I was on the freedomain radio chat room last night when a guest came in. After some brief get-to-know-you questions that topic of government came up. I didn't argue with him myself mostly because i am not very good at identifying the logical problems with peoples thinking in the moment, but he did give me a few interesting thoughts to ponder.
Taurus's(the name this guest went by) basic idea was that it is good to have pride in your country. From what he said i gathered that he believed that America is a great country, filled with innovative people, our system of government grants people the most freedom( if not the maximum possible freedom, at least the maximum available at this or any other time in history). We Americans have the best of everything: education, medicine, technology, etc. He believed that we should be proud of having these things.
First i think it is important to have a definition of pride:(copypasted from merriam-webster)
1: the quality or state of being proud: as a: inordinate self-esteem :
conceit b: a reasonable or justifiable self-respect c: delight or elation arising from some act, possession, or relationship.
i think the third form of the word would be the most relevant.
This definition only gives us what pride is though not who it applies to(self, others, arbitrary relationships). For pride to be valuable it must have some restrictions. If everyone is allowed to be proud of everything then the word becomes meaningless because you have no opposing state to compare pride to. Most people would agree that you should feel proud of something you have spent a great deal of effort on to make it better.(hopefully i will be able to say that about this blog) Therefore pride is something that is earned through effort.
According to Taurus pride applies to the country you live in. Do you choose your parents? Do you choose your race? Do you choose your height? Do you choose the lenght of your penis? Do you choose your country? the answers to these questions are obviously no, no, no, i wish, and no. These things are not chosen but occur completely randomly. What does it mean to say that I'm proud of my country? well it means "I'm proud of an arbitrary relationship to something i had no involvement in creating, no affect on in the past, and no control over in the present." but isn't this a contradiction? It is saying that pride is both earned through effort and by doing absolutely nothing.
Lets assume for a moment that my previous argument is completely invalid(it may not be as hard for you to imagine as i would hope) and pride for ones country is not self contradictory. Lets even assume that it is indeed a good thing to have pride in ones country. when you say something is 'a good' it is putting it into moral terms. For something to be moral it must be universal. well does this meet the standard for universality. Should i be proud of the country I'm born in? what if my family moves to a new country right after i am born? what if i was born at an embassy half way across the planet? or if i am born at sea? Or should i be proud of my ancestry? well then which ones? what if i don't know who my ancestors are, am i bad for not being proud of that? we also face the not insignificant fact that countries don't exist anywhere in reality. a country is just lines on a map.
We can even ignore that hurdle and assume that it is both possible and good to have pride in ones country. What does that look like? well i get to feel good about all the so called heroic crap that the people who started this country did. the signing of the declaration of independence and the constitution, civil rights, women's suffrage, anything else that i didn't pay much attention to in history class. we get to feel great about all of it. Isn't this awesome? oh wait there is a catch. Our country doesn't have a squeaky clean record. Slavery, murder, theft, the wrongful imprisonment of millions. Need i go on? If we get to feel pride for all the freedoms and accomplishments of our country then should we not also share in the collective shame of this country? Isn't the blood of the people who were murdered in protest of unjust laws on all of our hands? why is it that we get the happiness and joy but not also the shame and humiliation?
Countries don't exist. People exist. It is the personal achievements of individual people that earns them their pride or their shame. It is just a form of bigotry to claim that you deserve to be proud of you country's successes but not also ashamed of its failures
I would greatly appreciate comments, questions, praise, critiques, from anyone who thought that this was an interesting read. Thanks so much, hope you enjoyed it.
