Sep 08 2008
It’s ok not to be proud of your country
I want to address the attacks being made on Michelle Obama for her comment about being proud of her country for the first time in her adult life. It is much along the lines of the irrational and base thinking that leads people to say things like “If you don’t support the war, then you’re not patriotic.” It is sad when politicians cannot express their genuine concerns and views of our country in fear of the extreme backlash that they know they will get. It is also what causes our politics and elections to become so debased and the comments and views from the politicians to be meaningless (we all know that they are saying mostly what they think we want to hear not necessarily what they believe and what they will do).
There is absolutely nothing wrong with not being proud of your country. It is like having a child that is a drug dealer, who you will always love and do your best for, but who you are not proud of at the time. You wouldn’t go around cheerfully saying “My child is just the best meth dealer!” (Or maybe you would depending on your opinion of meth). You would tell your child that they could do better and you would do everything within your power to lead them off of that path. This is exactly what we should all be doing for our country rather than blindly (often with passionate blindness) and apathetically following along.
In buying into this kind of mindless, overly defensive line of thought we are allowing politicians to dumb us down as constituents. It is a method of totalizing people, that is ignorant and troubling in modern politics today, yet it still runs rampant on both sides.
I proudly say that I am currently not proud of my country, in many ways. And this is okay because we live in American after all and not China, where those kinds of expressions are not permissible. We take pride in being a free country and yet when people exercise the use of that freedom we degrade them as if they are a lesser form of American. I believe that it is more patriotic to challenge the things that are going on in your country, if you believe they are wrong, than to ignorantly follow along (while claiming to be patriotic). Since we are free, why would we not use this ability to speak out about the wrongs being done? Isn’t that one of the basic ideas the forefathers had in mind when forming this country? Isn’t this kind of freedom something you would want to see being embraced by your president and not disrespected?
I completely agree, but I’ve even talked to democrats who hate Michelle Obama for what she said. It’s a disturbingly effective political attack because so many people internalized the statement and how the media portrayed it, and without considering the meaning behind it.
And I usually hate hypothetical comparisons, but I like your drug dealer one.
“A true patriot is a lover of his country who rebukes, and does not excuse, it’s sins” -Fredrick Douglass
When I heard she said it I agreed with her. For the first time in my lifetime, it seemed like people were getting more engaged in the political process. For the first time in my lifetime, there were presidential candidates that were well qualified for the job that weren’t all white men. I think a true patriot is someone who isn’t always proud of their country. A true patriot sees the potential that this country has and just wants it to reach that potential.