FederationJunkie wrote:
Dr_Horrible wrote:
FederationJunkie wrote:
Being one of what seems to be a dying breed of patriots these days, I find it nothing less than appalling when people say that "we shouldn't have the freedoms we have" or "this country is dying because we have too much freedom." My question is: what the hell happened??? Since when is freedom such a bad thing? Since when have the ideals of self-reliance, individualism, and limited government become invalid? Why does everybody assume that people can't take care of themselves, and the government needs to do that for them? And by far the worst part about all this is that nobody seems to care. In fact, the mere mention of politics or other such things seems to make people cover their ears and sing to themselves. Am I the only person left who realizes these problems? Fellow patriots, let your voice be heard!
I don't know about whom you have conversed with and what they have said, and that is probably what is making your rant so hard to follow through. Having travelled far and wide over the internet, I have engaged a lot of Americans in discussion. Neither am I an American.
Nevertheless, I believe that patriotism is an irrational scourge, most often used by ruling establishments to cloud the uncomfortable fact that resources in general are amassed in the hands of tiny minorities, while the vast majority literally are forced to seek boring, unamusing works - works that are unnecessary or out-right harmful for society, like advertising, telephone salesmanship or the porn industry - in order to survive. People would need to sell themselves in order to "take care of themselves".
I do not believe in any kind of patriotism for my country, since a country is a piece of land arbitrarily placed on a map due to the migrations of ethnic groups and the history of warfare, and that every country would cease to exist if no one believed them to exist.
In your case, its a bit trickier, since patriotism in the USA is heavily associated with the constitution, a constitution which obviously is working quite ineffectively today as it is virtually ensuring that no laws could be passed and the sh** caused by the progress of capitalism continues to pile up while increasingly weak governments are trying to push it through time so their successors would have to deal with it.
Moreover, if I ain't mistaken, your idea of liberty is akin to "sittin' on a porch with a rifle on the knees and a stray hat shielding the rays of the sun, minding my own business". Even if that isn't the case, individualism is a deeply flawed concept which often ends up opposing itself. If every individual was self-sustaining, as in the pre-industrial age (and that was not true even then, look at the extended families and the social control of the village life), that would make sense. Nowadays, most of us in any given western country are forced to seek employment in order to sustain ourselves - thus we are forced to alter our lifestyles, our choices and our words to what the employers and/or the customers want to hear. The reason for this fact is that 1% of Earth's population are controlling 40% of the planet's resources, and the vast majority of us simply need to work to have access to food, water, electricity, heating, healthcare and so on.
I find such a system deeply flawed and twisted. Human beings should live to pursue arts and love, to explore space and to do things which are useful, not working at the Big Mac.
Thumbs down for patriotism, except for the future society which will bring us paradise on EarthI do understand where u are coming from, and yes it is impractical to think of oneself as a self-sustaining individual in the world we currently live in. Please understand, I am not a patriot in the sense that I love America as an entity, but rather I am a patriot in the idealogical sense... in other words, I value the personal freedoms that we, as Americans, are supposed to be guaranteed, and I am also a strong believer in self-reliance (again, it is impractical to attempt a completely self-sustaining existence in the way our society works today, however I do not believe that one should completely rely on everyone and everything outside of him/herself in order to survive), and that moral integrity is an essential thing to have, regardless of religion, political views, etc. If you really narrow it down to the fundamental problem at hand, you will find that most people in America simply do not care about the nation's affairs enough to even think about it, much less do something about it. This is the reason why the big corporations and banking fat-cats have essentially seized control of everything - after all, how does a democracy work when 90% of the people aren't participating? Also, people seem to be looking at the more superficial problems, not focusing at the true problems at hand. For instance, that lady that's running for Congress, Christine O'Donnell if my memory serves me correctly, that kinda screwed around with witchcraft in High School. That insignificant little detail has been the subject of debate on nearly every news show I have seen for the past couple weeks at least. We've got Congress bugging out from a vote to lower our taxes in the hopes of raising them, and everybody's arguing over whether we should vote for someone who, God forbid, screwed around in High School? I think my point is pretty clear. I believe in moral values, self-reliance, freedom, progress, and respect for your fellow human beings. Politics I could care less about if it wasn't screwing with my life at such a high degree.
When it comes down to it, I just want the ability to go about my life, always working to better myself, and maybe even help out the rest of humanity too. The only reason I actually care about the affairs of our government is because of the widespread sophistry, corruption, and extortion that plagues this country, so much so that it adversely affects the everyday lives of everyone in America, myself included.
I understand what you mean with the ideological sense. That doesn't mean that I am in agreement.
Don't take this as an insult, but from my point of view "americanism" is more a kind of secular religion than an ideology in a classical sense. That is because ideologies in general focus on what principles resources should be distributed according to. Classical conservatism (not the American variety but the European in the 18th and 19th centuries) focused on feudal, autocratic and christian privileges as a foundation for redistribution, whereas liberalism focused on private property and processes and socialism on class warfare (I'm not bringing up fascism, since its basically just a radical variation of conservatism).
The American constitution was enacted in the 1780's, a period when most people in America lived in villages were they grew food, linen, tobacco, sugar and other goods, and they travelled to the nearest town by horsecart. It was not only a largely pre-industrial society, but a largely pre-capitalist society. Not that it wasn't a very revolutionary document for its time, but I wouldn't claim that the failure to adhere to the constitution is the primary problem in America today. To claim that all problems could be solved by the strict adherence to a piece of paper is rather mystical wish-thinking.
As a side-note, Jefferson himself stated that the tree of liberty needs to be washed with the blood of tyrants on a regular basis. He also said something about the constitution needing to be reviewed on a regular basis. Of course, if the constitution should be changed, it shouldn't be because of what some founding father said.
The US government exists in order to ensure the interests of banks and large, multi-national corporations. To what extent the government is acting to support the people, it is either purely co-incidental, legislated to avert social protests (civil rights) or in order to reduce the cost for corporations (social security). Then it could be argued how well the US system is performing in this aspect.
One plutocratic trait within the government is the existence of corporate lobbyism, which could basically subvert any type of legislation into anything which the original constituents didn't want to. Right now, the spin doctors within political science are re-labeling this process as "governance" because lobbyism is widely seen as a form of corruption by the population today.
A very interesting thing in the American political process today is the fact that Barack Obama - the person who stands as the literal symbol for everything which constitutionalists despise - wants to enact legislation that is limiting lobbying, by forcing political candidates to openly declare their corporate sponsors. That wouldn't solve the structural problems, but it would serve to at least make corruption more transparent within the congress.
Moreover, I ask myself where the tea parties were under George W Bush? It is obvious to me that the strict constitutionalism - while its grassroots followers might be genuine - largely is a tool used by segments of the Republican Party to try to enlarge the party base.
As for the federal government and the state governments, the conflict between which entity that should be prevalent was solved in 1865 already, when the Confederacy got trashed (an event which I support, due to the fact that an integral part of the Confederacy was slavery, and for every thinking individual, slavery is an unacceptable condition). An effect of 1865 is that the federal government is having prevalence above state governments. Sometimes, it has used its powers to block reforms, but more usually, it has used its power to make legislation which the state governments were unwilling or unable to carry through, like the civil rights act of 1964. In that sense, the federal government has often served a progressive role, in terms of the abolishment of slavery, anti-trust legislation, women's rights, the establishment of social welfare and minority rights.
If the federal government had been as "anarcho-monarchistic" (in-active and just safeguarding the laissez faire principles imagined in the constitution), then the United States of today would see much less in terms of the rights of the people of colour, anti-monopoly laws, female rights, secularism, and many children wouldn't even go to schools and instead work in sweatshops.
The reason why governments in capitalistic countries are following interventionist policies is not because of "evil marxists" and "socialists" infiltrating the government in order to give up American sovereignty to the UN and take the arms from the American males, but that welfare A) is reducing social tensions in society and B) that it is a good system to control the pool of labour, discipline it and force it out on the labour market. When capitalism is in a crisis, those in political power tend to step up interventionism and/or repression in order to prevent social unrest.
10 Oct 2010, 11:22 pm
this is a "which is the chicken and which is the egg" kinda phenomenon. it is a matter of "you go first! - "NO! YOU go first!" politicians are nothing if not fingertip barometers of the public mood. obama was responding to timid democratic pols who were responding to timid obama. in any case, i still don't get how [from a democratic perspective] allowing a repub to win by default is better than using one's alloted vote for a democrat who at least TRIED to reform our ridiculous health care financing non-system. you can bet your bottom dollar that absolutely nothing along these lines would ever be even thought of, by any modern repub. richard nixon was the last semi-reasonable repub who even thought about doing something about our horrible health care system, and that was 40 years ago! reluctant dems need to get a clue and realize that half a [democratic] loaf, or even a crumb, is a damned sight better than a [repub] nothing at all!
