Are you a patriot?

[Nikajo]

Nope, not at all. Let's just say I'm gonna be jumping ship as soon as feesibly possible

I live in the UK, incase you were wondering

 

[Kwaren]

Here in the US being a patriot can be a bad thing. I wouldn't want to be grouped in with the other "patriots". Do you hear banjos?

 

[Mcface]

Are you a patriot?

Do you love your country?
What do you love about it?

It could be your country's food, the language, the music or whatever.

I am, in a literal sense of the word. I'm by no means a flag waver. But I love the country and what it stands for. And I wish we could go back to the way things used to be. If our founding fathers saw what we've become, they would be sick.

 

[Thrashgrinder]

i am NOT and i hate my countrys music, food, people, logic, goverment aaand mostly everthing else.(i like the language a bit thou. but English is much more enjoyable than Turkish)

 

[TheBeej]

I'm a big believer in social contract theory so, as long as we're distinguishing patriotism from nationalism, then sure; I'm a patriot. I'll qualify this, however, by saying that my patriotism doesn't require me to think that America is somehow superior to any other nation. Rather I'd argue that patriotism for most Americans (or at least the ones with brains : P ) is more about loving what our country stands for and recognizing that we owe something to our society for all of the services it's provided and advantages it's given us. But there are PLENTY of things that we really need to work on, and numerous things that I admire about other societies and recognize as being far superior to their corresponding parts over here.

So, patriot yes, nationalist no. : )

 

[Purpleboomerang]

Not really. Partly because I think patriotism is irrational and partly because I see myself as both Irish and British.

 

[internetzealot1]

My country has a great history. But things today... I'm not so proud of.

 

[ottenni]

Yes i am a patriot. I love my country, i love the god damn trees for starters!

What i am not however is jingoistic. Some people here may wish to read up on it.

 

[Ericb]

Also, I saw in your post that you're from Brazil, my dad just got back from Sao Palo and said that it wasn't as bad as everybody thinks it is.

And of course the women there

I'm from Rio, But yeah, women from Sao Paulo are also something else. From all over the country, actually. =]

("Sao Paulo" actually has a tilde sign on top of the "a", but this site doesn't accept it when I type it.)

Regarding how bad things are around here... it is usually worst then most foreigners realize. There's a lot that our media plays down, precisely to keep tourism up and running. And obviously, you guys from outside get treated a lot better. =P

But yeah, its good to hear your dad enjoyed the good stuff and dodged the bad. It's what I always hope for myself when traveling.

To stay on topic, one reasons I will never be a patriot is because I fully realize each and every country and city has its sets of beauty and ugliness.

I wasn't raised to think in terms of "my people, your people, their people". So it just doesn't make sense to me.

My country has a great history. But things today... I'm not so proud of.

Chances are, if you could see your country back in historical times, you'd find a lot of things not to be so proud of. History is written by winners, mostly.

And winners aren't always on the right side.

 

[Joe Matsuda]

No...not really

...Its not that I hate America...

I just don't very much care for it these days

 

[Gudrests]

I'm from America... so it's more a point against me to be a 'patriot'...

I don't really care much; I'd prefer to live somewhere else where I don't have to listen to all this crap about horrid parties and the like, but then again I don't care that much either. I'll find myself somewhere else eventually.

the party system...is everywhere...its all just different names and faces

.....i smells scarcasm....imagine...a world...full of democrats...or full of republicans....OMG RUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN-

Yea, I know. I could just go somewhere where there's only one party though. What could go wrong there?!

 

[SilentVirus]

I fucking love my country, my people, my freedom....except for my government.....

 

[Fetzenfisch]

Its ok here. And i even own 2/3 of a flag. Cut the rest of to make a cool red/black banner.

Do you mean the "Nordfeuer"-flag? (cookie for V for Vendetta reference please)

OT:
I love my country. Nearly every last bit of it. It deserves all the respect of it's people. It has been down for a long time, but we shall restore it to it's glory.

Just talking about something like

Spoiler: this

 

[bobknowsall]

I don't mind my country, and I'll defend it from baseless insults, but I'm not going to scream about how great Ireland is. That's just not done over here.

 

[Tdc2182]

I'm more a patriot then the people who think they are patriots.

I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

I am convinced you dont even know what I meant. So you go ahead and describe exactly what I was saying. Just so you dont look like an ass.

 

[Shadow XXVII]

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

-John Stuart Mill

I am proud to be a patriot.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

Well, let me think:

My country has an irrational fear of my ideology, when even the most educated of them rarely know what it actually entails. They, furthermore, cannot differentiate my ideology from fascism. Apparently to them socialism and fascism both sound scary and therefore must obviously be the same thing. Furthermore, I heard someone that I consider to be one of the more educated of my peers arguing that fascism was a form of socialism due to both having a command economy.

The people here listen to the most god awful music, and further spit in my face by trying to label it as punk rock. I swear, the next "punk" who I hear talking about how great Avril Lavigne or My Chemical Romance is might just mysteriously disappear.

Our culture has made Micheal Bay popular. Everyone has seen the Transformers movies, but if I want to discuss Quintin Tarantino with anyone the discussion is almost always limited to the one with Brad Pitt and nazis (a good movie, but certainly not representative of his entire career). Furthermore, people largely refuse to watch amazing foreign films like Pan's Labyrinth because they don't want to read subtitles.

On a more political and less cultural note- my country is still awful. While some American patriots will argue that America's government used to be good but not its government has been corrupted, America was not an example of anything this side of the French Revolution. The only thing we ever had going for us politically was that we were not a monarchy, but that was not true for long. Then for a while we weren't imperialist, except we were because Manifest Destiny was just a fancy word for imperialism. We have been imperialist ever since, although our modern imperialism is a bit more watered down to keep the appearance that we are a large benevolent world power when really we are a greedy, corrupt empire that will bomb to hell as many little countries full of brown people as it takes to assert our absolute authority over the geo-political balance. Furthermore, we were the last country to abolish slavery.

In short- I am not a patriot, and I would be almost offended to be mistaken for one. I will admit myself lucky to be born here, simply because I could have been born somewhere that was not at all industrialized and I could be starving right now. I would have preferred to be born in Europe, and will probably move there when I am done with my education.

Move to Norway with me. I'm sure we'd get along just fine as roomies.

That is one of the countries I am heavily considering moving to.