America tops in national pride, survey finds

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13577802/

U-S-A! U-S-A! When it comes to national pride, Americans are No. 1, according to a survey of 34 countries’ patriotism.

Venezuela came in a close second in the survey, released Tuesday by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

People rated how proud they were of their countries in 10 areas: political influence, social security, the way their democracy works, economic success, science and technology, sports, arts and literature, military, history, and fair treatment of all groups in society.

In the U.S., “the two things we rank high on are what we think of as the political or power dimension,” said Tom W. Smith, a researcher at the university. “Given that we’re the one world superpower, it’s not that surprising.”

Patriotism is mostly a New World concept, the researchers said. Former colonies and newer nations were more likely to rank high on the list, while Western European, East Asian and former socialist countries usually ranked near the middle or bottom.

Redstone

it just ranked how proud we are of that stuff; it may suck, but boy are we proud of it!

Redstone

:evilgrin:

Our economy's racing along, we have a popular wartime president, we are loved world wide. :sarcasm: :puke:

prejudice.

There's a big difference.

Nationalism leads to arrogance and brutality.

And the difference is so dangerous. We patriots want what is best for America.
Nationalists want what is best for the government.
The Bushies are Nationalists. Waving flags, proclaiming "Mission Accomplished", yelling "Bring It On." Lying us into war. Spying on citizens. The secrecy. The "might makes right" attitude.
All out of the nationalism playbook.
And so very far away from patriotism.

The way people in this country not only have a flag outside, but screened on to car windows, clothing, tattoos, etc is not nearly as common in other countries. Honestly I have never understood that *at all* - it's like we all live in the same place and therefore we know where we live, so who are we trying to reach when we paint a flag on the side of a barn? (I actually saw that around here.)

There's a big difference between nationalism and patriotism, but I'd venture a guess that most Americans don't know that.

One can be healthy, the other sick. :shrug: Pride can promote confidence; whereas, arrogance promotes destructive behavior towards others.

My pride in my country is noticeably lacking at the moment. And that pains me greatly.

sorry. couldn't help it.

That we make great cheerleaders?

Go America!!!
USA! USA! USA!

30's and 40's.....:think:

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USA ain't got a whole lot to be legitimately proud of these days . .

But that's Just My Canuk Opinion/Observation . . .

Whadda I know . . .

So, yes, that figures. Becxause I can't think of a single time in history where this country has sunk so low. In every single domain. Including "democracy".

of pride.

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins.

Now there's an achievement to be proud of...we rank lowest in life expectancy, literacy, and education among developed nations, but we still beat EVERYONE when it comes to jingoistic flag-waving...USA! USA! :patriot:

Wondering just exactly what these people think makes the U.S. "the greatest nation in the world" since we're at the bottom in education, healthcare, life expectancy, science and almost everything else -- is it that we are the most heavily armed?

No, my friends said, it's because we have the most "toys."

New slogan for the U.S., "Toys are Us."

never traveled or never traveled outside the resort/luxury hotel bubble, so they don't know that many other countries have things like universal health care that you can't lose eligibility for just because you get sick, mandatory month-long vacations, allowances for families with children, affordable daycare, public transit and passenger rail systems, public school systems that turn out well-informed people...

They perhaps go to a Caribbean resort and see poor locals just beyond the boundaries of the resort, and that's the extent of their foreign experience. Or they're stationed in the military overseas, and they never see anything but the bar and brothel districts near their base, so they get the worst possible impression of life overseas.

Or they hear old stories from their uncle who was in World War II and who talks of starving orphans in the wartorn countries and how great it was to get back to the good ol' U.S. of A. Or maybe they hear stories from Grandma, who was a peasant in the Old Country and who says that life is much better here.

So few Americans even hold passports. So few believe that it's a rite of passage to backpack and work one's way around the world, as many Europeans and Australians do. Unlike Canada, Australia, the UK, France, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea (and maybe some other countries I've forgotten), we don't participate in the Working Holiday program, which lets people (ages 18-30) from any of those countries work for six months (renewable once) in any of the other participant countries without a lot of red tape.

On the whole, we're pig ignorant of the rest of the world, and our mass media encourage us in our lazy nationalism.

its called HUBRIS, murka.

And as we know, "Pride goeth before the fall". We have little to be proud of right now.

Living off our fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, and farther back, or even other peoples' ancestors accomplishments.

What, then, is patriotism? "Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels," said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the average workingman.

Gustave Hervé, another great anti-patriot, justly calls patriotism a superstition--one far more injurious, brutal, and inhumane than religion. The superstition of religion originated in man's inability to explain natural phenomena. That is, when primitive man heard thunder or saw the lightning, he could not account for either, and therefore concluded that back of them must be a force greater than himself. Similarly he saw a supernatural force in the rain, and in the various other changes in nature. Patriotism, on the other hand, is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.

Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.

Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty (1917)
by Emma Goldman

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Writings/Anarchism/patriotism.html

Unforunately, we fall in the category of "The Nazis were VERY patriotic too. And protective of the Homeland against domestic liberal threats."

So sad. But then, isn't damned near everything in the tragic-comic "Last Days of the Soviet Union = First Days of Imperial Amerika" nation we live in today.

This is entirely unremarkable "victory" and one which is predictable (no, I didn't specifically predict this for the record) because of what happens when a people are purposefully re-engineered mentally by their rulers and the incredibly sophisticated propaganda biz.

We tested off the charts on this for the exact same reason (different country with different customs thankfully leaves us free of the cauldron of violnce the German Liberals had to deal with in the 1930s) the German Nation, circa 1934, would have if this test had been given then. Maybe it was.