I don't feel pride in the good things my country has done in the past or guilt for the bad things its done. I wasn't responsible for either.
I am glad to live in my country since its relatively wealthy and free compared to most of the world, but thats my good luck, not an achievement I can feel pride in.

As far as I can tell, it's a behavior that comes from the same source as almost every behavior related to people encountering each other; people seem to have an almost desperate need to put themselves on a pedestal as superior to those around them, and will use any means necessary to do so. My country is better than yours, my political affiliation is better than yours, my religion is better than yours, my lifestyle, my race, my language, my culture, my things I own, my fashion, so on and so on. Even down to the tiniest scale, you can see the same thing around here in those Morrowind vs Oblivion arguments and similar, people treat them like sports teams. They get so defensive that soon it has nothing to do with any actual pros/cons to the game, so much as "this game is better because it's the one *I* like best".

The same gets applied to countries, as that quote a while back noted. People are proud of their country primarily because it's their country. If they grew up somewhere else, they would love that country. The focus is not the place, but them, in odd sort of subconscious selfishness. The same idea happens even with those who have low self-esteem, who tend to reject the outside with less a sense of self-aggrandizement as a contempt for outside opinions as inherently faulty and inferior. It's not always (maybe even not often) a matter of pompousness and "I'm better than everyone" feelings, but a subconscious part of human behavior.


You mean teenagers? Yeah that culture tends to be pretty awful.


The idea is that love, respect, enjoyment, or other feelings are not the same as "pride". I might buy and eat an especially delicious sandwich for lunch, and be glad that I have the opportunity for that sandwich, but it doesn't really make sense to be proud of the sandwich.

Because of all the history behind this country. I love that people here are free to believe what they want to believe, religious and politically. And where I live, it is a very friendly community. And people of all different backgrounds live here and the history of how they got here and how they became who they became. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else but in the U.S.A.

Like I said. I am damn proud to be an American.

So many people aren't proud of their country? That's . . . surprising . . . to me.

I personally am proud to be an American, because I get to be a part of (in my humble opinion) the greatest nation on Earth. Sure, I don't always agree with my country's actions, but I'm proud to get to be a part of a legacy of greatness. I can't really explain it. I guess if you aren't proud of your country in the first place, it's hard to understand why other people are.

National pride is a cultural aspect of society, and culture is always local. It's what you know, where you grew up, and the familiarity of the place, region, the trappings and the traditions that reign.

I have more of a species pride.

I'm proud to be human. I have the right amount of chromosomes (count them!), only a single dna/rna helix (awkward, but you get used to the limitations eventually), and I'm okay with most other humans, as long as no one is trying to kill me that is..

I could say that the Dutch are somewhat elitist, but only because they couldn't find any land that they thought was good enough for them, so they told the sea to [censored] off, and built their own country out of the seabed.. which I find a redeemable quality in any group of people.

Im not proud of my country. Im proud of what it stands for though. Just because I dont agree with everything it does, or most things, I still think that its ideals it was founded on and stand for are wonderful.

I will alo hope to this Shaddi to keep it from happening.
The world being seperated is good, you want to live a certain way move to a certain place.


... Your reason is pointless, when that applies to several countries, less with the guns. But yeah freedom isnt a good reason.

Yeah, those reasons could be applied to most countries in the world, bar the guns.

I'm not very patriotic at all, but I am glad I live in Britain, and I do feel a little surge of pride when I find out something was a British invention, or something like that.