Nationalism is a good thing. People talk about patriotism and nationalism as if they're just symbols-- stars and stripes and eagles-- but it runs deeper.
Absolutely. I don't understand people who claim to find no pride in being an American. There are literally tens of thousands of people that save up and travel to America to make it their new home every year. Is it the same for other nations? Do they save up to move to China or the Middle East or South America or even Europe in the same manner that they do for America? Obviously foreigners see something from the outside that some Americans can't see from the inside (it's taken for granted).
They come for a reason. They come because they are seeking a better life for their families and to provide their children with opportunities. They do this because only in America will you find so many religions and cultures free to explore and celebrate without persecution or malice. Considering history's empires, only America has found a way to balance almost absolute power with morality. We are not known for colonialism. We are not known for starting World Wars. In fact, if we take a greater look at our history, we are actually known as the empire killer...
1) The
British Empire: We drove out the greatest empire of the age to champion the political and economic rights of man. A second war with them confirmed their relegation to the Canadian borders.
2) The
Mexican Empire: We cut them in half before we fought our own Civil War, which was an internal purge or cleansing from the last European notions of hereditary authority and human subjugation (though Europeans refuse responsibility).
3) The
Spanish Empire: The Spanish-American War was our first time venturing out into the world and the first time we defeated a European empire and destroyed it. This also marked our first war against an "
evil empire." Spain's treatment of Cubans both moved us and gave us an excuse to grasp its treasures. It proved an addictive model, because this is also where we dabbled a little in the European colonial game as we set up camp in former Spanish colonies (Philippines, Guam, Cuba, Puerto Rico).
4) First World War: This internal European feud weakened Europe's remaining empires while spawning new ones. Our late entry didn't win the war, but it damn sure prevented the allies from losing.
Germany's Second Reich,
Austria-Hungary, and the
Ottoman Empire went down.
5) Second World War: Though it is fashionable to deny America credit, it was us that saved the world from unspeakable tyranny. For all the valor of crumpled Britain and agonized Russia, the U.S. decided the outcome. We destroyed the Japanese Empire and greatly influenced the destruction of
Nazi Germany and
fascist Italy. The French (which needed liberating from its own Nazi collaborators) and British Empires both collapsed of their own weight after the war. In 1945 we found ourselves the stewards of a world we hardly knew and only the "Soviets" remained strong.
6) Cold War: Given our unfamiliar station in the world, it should not be suprising that we made mistakes, but that we actually made so few. Beating the
Soviet Empire at their own dictator game was hard on our values (of which we are hypocritically reminded of often by Europe). This was an age of paradox and moral erosion (at least for America) overshadowed by the threat of nuclear holocaust. We wound up maintaining European creations throughout the war for stability against an enemy that would control them and use them (and their resources) against us.
That's 9 empires America took down, helped take down, or bypassed as they buckled under their own or each other's pressures. The few remaining were Portuguese, Dutch, and Belgian and they simply died of decay. People don't really think about this, but 1989 marked something wonderful. It didn't just end half a century of nuclear Cold War. It marked the end of a longer struggle. Those who believed that man should govern himself from below defeated those who believed that man must be governed from above. The kings, kaisers, and czars that slashed lines across maps and engineered a fractured world with crayolas were gone. Man's entire previous history of governance had finally come to a close. The future belongs to citizens who control their own goverments. We did this. Not the French who spawned their internal Revolution while celebrating the continued colonization of the world. Not the Germans who's love affair for dictators had a hard time turing the corner. Not the British who was key in screwing up the Middle East. Us. It was a 250 year epoch for which we were the key player. Today, we find ourselves without a clearly defined mission, but there are missions.
Along the way we managed to free our own slaves, create the car, march for civil rights, and go to the moon. Today we find ourselves without an empire to compete with. Now we can concentrate on repairing our morals and values and project that out into the world with greater focus while dealing with the social decay of former Cold War global scars (something our allies would rather pretend isn't their problem).
This has been our history. While our role has largely been about our security, our sense of values and morality has created an environment that steers the world away from tyranny. Therefore, what we do for ourselves benefits hundreds of millions of people outside our borders (for which gets dismissed far often than not by our critics). A perfect example of this would be the Barbary Pirates Wars which not only freed the Mediteranean Sea for our safe passage, but freed it up for those European powers who preferred to pay ransmom and bribes. People tend to focus on whatever will describe America as imperfect, but they focus on the exceptions. There's a reason for this. One, since we have been so extremely successful in our extremely young age, there is a sense of resentment and jealousy that comes from the former empires (especially from those we took down or had to liberate.) Two, because our critic's own histories have perfected ethnic cleansing, genocide, and global calamity, they must take chinks out of the armor of someone else if only to preserve a sense of pride. And three, since we are arrogant (with cause), we have to be reminded that we do make mistakes. Fortunately, our mistakes haven't walked the world into global catastrophe yet, but we have made our mistakes. Europeans are rather fond of reminding us about the Native American, no matter how many genocides and ethnic cleansing adventures they orchestrated internally and externally. We should remind them that it was them that brought the institution of slavery and the program of native slaughter to our shores. But we are responsible for what we did after 1775. We accept it. We address it. And we have become better for it whereas our critics seem to have had to rinse and repeat... rinse and repeat... rinse and repeat.
I bring up our critics because it is their criticisms that seem to ring in the ears of those Americans who can't figure out why they should have pride in their country. The question to ask is why do our critics find it important to remove American pride from Americans. And why Americans are so easily swayed by the exceptions no matter how minor they are in comparison to what our critics have done. Our history, on every level, is something to be proud about because it not only made us powerful, but it has been the greatest force for positive change in history.
We should all be proud in knowing that our nation provides us the individual opportunities to do even greater, not just for ourselves, but for everyone.
