What is America? Why should I love it.

[angrycarpenter]

The homeland is a term that has been used to exhaustion in recent years. Homeland, to me, carries the sense that America is just a collection of dirt, houses, towns and cities. It makes me feel that the only thing that homeland security is protecting is stuff.

If America is nothing but a big pile of goods and services then No, I do not love America. There is nothing that I own that is worth more than any human life but our country is full of people who care not for the misery that walks hand-in-hand with our excessive consumer driven lifestyle.

In reality I do love America because America is much more than stuff. America properly should be an ideal. Something that cannot be sold or stolen. The idea that we should spread the power as widely as possible to avoid shutting anyone out for arbitrary reasons such as race or class.
The idea that a person can vote and be assured that it will be counted. The idea that all should enjoy equal protection under the law. The idea that these ideals should apply to all even those we have imprisoned for fighting against us.

We are supposed to be the good guys. When did our picture of America change from a vibrant philosophy to a cold collection of materialistic opinions based on greed and class hatred? Why are the ones who still think of America as a people rather than a land with some homes on it called un-American commie liberals?

I will repeat. I LOVE AMERICA! that is why I support liberal causes. I care about the people who are made to suffer so that the homeland people can have ten or a hundred or a thousand times what they need. It is why I question authority because unquestioned authority is totalitarianism. It is why I will get in the face of anyone who says that being critical of the government is anti-American.

I love my country but I hate the greed that has infected us to the point that we will trade it all away for a false sense of security and a big screen tv.

[blues90]

1. I hear that , it's the material progress that has washed down the

the heart of america . There is a list of things we don't need that is longer than it's history .

[OwnedByFerrets]

2. K & R

[Warpy]

3. It's getting really hard to love a country that says I'm not worth

having my health insured, something that's been the case for 20 years now.

It's getting harder to love a country whose economy is dedicated to fattening the rich and corporate, and to hell with we the people. We don't count.

It's getting harder to love a country that allows a man to set himself up as defacto dictator without a whimper from either political party, save the actions of a handful of brave people in Congress who can't get the process to remove him started.

It's getting harder to love a country that thinks it has a right to attack an innocent population because it doesn't like their leader and wants the natural resources under their feet.

I want the country I grew up in back, a country whose greatest source of pride was its strict adherence to national and international law, law that was meant to apply to the rich as well as the rest of us. It didn't, but it was supposed to. Now the rich openly scoff at the idea of being subject to the laws of country and decency that the rest of us are.

I have the resources to leave and start over somewhere else. I don't want to because this is my home. However, the romance is over until this country gets back on the proper track.

[raccoon]

11. Great post. nt

[leftofthedial]

4. 1980, when ronnie raygun started pretending to be "President"

[mmonk]

5. America died. People are in love with an image.

[Demagitator]

6. America is a liberal democracy....

in its ideal form of government. That is why we are loved around the world, most seek that ideal...but a few seek to brainwash, and control by means of fear. And, it has worked democracy is dead; and has been dead for fifty, or more years now.

But, it can become a liberal democracy again, because it has always been a experiment to seek that ideal form of a liberal democracy. So, it can become more democratic; just as it became less democratic, such as in Bush v. Gore.

[annabanana]

7. Hypnotized by the TV, sedated by central heating, immobilized

by carbs.. We are nothing but a cash crop, and not the most valuable one either...

[Donnachaidh]

8. Americans are veal?

Yes, we ARE a cash crop. Brainwashed into thinking that our own wants take precedence over others. That buying that shiny new gizmo makes one *cool* or *with it*. We've become the *coppertops* of the Matrix - only this time it's global corporations that are the machines.

The *Fuck y'all, I've got mine* mindset has been deeply ingrained into the public by the companies that have the most to gain. AND it's been tended by the mega-church theocrats, and the upper 1%.

Welcome to Hell folks.

[elmerdem]

9. the heart of our country

You can take the heart out of this country
but you can't take the country out of your heart

Well, it's more than cities, fields and mountains
more than a place to view the farmer man
and everyday I want to thank all the angels
that it's more than its congress and its president
Greg Brown

[SIMPLYB1980]

10. Well said.