Given some of the mixed responses to the ports deal, I wanted to get...

[FormerRepublican]

...a better idea about how people feel about national security without mixing the ports deal into it.

The question:

If you're an American, is it OK to be loyal to America above all other nations in the world?

[Up2Late]

1. Loyal Yes, but being a narrow minded, jingoistic idiot would be bad.

:patriot:

[Der Blaue Engel]

2. Loyal to our country, but not to our leader

And not loyal to the policies that are hurting other countries.

[Mnemosyne]

3. Circumstances, not in all things. WARNING! EXTREME GRAPHIC!!

Not when they continue committing war crimes against humanity. I cannot be loyal to this.

[slybacon9]

14. um... wtfingf?

[Mnemosyne]

16. Depleted uranium birth defect. War crime against humanity. n/t

There are morejust as horrible, if you can stand to look, at this link:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/VISIE/extremedeformities.html

I will never be loyal to a country that uses weapons that create such horrific suffering.


In hope of peace,
V

[TahitiNut]

4. "above all others" = über alles ... and that's not what I'm about.

It's too bad that lesson doesn't seem to take root. I aspire to be "an equal, in a community of equals."

[MADem]

5. There is nothing wrong with preferring, and being proud of, your land

It is NORMAL, in fact.

It's just that the dickheads in DC make it SO DAMN HARD to be proud of anything with their horrible behaviors as our "representatives." The rest of the world is disgusted with us, and it is all the Nitwit's fault.

[porphyrian]

6. OK, yes. Intelligent, not necessarily.

Blind allegiance to anything is stupid.

[Lexingtonian]

7. Depends on what you mean with loyal, of course.

This is just the question of what family loyalty means to you.

Yeah, I'd turn close relatives in to the police under some circumstances. Some I'd tell to turn themselves in. And under some circumstances, I'd tell them what they did was not a serious violation in my eyes and that I'll have no part in prosecuting or punishing them for what they've done.

We have to have slightly different standards for people we know intimately versus those we do not. But I'm not saying I'm easier on my own- I'm easier on my relatives in some things than I would be to outsiders, and I am harder on my relatives in some things.

We can't disconnect the standard to which we hold our own from the standard to which we hold the rest of the world. But in a world in which such a disconnect is still a pretty general condition, but not always the case, it's still right to limit the abuses somewhat in a defensive fashion. When the situation warrants it.

The problem in this country is that an extreme defensiveness about 'America' has been a social convention. It's part of the defensive world view of immigrants and people stuck in the working class. It's part of the defensive world view of the losers of the Civil War. It's been a way individually losers and powerless people have joined ranks in dealing with an America that has, since the Settlement, been so strongly defined by its caste system and the way it works by excluding people.

If loyal means blind to justice and deaf to mercy, I'm not loyal. If loyal means unity in hatreds and crimes, I'm not loyal.

If loyal means attached to the work and the people who do the work and effort to consecrate life, to living the covenant that makes this country worth living in, I see myself as loyal.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

8. Depends what you mean by "OK."

[omega minimo]

9. Depends on what the meaning of "normal" is

[RB TexLa]

10. Salad bowl not melting pot

Sorry but I am not an American, unless you are refering to me as a resident of North America or of The Americas. I am an Irish-American, all the "we are one" bullshit after September 2001 was nothing but xenophobia.

[RoyGBiv]

11. Depends ...

You have a lot of words in there without clear meanings, as some of the responses show. The question itself comes across, to me, as asking whether we agree with the "my country, right or wrong" philosophy. I do not.

Loyalty specifically is a difficult concept to define, and loyalty to a nation even more so. What does it mean to be loyal to your friends, for example? Does this mean looking the other way when you know one of them is responsible for a string of bank robberies? If that friend is married, and you have a friendship with the spouse as well, how do these loyalties conflict? When it comes to a nation, what is the true nature of loyalty? Is it supporting your nation no matter what it does, or is it supporting your nation when it acts justly and rising in dissent otherwise? Is loyalty to a nation a loyalty to an abstract entity, land, or people? Many answers to these questions are possible.

So, I'll just summarize by letting JQ Adams speak for me:

"I can never join with my voice in the toast which I see in the papers attributed to one of our gallant naval heroes. (The toast is the "my country right or wrong" comment.) I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong. Fiat justitia, pereat coelum. (Let justice be done though heaven should fall.) My toast would be, may our country always be successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right."

[radfringe]

12. It depends on the circumstances

actually it depends on what is meant by loyalty

wanting what is best for the country and ALL the people - yes then it's OK to be loyal to American above all other nations in the world - after all it is our country

drinking the kook-aid, and being lemmings - even when things are heading in the wrong direction just to prove loyalty -- then I have a problem

[rman]

13. what does loyalty have to do with national security?

[sandnsea]

15. If we don't care about our country

then just turn it over to the corporates, toss the constitution, and be done with it. What the hell are we fighting for if we're willing to let global corporates take it all over anyway. Makes no damned sense to me at all.

[TahitiNut]

17. Depends

[Spider Jerusalem]

18. Loyalty is a disease of dogs.

And patriotism is a form of blind prejudice that's just as stupid as any of the other varieties.