Is everything about Britain shameful ?

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I know Britain has had a history which I am not proud of at all and appalled with including the slave trade. I seem to think some people have gone too far over the past year wanting to tear down statues such as Churchill, whom I am not really a fan of and wanting things renamed such as OBE (Order of the British Empire), which I do think is irrelevant now as we don't still have an empire. I remember seeing a BBC history programme about Britain's slave trade and described people's experiences in a cramped slave ship hold in which people died on the journeys and showed how people were branded and a plantation owners book on the number of floggings they enforced. I was glad the topic was brought up as it does seem like we don't teach enough about it in schools and so on or that it is just ignored about. I think it should be taught about more and talk about those who abolished it like Wilberforce. But I seem to think those people who ashamed of British History want to erase everything even people like abolitionists who wanted to stop and end the terrible suffering while at the same time were still complicit in them and those who are not ashamed focus on one narrative and tend to ignore the terrible stuff. I does irritate me sometimes.

false dichotomy is false.

Nothing wrong with your tea and lemon curd.

Each cultures have their own brand of shame, one may blame everything about said respective culture as the most shameful of all.

Only and only because of being directly too tied to it -- be it ancestral or by some collective member proxy of sorts (i.e. nationality, ethnicity, etc.)
Therefore the present who finds out this sort of past, well, may also thought 'presents' this same shame as well.


So I do not understand the question.
I'm a foreigner, from a place where Britain isn't very involved in my country's history or recent affairs.

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I'm still proud of Britain's scientific, technological and artistic history, and selected parts of its political, social and military history. I can face up to the bad parts without chucking all the rest away. It always seems to me a bad faith argument when right-wingers say "Well, if you're not proud of the Empire (or the Monarchy or whatever) you have no pride in Britain." Or when left-wingers say "If you have any pride in Britain, that must mean you're happy about every single atrocity in British history." A country is a much bigger concept than those reductive arguments would allow.

It also infuriates me that the way to be a "patriot" nowadays is apparently to lie about your country, and to harm your country and its people while waving a nice big flag. A true patriot would recognise their country's flaws and work to make them better, to build a country that really is worthy of pride for what it does in the present day.

This sounds like a deep topic..... could go all the way back to the time of Holy Roman Empire and built up parts of London and all the way up the coastline to Wales not including its southernmost outposts . Should the Romans
be abolished as a slaving empire ? Where as Romans took slaves from everywhere . So how far back do you go into Britain’s history . All this is part of how the Empire came about . Where do you begin with patriotism or stop for that matter ?

I am ashamed of some parts of Britain's history too. But there are things about the country I love, such as fish and chips.

The music of The 60s British Invasion is very cool. I'm listening to The Kinks right now. Does this answer your question?

I plead the fifth as our American cousins say...

In all seriousness though, no not everything about these islands is shameful.

Really nice gardens.

I like the TV shows, Are You Being Served?, Keeping Up Appearances, On the Buses and Eastenders. Not everything about Britain is shameful.

The *one* country I think should be ashamed of itself acts like it has no shame at all.

I'd be more worried that there's still over 40 million slaves around the world at this moment in time.