I started out as a child rather automatically but genuinely loving my country, as I knew it. I was born at the end of 1941. We had moved a lot, but not as much as Craven, and while my father was overseas, my mother and I still always lived in the U.S.
My father was by the end of WWII, a colonel in the Army Air Force, and we lived right next to the air field. We moved to a couple of different cities after he left the service. I knew nothing but pride and love, immediate for my family, and then when I learned from history books in school and certain early tv shows, and general conversation in my family, for my country. Mostly I liked my little life, my dolls, my room, going shopping with my mother. I had no clue about community.
When I was a teen, we moved across country again, and at sixteen I started working after school in the local hospital. That is probably where I first had any sense of an associated group. While I got along ok, if shyly, in high school, and had what I now look at as acquaintance-friends, it wasn't until I had gotten immersed in hospital life that I had any sense of moving around in space amid a group of people, some buddies in the office, some head nurses to be feared... some nice doctors, all of us dealing with ever-revolving patients with all the trouble and joy of that. I worked after school and summers for six years, and that was a formative experience for a certain contentment for me, belonging to a larger group, my first perceived experience of Community.
As I started college, JFK became president, and I was an avid follower. By this time I was following news on tv, reading news magazines, involved in discussions at home with a mother and father differing strongly on politics, mother being conservative, father liberal. (I lived at home in college.) I was enthused about my country, and my interest in the rest of the world was growing, but fairly fuzzy. I switched schools to a university, and that woke me up a bit. There were students from all over, and reading the college paper opened my eyes to all sorts of questions.
Then came the series of incredible assassinations, and the growing concerns about what we were doing in Vietnam and Laos. My father was the first person I knew to question our going into the Dominican Republic
and what we doing in Vietnam. He died in 1968, leaving me many years to live missing conversation with him...but also leaving me with the clarity that you could disagree with your country's actions and still love it well.
I do viscerally love my country, while objectively seeing an endless list of ways we have veered from what I thought we believed in when I was a child. I am rather fond of some other countries too though.
In the intervening years I have read widely about other countries than the US, about their culture and their governments, and have a much more
dispassionate view of the US and our place in the intricacies of life on our planet. I agreed with Setanta's comment that pointed out aspects well meaning anti globalists don't see... and yet I find a great deal to protest in much that happens in the name of globalization. In any case, I do care greatly about the planet, although it is a rather big lump to spread my arms around.
So I loved my family, I have continued partaking in communities, I am quickly adopting and adapting to my new region to live in, I do love my country and I do care about the planet, admittedly in a more conceptual but no less true way.
As far as debt, and who owes whom what?
Let's see - speaking for myself -
I obey the laws of my country, mostly. I have been known to jaywalk. I do think I owe obedience to just laws.
I have worked to change some of the laws.
I always vote, I have provided rides for others to vote.
I have protested government actions I don't concur with, in a lawful manner.
I have sat as a volunteer on legislative committees and held community land use policy meetings (not as part of my job) and volunteered design work for community health facilities.
I expect my government representatives to make and carry out laws that
safeguard our civil rights, and maintain a military that protects and serves and acts wisely with regard to the rights of others. I expect the government to use our taxes to maintain the infrastructure of the country at the same time protecting the environment. I expect the government to
maintain not only civil order but a civilization, and thus to support the health and welfare of its people. I expect opportunity to be equal. I expect there to be separation of church and state.
I do think this is all a social contract. This is in my country, my understanding of my contract with it. I think the contract is sometimes broken in all countries.
I'll probably remember other points after I post this.
Very well stated, Osso, i for one appreciate your having taken the time . . .
By God, I take a few hours off and all hell breaks loose. Ya'll sure is fiesty today.
Is there anybody here who did
not serve in the army?
Me. I served in the Navy. Heh heh.
I served in the Air Force.
Y'all entered it professionally or just to fulfill the military service?
I have never served in the military.
LOL, Sofia - re an earlier post of yours, I didn't mind being "called on the carpet" - if you mean Craven's comments (sadly, I know he will have examples to back them up!) - if you mean Perception's, about being attacaked for his/her patriotism, or some such, I gave them the attention I felt they warranted.
The ridiculous attack on Walter confirmed me in that estimation, by the way...
Yes -- I think volunteer work -- and never missing a vote, and for me, living in different parts of the country and seeing/hearing different viewpoints -- have connected me to America. Having spent a big chunk of my life in other countries, it was surprising to come back and find how much more interconnected people had become in the meantime. Communications. A wonderful phenomenon which has now become a serious threat as open communications have been bought up and controlled.
I have hope invested in what the internet (still open) is bringing us. At least some of my interest in Howard Dean has been his recognition of the important of widespread, person-to-person communication unorchestrated by large corporations. But when I get real -- when I face facts -- it's the acquiescence to corporate control which makes me fear and dislike what America has become.
I have never been in the armed forces either.
I don't see service in the military as the only way (or even the best way) one can serve their community. Being a teacher, helping others, simply looking out for one's fellow human beings is service, and is far more important than drawing minimum wage and dressing like a tree.
I particularly find a lot of the "hero" rhetoric bandied about by the far-right regarding the military to be ofensive. "Hero" is one of the sarcastic names one calls basic trainees. "Hero" is the last thing anyone in uniform attempts to become. A "hero" usally has a group of dead fellow soldiers around him that died so he can have that moment of glory.
Being in the military in no way made me superior to persons that never served. I don't like the idea of every citizen being a soldier. It makes for jingoist's ready fodder. Better they should have to go after recruits by way of persuasion and by giving a more noble purpose than the sort of wars we have engaged since WWII.
I went in mostly because of the suposed change in emphasis to "humanitarian intervention." Somalia taught me just how poorly we do that mission.
Reading hobitbob's post, I immediately thought how much I wish we'd have a military which was more of a home guard, ready to go overseas in defense of the general interest (helping allies), and prepared to help effectively in situations like Somalia. Right now the military seems to be made up of some highly intelligent and well-trained soldiers led by poor command (military and civilian) and used in the wrong ways.
Every time I leave the USA for foreign lands, and return home, I find myself appreciative of what we have in our country; opportunity, freedom, and many good, friendly, and generous, people. It's unfortunate that the world economy is now suffering from lack of jobs and opportunity for our current college grads, but when looked at through the world lens, we're still holding our own - however modestly. Many people in our country doesn't understand the previleges we have for being American citizens, that the poorest in our country live better than many middle class in other countries. The only criticism I have now is our leadership; they have succummed to the same criticism that Iraqi's had of Saddam; Saddam gave Palestinian terrorist's families $35,000 while most people on Iraq lived on $2 a day, and our country is spending $4 billion dollars every month on our war in Iraq while many of our citizens at home suffer from lack of jobs, healthcare, food, and shelter. c.i.
Did I forget to tell that I served in the Navy?
Somehow I could always tell you were a bit water logged, Walter.
