Aspies For Freedom

Now, in the academic community it is generally considered true that the nation is a construct. Just consider Benedict Anderson's famous 'Imagined Communities'. One of his core arguments is that patriotism is similar to theism.

Different cultures exist within as well as without countries. As to whether these cultures are distinct is also very debatable. I have spent a lot of time in two countries (the UK and Austria) and notice there to be very few, if fairly important, differences in the cultures. Identity is often borne out of bad historicism.

Science has demonstrated that ethnic groups are very much more heterogeneous than we previously thought. This is especially true of countries such as Britain or America. So how would one define a British or American person?

So, I ask a few questions:

1.Is patriotism good or bad?
2.Is patriotism natural?
3.Are national communities imagined or real?
4.Is patriotism necessary?
5.Is it important that one identify with a particular country?

Thoughts?

A quick vote for No - it's pointless and now I'm definately going!

I will post more about this topic, but this may be an interesting read about part of my reasoning for not loving America so much at the moment:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...10258K.DTL

"The lowest-income people are much better off than they used to be," he said. "If you just look at the baskets of consumer goods that people are acquiring, it's just not consistent with data that shows people are not better off."

That was brilliantly amusing. That man must be an imbecile.

Fact is that they're not. They're not in the UK and they're not in the US.

Patriotism is unquestionably bad, every war that has ever been fought used patriotism to ignite it. Love of Humanity as a whole is what this world needs.

I am going to bring this down on a personal level, as I think it has been an interesting experience, and would welcome thoughts on it.

Is patriotism good or bad?  I am unsure.  I like that America has the image of such freedom.  I do not know that the image is true, but then again, I have heard from a friend from Afghanistan about the things done to women there, and then I thank goodness I was born here.

Is it natural?  I think there is some need to love the place where you originate.  I do not believe that qualifies as patriotism.

National communities?  More information please?

Unfortunately I think patriotism is necessary.  I think that we as each country need to have a military service, and without patriotism, there will be little voluntary military service.  You have to love the country to volunteer to die for it.  (This does not include people who enter the military as their only career choice, they are cornered and are not doing it for "love of country."

Is it important that one identify...Here is my issue.

I live in a large city.  A city which is praised for its inclusion, for its diversity, for its radical ideals.  It seems to me to be a very broken system.  So I cannot be said to really love my city.  The politics of the city make it a very difficult place to live.  

So, this alleged diversity is the bringing together of so many cultures.  However, the city is split into areas, which are mostly a color/race boundary.  It is disturbing.  

The largest population I deal with are Chinese.  Many are recent immigrants, but not all. The area of the city which I have chosen to live is largely Chinese.  These folks, which may be incredibly nice people, will not integrate into any other part of the population.  They will not speak English, they will not mix with people of other races, they have ostracized my blond haired blue eyed daughter and called her names because she is not of their race, they continue to bring over their cultural thoughts and ideals, which has included a lot of what I would consider very rude behavior, but to them, is normal and cultural.  They have all chosen to live in America and have all of the great things that come with that, but have chosen to separate themselves into their own race.  I do not get it.

My concern here is that I am branded as racist.  I am not racist.  I take each person and try to learn from them their personality and then make a decision as to whether or not I like them.  I grew up in a community that was largely Hispanic, and experienced some, but not all of these kinds of things.  

Example:  I ride public transit daily.  When you ride public transit, the first several seats are reserved for "disabled and elderly persons".  If an older person of a Chinese race gets on, and a younger person is sitting in the seats, they will immediately get up, in fact, if there is more than one, there will be a rush to see who gets up first.  The Chinese elder gets the seat.  If an older person of another race gets on the bus/train, not one Chinese person will get up.  Why is that acceptable?  I have also been known to be knocked down trying to get on the public transit as the Chinese elders get on.  They have no thought to knocking a child out of the way.  

Why is this acceptable?  

Korrigan pretty much sums up my view on the issue... I think nationalism and patriotism are a part of human nature, part of our subconscious (and conscious, I guess) preference for sameness and familiarity. Of course, patriotism can go overboard, and it certainly has in many countries (not just the United States). I also agree that there is nothing wrong with people wanting to defend their homeland if need be, if it is genuinely threatened. The keywords there are genuinely threatened, which does not seem to be necessary criterion to start a war nowadays, however unfortunate that may be.

Personally, I like living where I do. I think California is one of the greatest places on the planet to live, especially when compared to other parts of the world and even compared with other parts of the United States. Sure, it has its problems, but what state/country doesn't? It kind of annoys me to see socialists from Europe saying "America would be so much better if it just blah, blah, blah, blah, etc". By "better" they typically mean "more like Europe". This is not something new by any means; it has been going on since I first joined these forums over a year ago (anyone remember Jean-Pierre?). If I wanted to live somewhere that was like Europe then I would pack up and move to Europe.

That is fair.

If you ask me, politics in general is very close to "theism". Statements are made that are in direct conflict with the reasoning abilities of an average 8 year old, yet the masses of adults throng in adulation of the next Hillary, Obama, or McCain. Each object of belief is either a  golden calf, or perhaps an egg. Noone knows what's inside. The handlers make more of the difference than the objects themselves.

Yeah, we have more toys that cost less and less each year in terms of labor hours worked (cell phones, DVRs, VCRs, play stations, get cheaper and cheaper), but they come from somewhere else and many people pay for them with money they don't have and may never have.

I am simply thankful I am not one of those.

I am also thankful that the kind of patriotism that is required of me is simply to follow the laws and pay my taxes, make a living and fly the flag, like Donald Duck in World War II.

By the way, now you only have five days to pay your income taxes in the United States!

America is at war, this time against Al Qaeda, not the Japanese Empire or the Nazi war machine.  Men were drafted up to age 35 before Pearl Harbor when in 1940 peacetime conscription was enacted (first for one year, and then that was extended indefinitely).  After Pearl Harbor that went up to 45 and registration went up to age 65.   (But we were fighting large countries of 40, 50, 80 million people each, when we had 120 or 140 million ourselves, and our own birth numbers in the 1920s were not very impressive.  ** Remember that when the surviving veterans came home and went to college on the government dime, GI Bill, and that explains the fantastic life chances of the 1920s birth cohort in the 1950s especially when you factor in Germany and Japan and also many of our allies in ruins, and we were rebuilding them with the Marshall Plan, plus racial and gender discrimination at the time. **

Fast forward 20 years later

** All those kids the vets had, first they choked the schools, then they choked the colleges, and then they choked the job market, right when Germany and Japan re-emerged on the world economic stage, plus the economic strain of the Vietnam war on our economy **
(Easterlin, comparison of 20th century birth cohorts in light of world economic and domestic social factors)


So all I need to do is keep working, paying taxes, and flying the flag.  I think I can manage that.

Thank a soldier.  In a real sense he or she may really be fighting for your freedom, especially if you are his or her age, because if he or she wasn't in the army long past his or her due, and Bush didn't change his ways, you'd be drafted.

Excessive patriotism is a bad thing, In certain situations. like war when on the side that has moral legitimacy, it may be good.

Seeing people in terms of whether they are part of group or outside of it is a natural tendency.

Important in what sense? Do you mean is it what one should do or something that is benficial?

A brief (and slightly Bismarkian?) excurse on the War On Terror:
1.Saddam Hussein was a bastard, but was also complicit in repressing Islamic extremism in the Middle East. Getting rid of was a bad idea. Even most Iraqis agree.
2.You cannot defeat these people until the Israeli state is restrained and the zealous settlers are forced to leave the Palestinian areas. I've read some outrageous literature (very good Jewish journalist in a British newspapers that covers Israeli-Palestine affair) and seen some horrible footage. People don't seem to realise that these settlers are literally sniping at innocent Palestinian children, purely because they're Palestinian. Same goes for the suicide bombers and Palestinian gunman. I really think it's time we bang their heads together and tell them to stop fucking around. Israel is too aggressive/paranoid and the Palestinians are too poor and desperate. You can't deal with Islamism, as a political or military force, until you deal with Palestine. Ah, religion and nationalism. Thanks again for the wonderful time.
3.Much of it has to do with poverty. The vast majority of these extremists are badly educated and very poor. Unfortunately a religious education is the only chance that many of them get. These institutions are extremely dangerous. Good example is Pakistan. The problem is that they're treated badly by Western powers. Go figure. Global capitalism.

As to the necessity of patriotism? Here's my opinion:
I think that I've read enough books on Nazi Germany, militant Zionism, the National Front in the UK, Austrofascism etc. to know that it is always a bad thing. You may think that a little bit of pride is fine, but that quickly escalates into xenophobia and hatred in times of war. e.g. Surrender monkeys (French?), towel heads, Obama=Osama etc. etc. It's fucking stupid.

I can only name two or three just wars. That against Hitler/Imperial Japan, that against the Milosevic and that against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Vietnam, WW1, the Falklands War etc.? The range from the frightening to the fucking pointless, but 99% of them were not in any way just.

"Seeing people in terms of whether they are part of group or outside of it is a natural tendency."

Yes. National groups are not natural though. If you're implying that it's a macrocosm of a tribe? Hmmm...but the actual -nation-, the languages, even the cultures? All pretty much artificial. I don't think it's -that- natural.

"Important in what sense? Do you mean is it what one should do or something that is benficial?"

Is it important. Do people -need- a national identity? As someone who has lived without one for most of their life...I'm unsure. I don't think one should and I don't think it's beneficial.

I was reading Lawrence E. Joseph's take on Islamic radicalism and the Holocaust in Apocalypse 2012, which I bought at Costco last weekend.

Joseph suggests that Germany got off very easily (79 people were prosecuted for certain war crimes, there was a multiple choice question meant to shock the reader), the Western nations forgave each other for World War II and the Holocaust, and are scapegoating the Muslims for the problems of the Jews.  He suggested giving the West Bank to the Palestinians and giving Israel its pre-1967 borders and the state of Bavaria.

No, we can't have settlers sniping at children.  Why can't someone stop them?

The thing is that many Jewish historians have said: "The Jews should have gone to the US, UK or France." Obviously they're not Anti-Semitic. Simply their view that the US, UK or France would have been able to accomodate the Jewish people. It would have avoided the problem of Israel as a nation state. In the long run it would have been the most prudent and efficacious. The catch was that Zionism, by that time, was relatively popular. The other catch? The Western governments were not too comfortable with the idea. Today the Holocaust is regarded as being a tragedy. Back then? The majority of British, American and French people were not too concerned.

Interesting little story: Before Hitler came to power there were fascist Zionist groups operating in Poland. These Jewish people admired Hitler and Mussolini. They agreed that the Jews should be denaturalised across Europe and repatriated in Palestine. I understand that one individual, leader of such a group, approved of the Nuremberg Laws. Go figure. Bizarre world of nationalism.

How can they stop the settlers? The Israeli PM has tried. The government has attempted. Unfortunately they represent a large enough demographic to be influential. We forget that it's a democracy. No one wants to lose those precious votes.