Richard said:
I'm british But I Dispise the British flag with a passion, I also harbour simmilar hatred for the american flag.
Reasons: I'm a 22 year old black male, and millions of my ancestors were murdered at the hands of both nations throughout slavery and still now. the biggest homicide in the history was at the hands of these nations.
More people were killed during slavery than the holocaust, tsunamis and worl wars combined.
Now I wouldn't expect jewish people to pledge aleigance to the swastika so why am I expected to pledge to the flag that did unspeakable things to my race?
I like to think people get to talk shit about their country
after they can properly use their language, not before.
It's been pointed out earlier in the thread that western countries and The White Man(tm) in general have been responsible for much less slave trading and black deaths than the islamic world and black people themselves. Besides, the very fact that you are a black person and can also call yourself a British subject means that British mentality toward race has evolved by quite a stretch since Queen Victoria's reign. Also, unlike what some of the Thatcher haters like to portray, the United Kingdom is in fact a developed country, where you have things such as mass transit, the Internet and, uh, running drinkable water, privileges which you would be much less likely to enjoy if you did not live under the flag which you're so eager to insult over the 'web.
On the subject of
patriotism in general, I would like to point out the fact that none of us would be who they are, if not for the land we were born in, or at least the blood which runs through our veins, which is not of our doing, but the consequence of a history which precedes us and shapes us. Whether we like it or not, without exception, we have inherited moral values and behavioral traits from our country(ies) of origin. The concept of
Motherland is thus a very real one, almost literally so, although its definition varies from motherland to motherland.
Which brings up the next point:
difference. Just like people, nations have, through their (sometimes violent) confrontation with the other nations, shaped their own identity. To be of one nation means
standing for something, for a set of values, for a way of life. Nations are unique entities, just like people are unique entities who are shaped in part by their nations, just like nations are shaped by their people. When I say that we owe something to our nations, I don't mean that we have some sort of moral debt toward them we need to honor, because that only goes so far. What I mean is that a part of us comes from our nation, and that before we go denying attachment to it, we should recognize how much of us is from it.
Every country is, and stands for something not quite like any other country in the world. Fantastic things like modernity, cosmopolitanism have had the effect, by mixing all nations together, to dilute them. We have grown away from our solid link with our unique land, blood, history, culture. Anyone from an oppressed nation knows this very well, but here in cushy nations we have grown tepid.
However, to speak in aristotelian terms, man is the only animal which is cultural by nature. This means that we can only realize ourselves through the community to which we belong. Of course, communities have also an overbearing, holistic fact: this is the paradox of being human, we want to be independent but can't live outside of the pack. But this doesn't mean that the pack didn't do something for us. It doesn't mean that any pack is worth any other pack.
Intellectuals like the people this site caters to think lands are kind of dumb, what with all the mud, and the other patriots who are
such idiots. Ideas have the gnostic pleasure of being only accessible to a handful of initiates who are, like, totally above that nation stuff, which is just for hoi polloi. The problem with ideas is that when you put faith in them, they become ideologies, which breed totalitarianism. All of the horrors of the 20th century were done by people who believed in ideas, not in other people. People were sent off to concentration camps for the ideas of racism or communism, not for Germany or Russia; Nations can do some pretty ugly things, but they don't ask people to surrender their personalities.
I like being a patriot. You can touch a country, you can smell it. You can talk to its people. It is there, flourishing from the blood of the ancestors that has been shed for you. It's just the right size; big enough to realize yourself in it, not big enough to lose yourself in it. I have spent way too much time hearing emphatic comments about my country from foreigners, to whom it is a beacon of light, and hearing jaded comments from people who share my citizenship and don't recognize the priviledge that it is, not to want to believe in a country which is worth so much to people who already have their own country. My country stands for something that I also want to stand for. It outlived the ideologies which ruled the planet like dinosaurs. It will outlive me, and hopefully it will be even better to my children than it has been to me.
Nations are worthy of our allegiance.