I love my country!

[Anonymous]

I'm not ashamed to admit I love America, my country of birth. I know America only makes up 5% of the world's population, and am grateful for being lucky enough to be born here. Yes, we have our flaws. I do not agree with everything our government does and we have our problems. But that doesn't effect how proud I feel when I see the Stars & Stripes flying high, or hear fireworks on the 4th of July. I think we are the greatest country that has ever existed, and will continue to improve and thrive for centuries to come.

Do you love America as much as I do?

[Che Gookin]

Could you express your love for America on a sliding scale of 1 to 10?

[AtomicAnt]

I love my country, too but not blindly. I do not necessarily think it is the "best" country in the world. Perhaps that is because I have traveled the world extensively and work with people from all over the world. One of my friends sent an email with photos of the orphanage and the city he grew up in. The photos were of the "then and now" type where he took photos in the same place and in some cases with the same people as older childhood photos. These photos depicted a very well kept orphanage where the kids were well cared for and educated. The city was modern and clean looking, certainly not third world. This friend loves his country (The People's Republic of China) and feels his is the best country in the world.

He points out to me that in the United States, we have far more people in prison, both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of population than China does. He points out the USA leads the entire world in this statistic and this not only holds for the present, but for all of history. One in one hundred adults in the USA are behind bars. This is the highest rate in all of human history. He points out that we have the longest prison sentences of any developed nation. So before we point our fingers at the rest of the world, perhaps we should look into a mirror and ask what 'land of the free' really means; especially when 61% of those locked up are there because of non-violent drug offenses that are either not crimes, or minor crimes in the rest of the world.

I had a discussion with a group of friends from various countries and we were talking about free speech rights. The Europeans felt they had as much, or more, freedom of speech than Americans did. One of them pointed out that in a recent survey, over 60% of high school kids in the USA felt the 1st Amendment gives us too much freedom of speech and this concerned them greatly. Another said, "In America, free speech means you can say anything you want, as long as it does not matter." I agreed that I don't like the idea that something someone simply says can be a violation of another person's constitutional rights. And let's not get started on political correctness.

Because of the Bush administration, my friends have informed me the USA is the only western country where a person can be arbitrarily imprisoned without the right of habeas corpus or recourse to the courts and claim this action to be legal. While there is evidence that European countries have assisted the USA in extraordinary renditions, such action is clearly illegal in those countries and if caught, those engaged in these activities could and would be prosecuted without the defense of 'executive privilege.'

Standard of living enters these conversations. It turns out, we are no longer the richest country anymore. There are 17 European nations which are said to have higher disposable incomes than Americans now enjoy.  And let's not start on medical care, where conservatives have effectively used the press to convince Americans that socialized medicine does not work. All my friends prefer their socialized medicine over our system and say, while not perfect, is far more sensible and better than our system.

Finally, the UN did a study on the best countries for children to grow up in. The USA came in 21st with almost every European country beating us. Granted some of the reasons for the low ranking are dubious (high divorce rate and resulting single parent families), lack of medical coverage, and higher infant mortality rate (which can be accounted for by our willingness to save so many preemies) than other countries. But it is food for thought.

Yes indeed, I feel fortunate that I live far better and probably feel much safer than the vast majority of the world's citizens, but I am not going to go off the deep end waving the flag when so many other people have valid reasons for believing their own country is as good, if not better, than ours.

I do think our form of democracy is the best form of government for us and I am deeply concerned with the fragility of it and how I have seen our 'rights' being eroded over the years. I am also concerned (as a child of the 1960s and 1970s) how so many social gains are being reversed in the new wave of religious and social conservatism which seems to have no problem in telling (forcing) other people to live in a certain way or believe in a certain way. I honestly believe that when it comes to some things, we have come a long way, backwards, in the past 20 or 30 years. And I am old enough to remember how it used to be.

[FemanonFatal2.0]

I equally love and hate my country.

I love my country because I live in an environment much much more preferable to most other countries, I feel safe at night and I am grateful for that. I can walk down the street and appreciate the nice (well decent anyway but nice in comparison) neighborhoods, trees, well kept streets, safely controlled traffic and on any given day see children playing on the sidewalks and people walking their dogs and friendly passers by. Just thinking about the amount of FILTH that corrodes every street in Mexico (where I lived for 2 years) makes me realize all these things I took for granted that my country provides for me and everyone else. Here we are permitted to flourish and feel safe and everything is clean and maintained, other countries may be beautiful but I think our overall level of provided comfort far exceeds MOST countries.

I hate my country because of how politicians, capitalistic criminals and the media have severely warped our existence. Our country is stuck in a violent tug of war and we are the rope, we have really stretched ourselves too thin, gone too far, and dug ourselves too big of a hole to fall into. and not just with the war or immigration or the economy but with our general hysterical way of thinking. I understand that throughout the decades a society's general stance on certain issues are suspected to change but we as a country have really gone bat shit crazy. There are very few general consenses on a simple truth or the big picture its usually black or white, right or wrong, left wing or right wing and in my opinion they are both off center ways of thinking. I think it started with the separation between the hippies and the conservatives in the 60's and the gap only got wider and wider and now a days if you aren't one or the other you just don't fit in.

I guess my main example for this is this whole hysteria that weed is a gateway drug, and parents sending their kids off to be literally "scarred straight" is only evidence that only the extremely controlling approach to parenting is popular, where as if your the parent who decides to lighten up around the teen years, you get crucified by the other parents, school and the law. So what other choice do they have but to make their kids life miserable to save face? Even some of the coolest people I know are shitty parents, its sad but I think the media and the economy and all the new laws make it really hard for parents to raise their kids in a way that is best for the child's development, instead its all so important to punish punish punish just to force them not to do something, but really it only helps them learn how to not get caught and gives them mommy or daddy issues. I think even if a parent wanted to raise their child in a better way they wouldn't be able to because many members of our society are so self-righteous that they will impose their beliefs upon the family and that child to the point where the parent just has NO IDEA how to raise a child at all.

I think the laws in this country have greatly stepped over the line from what a government should be enforcing to protect its citizens and the laws they set up to exploit and embezzel money from them. Futhermore, I think the government is grossly mismanaging our tax dollars and providing ineffective social services that have proven to be harmful to its subjects as well as our economy. Someone really needs to walk in, throw all the cards in the air and redesign the whole social services/ foreign policy/ law system we got going on here. For one we don't have enough room or jobs to harbor more immigrants or money to lock up more prisoners and fight pointless wars. And we do not need to be paying our tax dollars for Shaniqua's crack babies to eat top romins while truly disabled people get denied for disability 4 and 5 times in a row before they are even considered. BUT we also don't need to be passing laws to prevent gay people from marrying the ones they love or preventing women from getting abortions and LEGALIZE WEED FOR CHRIST"S SAKE. (actually I'm pretty sure Christ would smoke weed if he existed) We really need a politician who is neither a republican nor a democrat (or a politician for that matter) to make any real change in this country and until we create the "Logical" party we are all pretty much screwed.