javasaurus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
javasaurus) wrote2006-01-19 09:59 am
javasaurus) wrote2006-01-19 09:59 am
Pride in the USA?
I had an earworm this morning. You know, a song that pops in and won't leave you alone for a while? It was a song about having pride in the USA, and I started thinking, "Why?" Now I'm in a funk.
Pride should stem from accomplishment, from leadership, from ability. I think what some people feel now is patriotism which has been mislabled as pride.
Give me some real reasons to feel pride in our country. I need 'em.
Pride should stem from accomplishment, from leadership, from ability. I think what some people feel now is patriotism which has been mislabled as pride.
Give me some real reasons to feel pride in our country. I need 'em.
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Got the original offending song out of my head, anyway.
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Now, I realize that a lot of these things aren't as strong as we would like but they are a part of what America is (or at least should be) and that counts for something. Hopefully the current threats to the freedoms will be a temporary blip.
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I do not think we should derive pride from our forefathers' accomplishments, unless we can live up to them. I don't think we are living up to them. I can't think of a single example, and none of the above has helped. But thanks for trying.
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Why be proud?
The U.S. feeds more of the world outside of its own citizens than any other nation. This, despite our decreasing number of farmers and farmland. The U.S. helped teach and train many nations in more efficient and productive agricultural methods, helping those nation to not only feed their own people, but to develop enough capacity to export.
Our economy, much as we like to obsess and worry about the negatives, is one of the strongest in the world, and, over the long-haul of decades, arguably the strongest in the world. We worry about our unemployment rate of 5.whatever percent, yet that is one of the lowest unemployment rate of any industrial nation, and, again, on a long-term basis, the lowest rate consistently. That means that we create jobs for and employ more people. Canada would give its eye teeth to have a rate as low as we do (they have for decades had 3 - 5 percent more unemployment than the U.S.). Most European nations don't even come close to us in providing jobs for their citizens. Ireland (I think) has us beat recently, but that was only *after* adopting U.S. market principles.
We are still the nation of choice for most people for immigration. Why? Because we offer more liberty and opportunity than anywhere else in the world. My mother asked some friends who had immigrated from India why they had wanted to come to the U.S. They told her, "We saw on the news reports and shows about American, that even your poor people are fat." Yes, *we* know that is due to inability to buy the most nutritious foods (and there are skinny poor people in the U.S.); but in most nations the typical poor person is skeletal, not fat. We allow more people to start businesses and pursue their dreams. Here, hard work and committment are still rewarded, and people have a realistic hope of achieving their dream. More Americans own their own home than ever before in our history and our level of homelessness (as bad as it is) is still lower than anywhere else.
People here are *still* protected in their rights to criticize the government or to express their ideas, and to pursue their political agendas -- even ones that endanger our nation's security. Look at the difference in the laws passed after 9-11 and the London bombings. We passed the Patriot Act, but we didn't pass laws to target Muslims and deport them. We made efforts to ensure that Muslims remained and free to practice their beliefs and express their political opinions. After the London bombings in Britain, the British government passed laws specifically targeting Muslims and making it easier to deport "extremist" elements of the Muslim community. Within one month of passage, the first group was deported under that law.
We are one of the most generous nations in the world. After the tsunami, the U.S.'s initial government assistance offer was more than the rest of the world's governments initial offers combined. As the need grew, so did our assistance in proportion to the need. Government assistance from the U.S., although no longer exceeding the total of all other nation's assistance, still is the largest single block of assistance provided. When you consider both government and private assistance, the U.S. again far outstrips all the rest of the worlds aid. And we do this type of thing ALL THE TIME. We send out volunteers around the world to teach and build and heal and care for.
If we don't see what about our nation we should be proud of, perhaps it is because we have become so accustomed to the good life and freedoms we have that we take them for granted.
Do we have our faults. Oh, yes. We can be arrogant, obtuse to other cultures, and self-centered. But we are also generous, productive, caring, and idealistic. And we still lift up the torch of freedom and champion its causes and invite others to share its benefits. Our founding patriots lit that torch, but we have maintained it -- not always well -- but to the best of our abilities and understanding.
That's something to be proud of.
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Outreach food programs and general generosity sound like good reasons to be proud of our country. Certainly we do supply more food and money to other countries than any other. But we still burn tons upon tons of excess grain, and as a percentage of GNP, our government provides less foreign aid than any other major economic power, only 0.1%. Which would you hold higher -- the poor person who shares half of his sandwich, or the multibillionaire who scatters his crumbs? Despite the fact that we are the strongest economy (for now – it’s changing in favor of eastern Asia), we continue to be behind many European countries in education, treatment of the poor, healthcare. Despite having only 5% unemployment, more than 40% of Americans are without health care. Though America spends far more than any other country on health care, they rank only 37th out of 191 countries in quality of health care (according to a 2000 WHO report). That’s pretty pathetic considering that most of those 191 countries are not industrialized. Also, according to a report by the USDA and the US Census Bureau, 11.9% of American households are “food insecure” and a third of those were “hungry.”
I'm not sure where you get your unemployment numbers. Looking at the 42 G20 countries (yes, 42. I'm counting the EU countries separately, including the two slated for entry in 2007), as of 2005 the US was tied for 9th lowest unemployment at 5.1%, while Canada is at 6.8%, not nearly 3 to 5 per cent higher. The United Kingdom, Ireland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Norway, and Slavakia all have lower unemployment, and Austria is tied with us. (based on 2005 CIA factbook statistics). Also, the US level has fluxuated between 3.8% and 10.8% over the last forty years, with 9% as recently as 1995. The number fluxuate a lot, and having it go much below 4 to 5% is actually bad for the country. Rather than look at how many people are employed, I'd ask how many are sufficiently, happily, productively employed, and we really can't measure that. IIRC, a major criticism of Bush Jr. was that employment levels may have improved during his first term, but the quality of the jobs went down as people took whatever they could get.
As for rights being protected after 9/11, do you really believe that? Have you forgotten the Presidential comments that anyone who speaks out against the Patriot Act should be considered suspect? Have your forgotten that the Patriot Act removed the checks/balances system of needing court approval before violating personal privacy? Have you forgotten the absence in the Patriot Act of any wording against racial profiling, and that hundreds of Muslims were rounded up and detained? Have you forgotten the violations of the Geneva Convention and civil liberties in relation to Guantanemo Bay?
we are also generous, productive, caring, and idealistic. And we still lift up the torch of freedom and champion its causes and invite others to share its benefits. Our founding patriots lit that torch, but we have maintained it -- not always well -- but to the best of our abilities and understanding.
That's something to be proud of.
I fear that we base our pride on the accomplishments of our forefathers, who were explorers and inventors, seekers of wisdom and spreaders of rights, that we scatter our crumbs, our leavings and let the needy pick them up. We have so much bread that our crumbs outweigh the loaves given by others, and so we are proud. Pride should not come from giving more than others, it should come from giving as much as we can, from giving enough. Pride should not come from making more money, but from making a difference.