Nationalistic feelings ...

Exactly what I was wondering. Why cannot most Americans discuss anything without reverting to partisan politics?

 

Sort of...

I think most nationalism is stupid. However, I think it's very naive to allow your country to have mostly unrestricted immigration.

Maintaining certain key values in a free society is very important and sometimes requires a little bit of nationalism for upkeep.

But yes, most nationalism is just a reflection of xenophobia.

 

Apart from a set of democratic and constitutional values acknowledged more in the breach than the observance, American "culture" sits around a faded (but still valuable) musical tradition and a booming film industry that promotes mainly violence.

There are, of course, many American ethnic "sub-cultures", expressed in a variety of ways, which may or may not be thriving. I don't know. Nor do most Americans.

It is a tribute to the lack of an "American culture" that most American posters here have no idea how to describe it.

 

Which leads on rather nicely to illustrating the issue raised in the OP.

Since the only active "culture" Americans recognise as a nation stems from, mainly, their erroneous view of themselves as freedom lovers, admixed with an affection for extreme violence, the only currency they have for its expression is a mindless jingoism that would put the British in the last days of empire to shame.

 

I do like American's gun culture. I think it is very unique.

 

It's a handgun "culture". Designed, they like to think, to protect them from one another.

Not sure Goethe would have called it culture.

But he would no doubt have recognised the link to American nationalism.

 

The right to bear arms has deep philosophy behind it, I think it should be counted as culture.

 

Nothing "deep" about it. The right to bear arms was about preserving your republic from external threats. Which was fair enough.

The extended gun "culture" was bred by loons who feared their own compatriots and manufacturers who wanted to make money out of pervasive paranoia.

We own as many guns as you do. But we don't call it culture. We call it hunting.

 

What about Australia? We barely have our own culture and we're about the least patriotic country on Earth (outside the sporting arena).

Or is he referring to the arts when he says culture and not to national identity? Which actually thinking about it, is much more likely. And in that case I'd say he was just wrong. Like someone else said, German's in the 1930's were of high culture. In fact pretty well every great empire in history had a high culture. I would say the arts are more often than not one of the greatest tools for both expressing and inspiring nationalism, especially when any political authority involves themselves in the work of artists.

 

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Sport is your "culture".

Apart from the stuff you borrowed from the Aborigines.

 

That's probably slightly unfair.

You have a culture of various expressions emanating from a hostile and rugged but primaevally beautiful land. Most Aussies identify with it.

And, together with your egalitarian origins, it produced a breed of people who are rugged but neither beautiful nor particularly hostile.

 

Aw, come on ...

 

He, I regret to say, was a New Zealander.

 

???

Was?

New Zealander?

 

These nationalists from other nations come to the PF to brag about their nation and talk down on Americans. Silly nationalists.

The globalists are the nationalists, trying to spread freedom and democracy around the world (allegedly). The patriots want to stay out of everyone's business and get the international communists at the UN and the fascist bankers out of our business.

 

He was modelled on this guy.

Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen. But performed by an Aussie.

 

Where is the "bragging".

Have you invented it in order to explain your lack of culture?

 

Hmmm, never heard that story before.

 

I've seen your threads and posts about the glory of New Zealand. I don't care about culture, because I'm not a collectivist. I don't even care about nations but it's better than being controlled by international bureaucracies and corporations, which is modern America and most of the western world at this point.

 

So I am to take it that Americans don't care about culture.

Now that is not news.

 

The ressemblance is canny.

 

LOL, at the risk of digressing, the term 'unique' is an abosolute - a bit like the terms 'pregnant' and 'dead'. Just as you cannot be a little bit dead, or very pregnant, you cannot be a little bit unique, or very unique. Unique simply means the only one.

 

Obama is certainly not fighting a "good" war. It is a misguidede quagmir that should not have been the initial course of action after 9/11.

 

there are still too many american nationalists supporting war, they brought british nationalists to join them as well

 

Kid, it's not "digressing" that you risk when you play the grammar nazi, it's looking like an absurdly petty egomaniac who exults over the puniest errors of others. hth