America's founding principals focus on self-reliance, self-determination, strength, and innovation. Because of this, our sense of patriotism manifests as wanting to be left alone until there is an entity trying to impede on any of the aforementioned. In which case, we rally against it.
Patriotism is simply a love of your country (however you define that entity.) comparing who loves a country more or which country is better is like fighting over who loves their mom/dad/boyfriend/etc. more, and who's is better. Pointless. All countries are imperfect and have flaws and strengths that different people will weigh more or less on personal preference. Extreme patriotism by default is not patriotism but nationalism or Jingoism (or similar.) just like any other love you may or may not decide to flaunt it openly or keep it to yourself. It's great to love a thing but that doesn't mean you have to tear down what others love, and just because someone else shows love differently than you doesn't mean it isn't love. You can love your country without liking things about it- in the end a country is just an idea anyway, why get upset, no one can hurt an idea of you keep it dear to you.
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· 7 years ago
Patriotism is to like* what is good about your country, and a huge part of what I like about Germany is the comparably high level of social justice, solidarity and common sense. We manage to maintain a comparably high standard of living even for poor, weak and sick people. The plague of neo-liberalism has done a lot of damage but still a huge majority of the people love the ideas and don't see an effort to create social justice as an insult, per se. "Self-reliance, self-determination, strength" sound quite peculiar to most of us. For a person alone it'd be megalomanic, for a nation it would lead to extreme isolation. (*The german politician Gustav Heinemann said "I don't love any nation. I love my wife")
I apologize. Love is too strong perhaps. By the dictionary: "vigorous like." Feel free to substitute either word as the overall meaning is unchanged. Germany is a fine country with many wonderful people and I'm glad you like it. As one travels around the globe we may find common sense is not so common. Many peoples have vastly differing cultural values and customs which to one are "rude" or "undesirable" and the other are polite and expected. Both may seem "backwards" to the other, but they do not need to agree or even understand, simply to respect that what works for some is not good for all. In fact that very principal could have averted the ideological component to most of the 20th centuries conflicts. Luckily there is room on earth for many ways and systems of government. All have flaws but so long as we like them more than not, we can be happy while we work to change what we see as wrong in our world. Self sufficiency doesn't require isolation, isolation is caused by how we behave
You guys learned this in school or on stormfront? Never mind, reducing something complex like a world war to one (1) reason kind of gets you kicked off the adult's table anyway.
If you want to explain the blank check, rise of militarism, political grandstanding, and the rest of the mess, then go for it
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· 7 years ago
Why would I? I have no ambition to explain the details, if anyone's interested, there's lots of sources out there. I rather addressed what you did. You picked each one out of many, many points, and be it deliberate or not, it's two points that are usually picked by people who want to belittle or even negate Germanys responsibility (not SOLE responsibility!) for both WW. Thus the stormfront reference. "Dumbing down is the deliberate oversimplification [...] in order to relate to those unable to assimilate more sophisticated information." (wikipedia) and that's not what you did. You simply made a false statement.
How is giving one main truth in a multiple of truths giving a false statement? Nevermind, you lost all credibility when you quoted Wikipedia.
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· 7 years ago
The reason that Wikipedia should not be used for school papers is not that it is generally unreliable. The definition of dumbing down is accurate. Naming one of many reasons without even mentioning there's others is making a false statement.
So saying the US civil war was because of slavery, the Titanic sank because of an iceberg and not vaccinating your children might kill them are all false statements? Well here's a true statement, you need to get your head out of ass.
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· 7 years ago
Yes, yes, no. Insulting me could only help your argument, if you had at least one (1) and even then it probably wouldn't.
The U.S. Civil war started out being about keeping the union together
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· 7 years ago
The last time Germans tried to be patriotic like Americans Jews got burned, disabled people were sterilised and a veggie with a shit lip did a Napoleon and tried to take on Russia in the WINTER.
(It's a joke please don't flip out)