Patriotism

With the fourth of July behind us I finally feel that I can admit something. It's not a popular thing to admit right now but I don't really care. It needs to be said.

I'm not much of a patriot. Or at least I don't care much for patriotism.

I like this country. There are a number of nice benefits of living here. It is certainly a better place to live than many country in the world. But do I believe that this is the greatest country ever? Do I believe that everything the US does is great? That's where my patriotism begins to get a little shaky. I was young when I started to notice how the word patriot was bandied around in debates. It was often meant to be a conversation stopper. I watched us go to war (for the first time in my lifetime) and the cracks started to appear in the "America is wonderful" veneer. I suddenly started wondering if we were just as flawed as the other countries.

I started to read more about the ways that our country slips: torture, espionage, war-mongering, etc.... And the more I read the more I realized that we're not a perfect country. That we do some of the things that we rail against other countries doing. We just try to do them quietly and covertly. Now I'm not expecting our country to be perfect. That would be silly. But I am tired of the patriotic rhetoric that goes around, that says we are. I'm tired of the flag waving and political speeches that seem to say that we can do no wrong.

I got into an argument on July 4th about Edward Snowden. There was passionate argument on either side about whether he was a traitor or a hero. And one of the debaters asked me if I loved my country. And I paused to think. And I honestly couldn't say one way or another. Like I said, I like this country. But I think I could just as comfortably live in Canada.