Why are Americans so Patriotic?

[Armakus]

I think it's you who's confused.
Patriotism = country
Nationalism = nation

There's no American nation. You are proud of your country, not of you having English, German ancestry, or of you being White or Black.

Are you a US citizen? Perhaps this is just my viewpoint while living here, but even within my own personal community, I see a lot of pride in ancestry. Hell, remember a few months ago when that congressman (I can't remember who) was on the news saying things like "I think black people and minorities should be thanking us, Europeans brought a lot of good things to the world".

I see Americans as both nationalistic and patriotic.

[Mormolyce]

When I studied Spanish at university (I've forgotten almost all of it by now), I remember the professor saying that in Spanish "Americano" usually refers to South/Central America inhabitants, unless spoken in the US or Mexico, where it mostly means people from the US. Dictionaries seem to partially agree with it:

http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/americano

I've also heard that they use "American" in English similarly. That said, they probably only use it between themselves; when talking to a person from the US, they might not.

I mean, it's only because the US has appropriated the term that it's used to mean US citizens in English. I mean yeah they are Americans, in the same way Germans are Europeans.

Maybe since the US has been a country for some 250 years, it's time it got a proper name... that way Americans would be called ____ans or ____ish or ____ese.

[Chingylol]

There's this guy that goes to my gym. Drives a pickup with two American flags on it and some type of god/jesus stickers, and wore a "I'm a Deplorable" T-shirt the other day.

I don't understand the idea of having the American flag on your car, to show other people who are in America that you are in/from America.

[kail]

I think it's you who's confused.
Patriotism = country
Nationalism = nation

There's no American nation. You are proud of your country, not of you having English, German ancestry, or of you being White or Black.

The words "country" and "nation" are synonyms. The "American nation" is a correct term.

[Deleted]

Are you a US citizen? Perhaps this is just my viewpoint while living here, but even within my own personal community, I see a lot of pride in ancestry. Hell, remember a few months ago when that congressman (I can't remember who) was on the news saying things like "I think black people and minorities should be thanking us, Europeans brought a lot of good things to the world".

I see Americans as both nationalistic and patriotic.

No, I'm not.
Yes, you can be both, but in case of Americans, most of them are proud of being American - they're patriots.

Do you mean nation as in nationality? I don't see a difference between country and nation.

I don't believe there to be a worthwhile discussion delineating patriotism from nationalism. The elements of the two overlap so thoroughly from a structural standpoint that there is little purpose in arguing for their separation.

From a less academic stance, patriotism is more generally simply regarded as the positive forces of nationalism. I think the most important distinction one could make would be similar to the one supertony51 made.

Tribe > nationality > nation.
That's how they came to existence.
Nationality is in most cases inseparable from ethnic group.
Want to be sure what nation really means? Look up "nation state". Most European countries were in the past nation states. The US? It never was.

[Deleted]

The reason I see Americans being the way they are about their country is because America is such a young one. They don't have a thousand or more years of history to fall back on as a reason or motivation to be patriotic. So they really over do it with the little amount of history they have. Take the right to bare arms as an example of how they will hang on to something so stupid from a few hundred years ago just to give themselves something to have a sense of patriotism about.

[LaserChild9]

The assertion that was made was that the only reason the U.S. was/is powerful is because of its location, geographically -- by virtue of extending the same logic to earlier inhabitants, the Amerindians would've enjoyed this same geopolitical/geoeconomic authority and would've been, in theory, equally as powerful. As we know, this isn't the reality and many other things were at play throughout the 1600's and 1700's that allowed for the U.S. to emerge paramount.

So when you say, "small pox" or "technology", you're just reinforcing the point made by my earlier rebuttal: that geographic location wasn't/isn't the only factor that explains over a century of American social-, economic-, and political-dominance.

Not true, comparatively speaking the Native Indians were primitives in comparison to the European colonists. I believe the Spanish had muskets with them, but as they were to slow and clunky to reload they were not used to fire at the natives, but rather used to scare them because the natives thought the Spanish could wield thunder. Given time, I'm sure that Native American society could have evolved, but when the Europeans arrived, they were a tribal society, what good was that against invaders that had muskets and cavalry? Fact, the Native Americans could not defend against the rest of the world.

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlike..._so_primitive/

[Deleted]

The assertion that was made was that the only reason the U.S. was/is powerful is because of its location, geographically -- by virtue of extending the same logic to earlier inhabitants, the Amerindians would've enjoyed this same geopolitical/geoeconomic authority and would've been, in theory, equally as powerful. As we know, this isn't the reality and many other things were at play throughout the 1600's and 1700's that allowed for the U.S. to emerge paramount.

I gave you the answer before, Smallpox.

So when you say, "small pox" or "technology", you're just reinforcing the point made by my earlier rebuttal: that geographic location wasn't/isn't the only factor that explains over a century of American social-, economic-, and political-dominance.

No it doesn't.
America is very hard to invade, without the smallpox, the colonization wouldn't have worked the way it did.
It would have been more like Africa at best - And Before you start talking, in the sixteenth century, African kingdoms repelled and forced the europeans to come to terms - There were no invasions like Spanish into south america.

You're placing a very exaggerated emphasis on how long most of the modern "nations"

The 'sveas' (me) Have existed since the 6th century or so.

have existed in Europe and are showing to be either naive or ignorant in regards to the realities of the concerted efforts made by various European powers from the 16th through 20th century.

That never succeeded - Again, Geography.

To the first bit, and as only one of dozens of examples that can be pointed to, the earliest recorded colony within the territory of the U.S. (Jamestown, 1607) was founded nearly 264 years before the first iteration of Germany (Deutsches Reich, 1871).

Yeah before then Germany was not united - because the outside spent a few centuries warring over it.

To suggest that 406 years isn't enough time for Americans to have diverged politically, socially or culturally while maintaining that 145 (or even less, if we consider the change in attitude from 1940-1950) is more than enough time for a multitude of differences to emerge in Europe is, well, ignoring the concept of a logical continuum.

The fundamental differences in Europe dates to the Roman fucking empire.

To your other point, what you're basically suggesting is that though most everything in the more modern nation-states was standardized (languages, especially), the social, cultural and political tendencies of the people found in any given region are often highly influenced by the social, cultural, and political tendencies that existed prior to the unification into the aforementioned nation-state; as it is today, this would explain why Bavarians tend to be more culturally-conservative when compared against Berliners or why folks from Cologne often times seem much more open to an expansion of federal authority than people from Thuringia.

Want me to start talking about the differences between Scandinavia and the Mediterranean?

The TL;DR of the second point being, "before they became, by the decree of a centralized authority, "Germans", the people from the various regions had different and sometimes conflicting social, cultural and political norms and this is still reflected in the intra-national relations to this very day". I fail to see how the situation in the U.S. is any different?

Because you were never different states - the US wasn't founded by a few states conquering the other states and forcing them to join their new empire.

I'm not even sure what the fuck you are talking about anymore.
Just fucking look at a map.
Is Russia more analogous to the US than Europe?.
The harder a place is to conquer the smaller the 'polity'.

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Do you mean nation as in nationality? I don't see a difference between country and nation.

Nation means people.
the Kurd have a nation, but not a state.
The US have a state, but no nation.

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The words "country" and "nation" are synonyms. The "American nation" is a correct term.

No, just No.

A nation (from Latin: natio, "people, tribe, kin, genus, class, flock") is a large group or collective of people with common characteristics attributed to them - including language, traditions, mores (customs), habitus (habits), and ethnicity. By comparison, a nation is more impersonal, abstract, and overtly political than an ethnic group. It is a cultural-political community that has become conscious of its autonomy, unity, and particular interests

Country on the other hand is just a legally recognized authority.

[Paladin885]

I think it's you who's confused.
Patriotism = country
Nationalism = nation

There's no American nation. You are proud of your country, not of you having English, German ancestry, or of you being White or Black.

nationalism - noun
-patriotic feeling, principles, or efforts.
synonyms: patriotism, patriotic sentiment, flag-waving, xenophobia, chauvinism, jingoism
-an extreme form of this, especially marked by a feeling of superiority over other countries.

#USA

[unbound]

Because it's hammered into our skulls from a very, very young age.

This ^^^

Although legally a child can remain seated for the daily recitation of the pledge, peer pressure will instill at an early age that it is something you are supposed to be doing. Heck, a few schools around the country have been caught illegally forcing (or ostracizing) students to stand and recite the pledge.

[Almaric]

The brits first called it soccer then changed to football later on. Its soccer, fucking deal with it.

It's football, deal with it. And what americans play is called HANDEGG. Fucking deal with it.

[Spectral]

The reason I see Americans being the way they are about their country is because America is such a young one. They don't have a thousand or more years of history to fall back on as a reason or motivation to be patriotic. So they really over do it with the little amount of history they have. Take the right to bare arms as an example of how they will hang on to something so stupid from a few hundred years ago just to give themselves something to have a sense of patriotism about.

This is a weird claim. As an independent, extant nation, the United States isn't particularly young - people tend to think of entities like "Germany" as older than the United States, but this doesn't actually match up with history when one looks at the fragmented history of what is now Germany.

Also, the idea that the United States has "little" history is obviously ridiculous. American history is deep enough and rich enough that no single person could even potentially know it themselves. That it's easier to have some cursory, surface-level knowledge of 250 years of history than 1000 years doesn't really mean much of anything.

[Shadowferal]

I seem to remember reading that before Columbus even sailed his bigoted ass across the Atlantic, the native peoples actually were fairly advanced. I do know that smallpox and other diseases really did devastate their populations. Wasn't the death toll getting into the millions?

Yes.
Even today it's difficult to get hard numbers. However, it's accepted that Tenochtitlan at its height had a population of roughly several hundred thousand. "When the Christians were exhausted from war, God saw fit to send the Indians smallpox, and there was a great pestilence in the city." When the Spanish marched into Tenochtitlan, there were so many bodies that they had to walk on them. Most of the Spaniards were immune to the disease, and that fact itself helped to crush Aztec morale." (From Loewen's "Lies My Teacher Told Me")

Not including them, I believe that still leaves over 2 million in the rest of North America.

Until Columbus opened the damned door. 90%-96% of the populations were wiped out within a couple of centuries.

This is a weird claim. As an independent, extant nation, the United States isn't particularly young

Our way of governance, and more so, the US Constitution was referred to as a grand experiment. And I believe that's what everyone here is referring to. Prior to the timeframe, commoners didn't create their system of law, and they certainly didn't vote people in, or have such "uneducated" folk hold such esteemed personages accountable for anything.

[Nirya]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being patriotism or nationalism.

[anon5123]

It's football, deal with it. And what americans play is called HANDEGG. Fucking deal with it.

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...73/505/2fb.png

Educate yourself.

[Spectral]

Our way of governance, and more so, the US Constitution was referred to as a grand experiment. And I believe that's what everyone here is referring to. Prior to the timeframe, commoners didn't create their system of law, and they certainly didn't vote people in, or have such "uneducated" folk hold such esteemed personages accountable for anything.

Sure. That's fairly new when looked at in grand scope, but a nation that's got 200+ years of continuous independent governance isn't actually short-lived when considering the overall scope of the world. This is much older than current iterations of most countries. Claiming that the United States is particularly young requires counting modern nations as continuous when no one in those geographic locations would have thought of themselves as belonging what became the modern nation a couple hundred years ago - that is, a Virginian in 1800 was more "American" than a Prussian from 1800 was "German".

My broader point is that the claim isn't really based on anything other than the typical MMO-Euro impulse to take an ignorant shot at Americans.

[Theinquisition]

I'm ... surprised to read that from you, SuperT.

I once read that a conservative's patriotism is like a child defending mommy and daddy no matter what they do. And that a liberal's patriotism is like someone who says " I really love my parents, but there's times they suck too."

Well, as a conservative, I do believe that our country has issues it bees to address and still believe that the founding principles are incredible.

I believe America has problems, not that America "is" the problem. I feel that many leftists think that America is fundamentally flawed and that we should feel some sort of guilt for the sins of our fathers.

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The reason I see Americans being the way they are about their country is because America is such a young one. They don't have a thousand or more years of history to fall back on as a reason or motivation to be patriotic. So they really over do it with the little amount of history they have. Take the right to bare arms as an example of how they will hang on to something so stupid from a few hundred years ago just to give themselves something to have a sense of patriotism about.

Has me until the right to bear arms thing.

The fact that the 2nd amendment didn't exist in Europe is partially why 6 million people were turned to ashes.

The 2nd amendment isn't for sporting, or even home defense, it's to fight against a tyrannical government. I believe that at any given time, we are three missed meals and a charismatic leader away from converting from a republic to a dictorial government.

[Kithelle]

Because of the founding of our nation. Of the struggles they went through and everything they worked for.

Plus all the battles the US has been in and the people we've helped throughout our time as a nation.

Our government has certainly fucked things up, no doubt about that, but the general premise remains the same.

We try and help others. Especially if their need is dire.

My other end to that, on a personal level, is damn near all of my family has served in the military. I served in the military. I've known a lot of people ranging back to our warriors from WW2 who have sacrificed so much for this nation. And I certainly won't be the one to let that sacrifice be in vain.

Which is ironic because our nation was founded by men who wanted freedoms and didn't want to pay heavy taxes...yet we pay taxes through the nose and we lose more and more freedoms every day. Not to mention the inept government running everything, especially this horrible presidency we're going to be suffering through in just a few months...

I don't know about other people...but I don't feel very patriotic these days when this country is going to hell.

[Spectral]

I'm ... surprised to read that from you, SuperT.

I once read that a conservative's patriotism is like a child defending mommy and daddy no matter what they do. And that a liberal's patriotism is like someone who says " I really love my parents, but there's times they suck too."

I can see some truth in this claim. At times though, left-leaning Americans tend to prattle on uncomfortably long about the "times they suck" - to take the analogy further, it'd be like someone saying they love their parents, but then going on a 15 minute rant about how their parents are irredeemably racist white trash. Maybe both things are true, but maybe you'd suspect just a bit that there's some real animosity there...

[Independent voter]

Who is this patriotic bunch?