(no subject)

I was just surfing through friends-of-friends and saw an entry on why someone did not consider themselves to be patriotic.

Now, I do consider myself to be patriotic. even though I'm bothered by everything that this person is bothered by.

Here's a major difference, though:

When the President says pretty much anything, this person feels embarrassed to be an American.

But me, when the President says pretty much anything, I feel embarrassed that the President is an American.

That, I think, sums it up. I am a patriot. I believe that America has in it much that is great, and believe that anything that falls short of that -- any time that we torture prisoners or send them abroad to be tortured, any time that we curtail civil liberties for greater safety (whether or not it actually works to make us safe), any time that we don't act in an open, free, and equal manner, that, in those cases, that's us not living up to what it means to be American.

And we fall short of those things so often that I can see how others can start to have trouble believing that those ideals ARE what "American" means.

But, for me, that makes it even more important to be patriotic -- to know that those are the things that we believe in and work for.