Is it wrong to be "proud to be an American"?

@Chary I'm sorry, but this is a rare occurrence where I'm really going to have to disagree with you. Again, patriotism is fine, but when you take it to the extreme point where it could be classified as nationalism (ESPECIALLY if that's how one self-identifies), that has historically virtually never been a good thing. You could open a history book dedicated to war throughout the ages to any entry and I guarantee that 95% of the time it will say that said conflict started by some variation of "our nation is better than everyone else's, and if no one else will yeild to us then we must take them by force to expand our dominion"

@alexg1989 "the left won't stop until they repeal the second amendment" cHrIsT which daytime Fox News talkshow did you get that from?

Honestly I mean pride in the sense of "Yay I'm from a place that's done good things and has many modern amenities! I can theoretically live a good life compared to those in a third world country!" Rather than just plain "EFF YEAH MURICA. SUCK IT, CANADA" kinda warlike "pride".

As a proud American, I strongly appreciate other proud Americans. These are precisely the kind of citizens I want for my country; because a proud citizen wants the best for their society, and will contribute what they can to improve it.

However, I agree with @ChaosEternal and @TotalInsanity4 ’s notion of the dangerous of making it a defining trait. Having too much pride will cause you to do things at the expense of others. Though I would not call it Nationalism - a more proper word would be Supremacism.

Generally speaking though, a person’s level of patriotism helps me narrow down their general societal intensions. I’ll leave you with this question: Would you rather have a self-loathing neighbor who leaves their grass to rot, or a prideful neighbor who tends their garden?

@Chary yeah, that's patriotism

@Vorpal Blade I think a more interesting question would be: Both your neighbors have lawns overrun by weeds. Would you rather have the neighbor that isn't proud of how their lawn looks, and so calls a lawn care company to spray weedkiller and lay down new grass, or the neighbor that says "this is my lawn, which makes it the best lawn, and I'm proud of it!" and MAYBE occasionally mows?

@Vorpal Blade "Generally speaking though, a person’s level of patriotism helps me narrow down their general societal intensions. I’ll leave you with this question: Would you rather have a self-loathing neighbor who leaves their grass to rot, or a prideful neighbor who tends their garden?"

Pride in a garden a person has cultivated and national pride aren't tied, though. Just because someone believes this nation has gone to shit doesn't mean they'll let their personal life go to shit. The former is out of control of the individual, after all.

@TotalInsanity4 The latter neighbor is dangerously prideful and entirely ignorant; which is virtually equivalent to the self-loather. Now the prior neighbor has a sense of pride through their acknowledgement - however they are also humble enough to ask the experts to assist them. As a result, they will take pride in their new beautiful lawn - and yes, they did not particularly care for it before nor contrived the new state of the lawn - yet I would argue they will start tending to it more from this point on.

So @Xzi , the aforementioned neighbor did not cultivate their garden per se; but is grateful to obtain it. I believe a nation going to shit could be helped and dare-I-say controlled with prideful individuals. It’s probably reductive of me to think so but a person surrounded by chaos probably has a chaotic personal life.

Here is someone I thought was reasonable.. Larry King litearlly saying the 2nd should be repealed.

Jesus dude, just google "repeal the 2nd amendment, and you will get nothing but a bunch of vultures frothing at the chance. Fox not needed.

^
Don't worry, it'll never get repealed. In fact, most states are becoming more pro gun.

I feel like even though we're all currently having troubles with the presidency and all that, Americans should still have pride for their country. ima keep it real with you chief, i hate trump. He's goofed up so many things with our taxes, immigration rights, trade policy, and the way he serves, but I think we should still come together for what our country stands for; freedom. Like, sure we're having tough times but we should still be strong, since so many people have fought for our unalienable rights which still hold today. It's not wrong to love your country.

@alexg1989 *sigh* I can't believe I'm taking the bait, but I'll play your game for a little bit I suppose

First of all, you need to understand that while as a foundation for our country our Constitution is fantastic, the conditions for changing anything in it are incredibly inflexible and rather outdated in comparison to other "developed" nations; this is relevant because it is virtually impossible to "change" any of its amendments - the nation cannot just convene and re-word the contents of a single Constitutional law to reflect the changing times, we instead either have to propose a constitutional convention, get enough states and/or representatives to vote on that, and then the ENTIRETY of the constitution is quite literally open for re-drafting at that point, so long as a coalition could get enough votes to get the changes through (I personally think this should happen within my lifetime, because it desperately needs modernization, but that's kind of beside the point), or propose an amendment convention, which is very similar, except that the previous text written cannot be changed, but amendments can be tacked on, which is basically what's been done so far

Now that we've got that exposition out of the way: the video you linked with Larry King, I'm guessing you just heard "repeal the Second Amendment" and were like "oh fuck he wants to take my gun! fuck him" when he actually laid out some relatively compelling points - namely, the wording is antiquated and no longer applies to any modern institution, now that we have a federally funded military and National Guard. That's problematic, because that instead gives the Supreme Court the power to interpret it however they want to, which has led to some unfortunate precedents that have made it... difficult, shall we say, to trace gun owners who have committed a crime. A rewrite could potentially solve that issue, clarifying whether or not reasonable restrictions are allowed, whether or not there may be a universal registry of sale kept (think like a car when you register it with the DOT), and whether the law refers to the rights of an individual (as it has been interpreted) or the rights of an organized group for the purpose of defense (as it was written). Now, all of these would technically be constitutional to implement, and I doubt that anyone would really complain about tighter gun laws in general, except for aforementioned Supreme Court precedents, along with NRA lobbying that will always ensure that as long as lawmakers have wallets and no conscience, there will always be an industry for firearms fueled by fear and governmental apathy

All this is to say, now, that for anything to change, short of a change in the above scenarios, we WOULD have to call an amendment convention and *gasp* repeal the second amendment via a new 28th amendment, which would then "overwrite" the contents of the second amendment, so to speak. It would be functionally the same as the situation with the 18th and 21st amendments, except for the fact that rather than completely doing away with the second it would replace it. Personally? I think this would be a good thing, and would even have the potential to cut down on a lot of government corruption via aggressive lobbying from the NRA.

However, there's a slight problem with that, and it stems from the constitutional convention system I outlined above; if a convention were to meet to re-draft the second (or, as it would become in this case, 28th) amendment, EVERYTHING would be up for grabs. And it is a genuine concern that should that happen, a malicious party might try to, say, repeal the right to due process, or protection from self-incrimination, under the guise that it increase convictions and keep our country safer. Do I think that's realistic? No. Is it a possibility? Honestly, I think so, and clearly a lot of people before me think so due to the fact that a proper second constitutional convention actually has yet to happen (instead, all we've had are amendment conventions). It is for this reason that I really, truly doubt that the second amendment will ever be touched, until such time that the nation can come together and agree that we need to sit down and figure our shit out together, at which point we'll re-write everything, hopefully for the better.

Now, as a closing statement, I do take issue with the fact that you seem convinced that there is a liberal agenda to completely repeal the right to bear arms; I won't say that I disagree with that sentiment, for basically the same reasons Larry King gave, but I will say that to imply that all liberals want that is intrinsically false. Ideally, I know a lot of us would rather see reasonable restrictions passed without even touching the constitution, because realistically speaking there's no wording in it that would prevent a lot of rational laws from being made. Plus, The Left isn't a hive mind; I have a lot of friends that I know actually have concealed carry permits, and while would like to see better restrictions and documentations in place, would never want their right to defend themselves to be taken away because they firmly believe that it's the best crime deterrent available, which I respect. You need to understand that politics aren't a spectrum, "we" aren't out to get you, nearly so much as you seem to think, anyway. That in particular is why I am... I guess TERRIFIED of nationalism, because it encourages us vs them mentalities that provoke physical hostility

When I was little, I was scared of Larry King. I was always scared he'd touch me. I don't know why, but it makes me laugh now, when I think about it.

I thought it'd be funny to bring that up, after that wall of text response.

Nationalists refuse to acknowledge problems with our country, thus refuse to help fix them. That's why the USA is so underdeveloped and the laughing stock of the world.

Not quite; Nationalists refuse to acknowledge that anything that they consider to be wrong with their country is something that is that ISN'T the fault of another group that they find convenient to shift blame to

Hmm pride in once country eh? It's a hard balance there. I can't say "I'm a proud Swede" mostly because it's sound profound. I'm just a Swedish citizen, nothing else. Sure I can be glad that our goverment(s?) have done good, but also made a lot of crap as well. So I think it's kind of odd to be "proud American" since it sounds more like a propaganda statement rather than anything else. And not to rustle anyone, but America lately doesn't have the best track record....

No, the constitution does not need to be "modernized"as you put it. It's inflexibility is why our free speech has remained.

The wording of the 2nd amendment is not outdated my friend. And it wasn't written for an organized group. It was written for Americans. We, americans, are the militia.

Well you can go ahead and be terrified of nationalism if you want. N

Yes, it's wrong. Every country had it's wars. But the USA is the worst. Built on the bones of the native americans, had it's hand in every major and minor war in the last 100 years. The USA has more blood on it's hands than the Soviet Union and the Third Reich ever had. And the citizens aplaud it. So yes, if you are proud, I have bad news for you.

Last month was gay pride month, which was basicaly entire month of gloryfing one personality trait of a person. Being pround of being american is not different than that. But also it's no different from being pround of having beautiful, blue eyes or being strong or being tall or having additional arm sticking out of your back.

It's just one trait of you. It's fine if you feel good with it but don't overvalue it because you are more than that.

@alexg1989 Except... it's really not. Do you really think that if the Constitution were democratically re-framed, we would just give up our right to free speech?...

You should give this article a read, but there's one very specific part I want to point out:

[Christopher Phillips has] turned to one of his heroes — Thomas Jefferson — who believed, Phillips says, that Americans should revisit the Constitution every 20 years and rewrite it from scratch.

"His argument was that if Americans weren't vital stakeholders in that foundational document, they would become distanced from governance itself," Phillips explains. "And the politicians from the president on down would become 'like wolves.' "

Click to expand...

https://www.npr.org/2011/12/10/143354018/reconstituting-the-constitution-how-to-rewrite-it

alexg1989 said:

No, the constitution does not need to be "modernized"as you put it. It's inflexibility is why our free speech has remained.

The wording of the 2nd amendment is not outdated my friend. And it wasn't written for an organized group. It was written for Americans. We, americans, are the militia.

Click to expand...

Actually the very first article after the preamble establishes a group organisation. The legislative branch of the federal government of the USA called United States Congress. The whole thing, just as any constitution, was written to organise the state which includes the people who live within the territory of the state and in case of a democray are even the source of all power (if everything turns out ideally of course). Just in case now you want to point out that if it was written to create a organised group the very group who worte it wasn't organised, I have to disappoint you on that it's called the Articles of Confederation. As you may remind from history class you had a independence war, ask yourself "Is it possible to win any kind of war without any kind of organisation?". It's great that you're now independ from any foreign power that makes unreasonable demands, but I'm pretty sure that you can be happy to have a organisation of somekind (and if it would be one purely based on culturely handed down rules instead of state laws or something like that) because areas of the world completely without look like a huge mess to put it nicely.