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Comment by _heimdall

21 days ago

Is national pride a problem now? I'd expect any country to have something like a national anthem and patriotic songs.

15 comments

_heimdall

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input_sh  21 days ago

Sure, but kids don't sing them in schools and there's definitely nothing even remotely comparable to the Pledge of Allegiance.

Hell, in some countries even the national anthem has no lyrics but is purely an instrumental track (Spain being a notable example).

theendisney  21 days ago

Yes, in the Netherlands we have a culture of moaning about everthing. Youd beter not dare suggest sonething is good enough! This complaining is the only thing we are proud of. lol

(If we had patriotic songs worth remembering im sure i would have)

The problem is this, hoe do you fix something you are proud of? It seems a contradiction?

  • _heimdall  21 days ago

    Agreed, I lives in the Netherlands for a couple years and can agree there isn't much patriotism so much as pragmatism! (I actually mean that as a good thing, I was a very fond of NL and the friends I made there).

    Speaking as an American, though, I can both be proud of something and recognize its faults. I'm proud of the core principles that America was based upon, for example, but very much recognize how far we've deviated from them and how much we need to fix.

    • vasco  21 days ago

      > I'm proud of the core principles that America was based upon

      I think there's never much to gain in being proud of things you have nothing to do with or control over. If you like some principles you would be proud when you uphold them personally. It is when we start feeling proud in the abstract that we start having issues.

      1 reply →

cycomanic  21 days ago

I'm not a big fan of patriotism in general, but something I noticed about the US patriotism is the tendency to call the US "the best country in the world". This crosses all political differences, e.g. I recall being surprised how Michael Moore was saying it in an interview or movie (when justifying criticising policy, he said he does it because he knows that America is the best country in the world). Even the most patriotic friends I have in other countries would typically not say this.

  • kelnos  21 days ago

    Yeah, as an American I've always found this cringe-worthy, even kinda icky.

    Claiming to be the best (at anything) is just tacky and arrogant. Especially with something as impossible to quantify as "best country". There's no such thing as the best country in the world. Every one has strengths and weaknesses, and you can't really balance and rank them.

  • foobiekr  21 days ago

    Nationalism is by far the most successful leftist project.

    It’s kind of amazing that the left has forgotten that fact.

    • cycomanic  21 days ago

      What does leftist mean in this context? Sure you could say the "nationalist" movements against monarchies and for more democratic processes were progressive at the time, i.e. they wanted to change the status quo. Calling them leftist in the modern sense (again with a huge caveat about what leftist even mean), doesn't make much sense IMO. Also it's important not to forget that the internationalist movements (which I'd argue fit modern definitions of "left" much more closely) developed quite quickly (in historical timeframes) after, e.g. it was only 50 odd years between the Warburg festival in Germany (generally considered the birth of German nationalism) and the Paris commune.