entrepreneurship not merely in commerce but in politics; and the inevitable results of its ascendance are, first, the capture of the state by business and, second, all that follows: incompetence, graft, and all the other wretched flotsam that we've come to expect from Washington.

The correct diagnosis is the "bad apple" thesis turned upside down. There are plenty of good conservative individuals, honorable folks who would never participate in the sort of corruption we have watched unfold over the last few years. Hang around with grassroots conservative voters in Kansas, and in the main you will find them to be honest, hardworking people.

But put conservatism in charge of the state, and it behaves very differently. Now the "values" that rightist politicians eulogize on the stump disappear, and in their place we can discern an entirely different set of priorities—priorities that reveal more about the unchanging historical essence of American conservatism than do its fleeting campaigns against gay marriage or secular humanism. Conservative's leaders laugh off the idea of the public interest as airy-fairy nonsense; they caution against bringing top-notch talent into government service; they declare war on public workers. They have made a cult of outsourcing and privatizing, they have wrecked established federal operations because they disagree with them, and they have deliberately piled up an Everest of debt in order to force the government into crisis. The ruination they have wrought has been thorough; it has been a professional job.

[Brutalis]

Not until we finish off the middle east then focus our attention to Central and South America. After taking over the western continents and killing any hostiles that give us trouble we can proceed with the rest of world domination.

[cheguevara]

Not until we finish off the middle east then focus our attention to Central and South America. After taking over the western continents and killing any hostiles that give us trouble we can proceed with the rest of 3rd world domination.

fixed

[Cry Havoc]

"being an American" is not an accomplishment.

Thanks for illustrating my point. Please direct me to the section where I said that I was proud of myself. Please show me a single comment I made that could even be construed as self-pride.

I'm proud of this:
http://staff.orcsd.org/kmarshall/5th%20team/Larsonweb/aerev/declarationofindependence.jpg

and this:
http://kancrn.kckps.k12.ks.us/wyandotte/library/Bill%20of%20Rights%20Redux%202/Assets/Images/bill-of-rights-01.gif

and this:
http://www.historicaldocuments.com/EmancipationProclamationDec.jpg

and this:
http://www.sligocameraclub.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/Iwo%20Jima.jpg

I'm proud of these guys (and gals):
http://www.shadetreemechanic.com/images/us_soldier_for_all.jpg


Cheesy? Absolutely. But so was the question.

[Cry Havoc]

fixed

Wait, are you talking about the UK here? Britain has had FAR more power and bloodshed over control of the rest of the world than the United States has ever thought about. But keep espousing that silly media hyperbole and rhetoric. It makes it so easy not to think for yourself.

[johnsmith]

Wait, are you talking about the UK here? Britain has had FAR more power and bloodshed over control of the rest of the world than the United States has ever thought about. But keep espousing that silly media hyperbole and rhetoric. It makes it so easy not to think for yourself.

Wow you take a lot of stuff too literal.

[Brutalis]

Wow you take a lot of stuff too literal.

:lol

[spurster]

I am proud of the ideal of America as embedded in our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and our Bill of Rights. I am not proud of where America falls far short of and moves away from the ideal.

[Cry Havoc]

Wow you take a lot of stuff too literal.

Sarcasm about the past history of the United States is really original.

[jochhejaam]

Grateful, thankful, privileged...doesn't really fit the true definition of proud though.

synonyms proud,
arrogant, haughty, lordly, insolent, overbearing, supercilious, disdainful mean showing scorn for inferiors. proud may suggest an assumed superiority or loftiness <too proud to take charity>.

I don't think anyone equates "being a proud American" with that^^.


Probably moreso with the Lee Greenwood song lyrics;

Proud To Be An American
I’d thank my lucky stars,
to be livin here today.
‘ Cause the flag still stands for freedom,
and they can’t take that away.

And I’m proud to be an American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
‘ Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.

^^^That's more like it.

[clambake]

Probably moreso with the Lee Greenwood song lyrics;
in other words "I'll sing it, you do it"


And I gladly stand up,
"I'll sing it, only"

next to you and defend her still today.
"provided all i have to do is sing this hick song to bubba"

[smeagol]

Probably moreso with the Lee Greenwood song lyrics;

Proud To Be An American
I’d thank my lucky stars,
to be livin here today.
‘ Cause the flag still stands for freedom,
and they can’t take that away.

And I’m proud to be an American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
‘ Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.

^^^That's more like it.

I don't think God is interested in blessing one particular country.

[clambake]

I don't think God is interested in blessing one particular country.

that's what bubba thinks.

[smeagol]

that's what bubba thinks.

Not only Bubba, unfortunately.

Entire religions (born in America) have been built around this notion.

[clambake]

Not only Bubba, unfortunately.

Entire religions (born in America) have been built around this notion.

bubba pretends to be religious.

[jochhejaam]

I don't think God is interested in blessing one particular country.



The song lyric that you bolded certainly doesn't imply that God should be interested in blessing only America so what's your point?

[clambake]

The song lyric that you bolded certainly doesn't imply that God should be interested in blessing only America so what's your point?

what countries does god refuse to bless?

[jochhejaam]

I don't think God is interested in blessing one particular country.

If you had taken the song's context in it's entirety, instead of taking the "I'm gonna be an a$$hole" approach, you would have come up with what my original thoughts were to the question "Are you proud to be an American?", which were; being grateful, thankful and feeling privileged about being an American.

[Cant_Be_Faded]

No

this nation is rife with hypocracy, getting dumber at an astounding rate, and has underlying problems that have been identified for many years yet no real effort has been made to fix them. I feel alternating bouts of intense rage and apathetic indifference when it comes to my country's politics and elections.


But the economic benefits of living here are still pretty tight.

[Duff McCartney]

I'm proud to live in a country that for only 99 cents...while people in Zimbabwe can't buy a loaf of bread, I can buy a nice greasy cheeseburger.

I Love America.

[MaNuMaNiAc]

Grateful, thankful, privileged...doesn't really fit the true definition of proud though.

synonyms proud,
arrogant, haughty, lordly, insolent, overbearing, supercilious, disdainful mean showing scorn for inferiors. proud may suggest an assumed superiority or loftiness <too proud to take charity>.

I don't think anyone equates "being a proud American" with that^^.



um... the people in this thread do

http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=102440

[hater]

I'm proud to live in a country that for only 99 cents...while people in Zimbabwe can't buy a loaf of bread, I can buy a nice greasy cheeseburger.

I Love America.

for 99 cents in Zimbabwe you can buy full meal plus desert. the problem is ppl there dont' have the 99 cents

[RobinsontoDuncan]

I am not proud to be an American, because I did absolutely nothing to become an American. I did not chose to be born into an American family. I did not chose to embrace the American lifestyle--these were both gifted to me, being an American (or really any ethnic westerner, i.e. a non first generation immigrant, as it usually takes a generation or two to fully integrate and enjoy the perks to western society) is much more like winning the genetic lottery.

I am proud of the storied legal and social traditions of America, I appreciate the underlying dedication to progress of my fellow countrymen and women, even if we don't always all agree on what that means and how to get there.

I think it is important to remember that in this 21st century, a time when communication between peoples of all races, genders, and ages is easy and instantaneous, that we are blessed to be human beings, and that all peoples, cultures, and creeds have something to offer. We should be grateful of the many opportunities being an American citizen entails, but we should also remember that these are not opportunities that we ourselves earned, and if given the opportunity, there is no reason a person from any other culture or nationality could not achieve the same standard of living we have.

[Anti.Hero]

I'm lucky, but disgusted at the direction this country is moving to.

I'd be proud of myself (in the American sense) had I ever served.

[Oh, Gee!!]

an honest working illegal immigrant


:lmao

based on my experience, they're usually more honest than the American citizens who hire them.

[smeagol]

If you had taken the song's context in it's entirety,

It was never my intent to comment about the song. I didn't even read the entire lyrics. I simply wanted to comment on how funny I find the "God bless America . . . " statement. I'm not sure I have ever heard any other citizen from a different country say "God bless [insert name of country]".



instead of taking the "I'm gonna be an a$$hole" approach,

Uncalled for insult on your behalf.



you would have come up with what my original thoughts were to the question "Are you proud to be an American?", which were; being grateful, thankful and feeling privileged about being an American.

I have no qualms with those reasons for being a proud American. I applaud you, joch :toast

[smeagol]

The song lyric that you bolded certainly doesn't imply that God should be interested in blessing only America so what's your point?

So . . . ?

Did I say that?

[johnsmith]

based on my experience, they're usually more honest than the American citizens who hire them.

Right, they're honestly illegal.

[jochhejaam]

So . . . ?

Did I say that?

Uncalled for insult on your behalf.


I'd rather not get overly involve in off-thread peripherals, but I'll make one short attempt to clear it up.

Your comment; "I don't think God is interested in blessing one particular country"., was a direct response to Greenwood's last lyric; "God Bless The USA". Since he wasn't asking God to exclude Blessing other Countries, your reply didn't make sense. That implied to me that you were going out of your way to critique my thoughts the subject matter <which you're free to do>.
I still can't figure out what point you were trying to make, but it seems obvious that it wasn't to be critical of my thoughts on the question, and with that in mind, I extend an apology for the insult <a bit overboard regardless of your intent>

[Yonivore]

based on my experience, they're usually more honest than the American citizens who hire them.
Being dishonest and illegal aren't mutually inclusive. There are a lot of honest criminals and dishonest, law-abiding people.

[smeagol]

I'd rather not get overly involve in off-thread peripherals, but I'll make one short attempt to clear it up.

Your comment; "I don't think God is interested in blessing one particular country"., was a direct response to Greenwood's last lyric; "God Bless The USA". Since he wasn't asking God to exclude Blessing other Countries, your reply didn't make sense. That implied to me that you were going out of your way to critique my thoughts the subject matter <which you're free to do>.
I still can't figure out what point you were trying to make, but it seems obvious that it wasn't to be critical of my thoughts on the question, and with that in mind, I extend an apology for the insult <a bit overboard regardless of your intent>

Applogies accepted.

[cool hand]

http://www.seaserpentproductions.com/images/MyOtherCarM1A1Abrams_Design.jpg


always!

[Oh, Gee!!]

Right, they're honestly illegal.


Being dishonest and illegal aren't mutually inclusive. There are a lot of honest criminals and dishonest, law-abiding people.

what he said

[whottt]

I'm lucky to an American.

It's not unlucky to be non-American.



I agree with boutons.

The one thing non-Americans have going for them that Americans never will, is that boutons isn't one of them. That's scoreboard for them...any way you look at it.

[smeagol]

Whoever thinks it is not lucky to be an American is an idiot.

[boutons_]

Whott, GFY.

Your jingoistic denigration of ALL people non-American, and there a millions of ignorant, close-minded, irredeemably nasty American bubbas like yourself, make you all the world-famous The Ugly American.

[johnsmith]

Whott, GFY.

Your jingoistic denigration of ALL people non-American, and there a millions of ignorant, close-minded, irredeemably nasty American bubbas like yourself, make you all the world-famous The Ugly American.

Wow, for someone who thinks he is lucky to be an American, you should really take a little time to master the English language because you suck at it so far.

[rascal]

Freedom does rule. I would be proud of American if I were an American.

Nevertheless, America has many flaws. It is retarded not to admit that.

Is it not free in Argentina? What freedoms do you not have?