I’ll be proud of America again when America starts being the place my parents, teachers, etc. told me it was. The place where all are created equal, where anybody can succeed, where you can be anything you want to be, where the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free can come to live their dreams.
Right now, I feel like I was sold a bill of goods, and the lie only becomes more obvious with every passing day.
I mean the supreme court just rules that it’s okay that they be bribed for their work after the deed is done, and also that the president is arbitrarily immune from prosecution, likely ultimately decided by them.
I love what this country should represent, but the current direction is a disaster.
It should be at zero.
I don’t hate being American, but extreme pride? The fuck? Look at even our recent history…
There is a subset of people who will have pride no matter what happens. Partially just through their own ignorance
“Extreme” pride in any country is just nationalism. If we have less of that, then we have gained as a society.
*Edit: Which is not to say that you should take no pride in your home at all. A lack of pride is similarly unhealthy, it leaves you uninvested in the place where you (and probably your friends and family) live. Even if you don’t approve of your current government, I guarantee you there are things to be proud of in your home, and you should take pride in them and work to maintain and improve them.
I fucking love being American. I hold American ideals in high regard.
I hate that people who hate freedom and equality claim to love America and freedom in general. I live in a red state, so I see traitorous flags everywhere I go. But American values hold true.
Pride month in general fills me with a lot of American pride. Regardless of how many antagonistic people there are, those who continue the fight for rights show the true American spirit.
I remember when gay marriage was illegal, which always felt like it was unconstitutional and anti-American. So seeing people celebrate those rights and continue to fight for rights that are withheld, that is America to me.
What are “American values”? And where do they come from? Like why would those be “American” values, over anything else?
Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness
Go read the preamble to the constitution. It’s quite different from what the “We the people…” 1776 people think it says. It’s basically what the right would call socialism, taking care of one another when possible.
The first amendment protects the separation of church and state, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly.
The second amendment protects your right to form a militia if none exist. Which always reminds me of the Black Panthers protecting black voters while armed.
There’s a lot of technical amendments too. But what really gives me American pride is all of those who have continued to push for those rights to be upheld.
That’s your modern interpretation of those “rights” and document. The people who wrote that were mostly slave owners, who believed only land owning men should have any democratic rights. Black people were not even considered humans. Indigenous people were treated as pests. I mean…
That is true. While the proclaimed rights and values held true, America has failed to uphold those values from the very beginning.
However, there have also been people from the very beginning who have fought for those values. Columbus was seen as savage by his fellows, slavery has never had unanimously accepted, indigenous people weren’t seen as pests to all.
Even the land owning part was contentious, which is why they left it up to the states to determine.
Calling the values that are supposedly held by Americans “American values” would be accurate even if they were the exact same values held by the people of Belgium. They would also be “Belgian values” if that were the case.
I doubt anyone here would suggest that “American values” were exclusively American.
So really just any values an American happens to believe in then?
No, the collected body of them. Hence the plural.
"Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” are specifically listed an unalienable rights in America’s Declaration of Independence and could be seen as the origin for many other “American values”.
The phrase itself is quite similar to John Locke’s "life, liberty, and estate” from Two Treatises of Government written nearly a century earlier. You can look to Voltaire, Hume, or really any other Enlightenment period philosopher or writer of the time to see that the founding fathers were a product of that time, and that the ideas of the century or so leading up to American independence are enshrined as values or rights in Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.
I’d bet that those that are in the “extreme pride” bracket have ratcheted up their pride to ever higher levels.
Good. That shit is cringeworthy and internationally embarrassing.
Don’t you want some FREEDOM FRIES???
In a way I understand.
