I just stopped watching a Fox News woman-on-the-street interview spot where the question asked of a number of young attractive women was whether they were ”proud to be an American.” This is typical Fox conservative patriotism pandering. I roll my eyes.
It is an issue I have been thinking about for years.
First, am I proud to be white? To be a Finn? To be a man?
These strike me as dumb questions. Pride? What?
I am not ashamed to be any of those things. Or of being an American. I cannot help but be these things. Why would I be proud of something that I cannot change, that I did not work for?
This is one of those kind of questions that right-wingers traditionally press as important and left-wingers, i. the good old days, would roll their eyes about, but nowadays leftists talk about their shame at being white, or American.
The Fox interviewees were all negative, but for stupid reasons. I mean, really stupid. They seemed to think that because America (never defined — the “country”? the government? the culture? the what?) is problematic for racist and colonial reasons (I kid you not) they had to demur of pride for being an American.
Now, I often express my derision at Americans, a people who generally cannot think and who almost invariably ratchet up the political folly and evil every generation. To the point where we may be reaching a generational crisis point. But that has nothing to do with me. I don’t feel shame because my neighbor is an idiot. I do not feel shame because Americans generally are a boobish lot. I should only feel shame when I’m an idiot. And prudence dictates that I shouldn’t talk about that!
It is in politics that people become most unhinged. And there are reasons for that, as explained by a number of economists, Vilfredo Pareto and Murray Rothbard most memorably, but Public Choice economists generally.
The youngsters who complain about colonialism, though, strike me as especially ditsy. America has had a terrible, lunatic foreign policy since at least George Herbert Walker Bush’s presidency, but I think much, much longer. But the problem with that policy is not ’colonialism.’ What a bad word for America’s world policeman stance. Never let Marxists or neo-Marxists get near education, folks.
It seems to me that using pride and shame as means of social control should not be done on a collectivist, group basis. It is repulsive. I think it is inherently a conservative gambit, which is why this ’proud to be an American’ rap is being pushed by Fox. But leftists are now conservatives, too, in many ways. Which is why they are pushing shame so hard.
What a despicable lot.
But funny. And amusing. So I don’t hate my fellow Americans. I just do not admire them much.

twv