McCain and Obama on Patriotism

[dahunan]

some people think patriotism means NEVER CHANGING from what was...

Should we still hang black people and tar and feather them and kill all the buffalo so we can sttarve the native americans off their land and into internment camps?

 

[fskimospy]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: dahunan

Originally posted by: Vic
And as usual, PJ replies only to the weakest and most off-topic post in the thread, as opposed to those that directly refuted his comments in the OP.

Nah.. the most embarrassing part is that he goes on to basically defend slavery ...

No, you need to understand what really built America.

It was not slave labor, if that was true then Brazil would be far richer since they got a LOT more slaves than we did.

Slavery sucked and was a horrible stain on our history, but it is in no way shape or form responsible for the greatness that America has achieved.

Way to ignore my post.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: eskimospy

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: dahunan

Originally posted by: Vic
And as usual, PJ replies only to the weakest and most off-topic post in the thread, as opposed to those that directly refuted his comments in the OP.

Nah.. the most embarrassing part is that he goes on to basically defend slavery ...

No, you need to understand what really built America.

It was not slave labor, if that was true then Brazil would be far richer since they got a LOT more slaves than we did.

Slavery sucked and was a horrible stain on our history, but it is in no way shape or form responsible for the greatness that America has achieved.

Way to ignore my post.

PJ is a one-trick pony with the Chewbacca defense.

 

[cwjerome]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam

Originally posted by: cwjerome

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Patriotism is a disease. [... ]

Patriotism is neither good nor bad, it just is. You ought to qualify it with some context when issuing your moral pronouncements... otherwise it's just more anti-conceptual blather for your celebrated Desiderata.

Patriotism just is? Patriotism has the very psychological roots I said it does. It may be, however, that because you can't see that you are forced to assume it just is. The context I was speaking in is obviously that defined by McCain. I would say also that it you who is the conceptual thinker. I'm talking about things I know.

Of course you are, we all know your Chicken Soup for the Soul on Steroids mantra of sanguine spirituality. I know patriotism, I've seen in, I've studied it, it's been around -in all its forms- for thousands of years. We can deal with it... we have survived. I'm a lot less sure about surviving your "we're all perfect" universe.

Patriotism can be a good thing, so long a you believe in right and wrong, because at its root it's a moral concept. I see nothing wrong with the idea that one group (for example, a nation-state) is better than another group. There, I said it, a very unpolitically correct value judgment that's becoming more rare in these subjectivist, relativist, postmodern times. I cannot renounce the concept that some ideas are better than others, and therefore some groups who hold superior ideas as a collective are better than groups with worse ideas.

That doesn't mean I love all the consequences and corollaries that MAY result from patriotism... such as extreme nationalism, racism, etc. But I'm not the kind of guy who will destroy the integrity of by belief system and dispose of an idea because some assholes take corrupted, tribalistic extrapolations of that idea.