What does being inherently better have to do with being proud of the United States?
None of these traits that you are ascribing are uniquely ' American.'
I feel American, because I speak English and because I am part of a rich history of asylum seekers looking for freedom and a better quality of life...one which America has provided to me. I am both thankful for that, and proud to live in a country that can look back on a history of accomplishment.
You keep talking about the country as if it were a person, it isn't. Any accomplishments were made by actual people, not this mythological entity.
I don't understand why you aren't.
Because nationalism is fundamentally irrational, and socially corrosive, much like religion.
I can only attribute it to unwarranted pessimism and reading from the Chomskian script.
Yes. Noam Chomsky; the Anarchist, the MIT professor, the scientist, the most cited living author, and eighth most cited author in recorded history.
Yeah, because socialist dictatorships are so altruistic.
Cuba isn't socialist.
Cuba spends a significantly larger portion of it's GDP on foreign aid. In fact, comparing foreign aid to GDP, the United States consistently ranks near the bottom, behind all of Western Europe, Japan, Australia, China, etc., etc. Suffice to say, Cuba spends sa greater percentage of it's GDP on foreign aid than the United States. Cuba has also been outstanding in sending trained medical technicians to the most impoverished regions, Pakistan, Haiti, several African countries, etc. So, yes, the Cuban government is significantly more altruistic than the United States government.
Stupidity.
I can hold a country accountable for things, yet acknowledge that most countries do those things.
Then you hold all of them accountable, especially the United States. There are contemptible human rights abuses occurring in North Korea, China, Colombia, etc., but it takes absolutely zero moral courage to point that out. There's also nothing we can do about it. The real test is applying those standards to ourselves, which is heresy. Otherwise, you're a hypocrite.
I know this is hard for you to believe, since you seem a little self-centered and don't like things that don't have to "do with you,"
There's no reason why I should be pursuaded by how being American makes you feel. It's simply not relevent.
but you are not born with rights. Doesn't mean they aren't worth defending or whatever, but rights are created because they are written down and because people have reasoned that it's better to accept the abstract value of those rights. The rights themselves exist because of human imagination. No God and no idealized version of a natural state can truly change that.
First; I'm an Atheist, among other things.
Second,; again, this is completely wrong. It is impossible to create rights, only to respect rights. The law has no inherent moral authority. The law can be just, or unjust, but justice precedes the law, and originates outside of it.
Then don't vote in one, or pay taxes in one, or live in one. It's easier than you think. Take some classes in wilderness survival and and go live off the grid. People do it. Why live by the rules of a fundamentally illegitimate institution?You have the option not to, and honestly it's pretty easy. Convince others to do the same. Maybe that'll take you farther than posting about it on the internet. By all means, go.
In other words; 'Love it or leave it.' If I believed in such things, I'd say that was a fundamentally un-American, and anti-American attitude. I don't want to leave this country; I want to dismantle illegitimate institutions. I oppose these institutions not simply because I find them personally objectionable, but because of what they do to my fellow man.
This paragraph is laughable and doesn't merit a true response.
First, I think it should be a fairly obvious truism that any despot can utter high-minded rhetoric about 'fairness', 'justice', 'freedom.' According to their propagandists, even the most brutal regimes were the picture of benevolence. What matters is what people do, whether or not they live up to the rhetoric. That's just fairly obvious.
The United States is
absolutely the most prolific sponsor and perpetrator of state terrorism. Take the official US definition of Terrorism;
'premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.'
There are numerous historical examples; Indonesia, Chile, Guatemala, Cuba, and Nicaragua, for which the United States was officially
convicted by the International Court of Justice, in 1986.
As for the correlation between US military aid and human rights abuses, I would recommend the 1981 study by Lars Schoultz, There have been impeccable corroborating studies by Martha Huggins, and Edward S. Herman, which can be found fairly easily.