QotD: Patriotic

Do you consider yourself a patriotic person?  Why or why not?

By the common definition of patriotism thrown around, probably not. I'm not particularly proud of my country and I sure as heck wouldn't go to war for it. Well…any current war anyway. Probably not any because of my believe that war is freaking stupid. Being patriotic implies that I believe I have a more moral duties to members of my country rather than members of other countries which I think is a dangerous thing to believe in. I'm more in the Cosmopolitanism camp.

However, I'm not going to pretend I don't enjoy living here. Culturally, the rights (currently at least) afforded to the citizens, etc. It's not a bad place to live. Perhaps my hesitation to claim to be patriotic comes more from my wish to not associate myself with those who are blindly patriotic. I visibly cringe every time I hear a blatant "Go USA!!" song (usually some sort of country music) because I don't believe that saying your country is the best over and over again makes it true necessarily, especially over the last few years.

In all honesty, I'd love to see this whole concept of countries abolished for a more world-centric view (see the Cosmopolitanism statement above). We're all stuck on this rock together and we're all much more similar than some recognize. All countries are, essentially is an artificial line dividing people. Don't ask me how a world government would work though…I'm going to let someone else figure that out.

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