What is the greatest country in the world today?

Yes, call me hypersensitive, but yes I saw the title of the thread, and then began to read half serious, half joking comments about various places being the greatest country in the world, I dare to say the United States of America is the greatest country in the world in my opinion, for me at least. It isn't perfect and never will be, and for people living somewhere else, they may think its the greatest country in the world, so be it, and I wouldn't blame them.

Yes, I am hypersensitive and tired of people that are chronic complainers about the country. I take the subject serious rather than an opportunity to joke and marginalize what we have here, given the context of politics these days, and it is trendy to blame America first, and we now have Hugo Chavez calling Bush an evil man. Yes, I am suffering complainers fatigue, Setanta, and I saw the thread as a call for malcontents to express their yearning for living somewhere else, so I am simply calling it like I see it. I don't think half the people here appreciate what they have here.

My Country
by Dorothea Mackeller (1904)

The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of rugged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!

The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze…

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

When you write: "I dont' think . . ."--you should stop right there. I don't recall that Hugo Chavez posted in this thread. You're making a hell of a lot of assumptions--and nasty, unflattering assumptions--about the other members of this site who have posted here. The first person to respond was McG, a conservative, who chose Bermuda, and set the tongue-in-cheek tone.

So you come along with your rah-rah, wave the flag, over-the-top hysterical rhetoric, and without the least cause assume that everyone else in the thread is a "complainer," and a "commie" and a "malcontent."

My take is, you're just plain hateful, and looking for an opportunity to whine about everybody else--if they don't think exactly as you do, and say it pretty damned quick, then they're a leftist, a commie, a complainer, a malcontent. You have serious problems--but they're not the fault of anyone here.

Why in heavens name should anybody be expected to jump up and say "I love it here and I love this country"? What if you're not happy with the way it looks right now? What if you think it could be better, and you'd like to make it better? What if you're ashamed of the way your countrymen are going about at the moment, and you're ashamed because they're your countrymen?

A sense of anger about what people have done to your country, if you think its in a bad shape, is as much taking and feeling ownership of the country as cheering and waving the flag is. Because it shows that you feel responsible for it, or for your part in it, feel connected to it - its your country they're f*cking up after all. A sense of disappointment in what your country's become is as much a sign of commitment to your country as cheering and waving the flag; it's like with family. Who cares what a stranger does; but if its your brother who did wrong, you care.

And what of those who just happen to be bummed? Who just lost their job, or got into a fight, or are lovesick and the whole place reminds them of that other person? They can still say, I love my country, but, "I love it here!" will surely seem insincere.

And what if you simply feel quite levelheaded about your country? Like with family, it should be all the easier to see that they got both their good sides and their bad sides, that you love them still for who they are cause they're family, but you're also pretty acutely aware of how they're surely their share of dysfunctional - it can be like that with your country too. Its your country, you feel familiar with it, its your home, anywhere else would be a strange land, but just like you might not quite be in the mood to stand on the table at Christmas and exclaim, "I love it here and I love this family", there might well be enough going to be lying if you'd just exclaimed, "I love it here and I love this country!" Cause, it being your country/your family an' all, you can still easily see which things are better in other countries, and which ones others could learn from you.

Ambiguity is no proof of lack of patriotism. Being perceptive enough to see that in some ways, other countries are better, and in some ways your own is, is no betrayal to your country. Wanting your country to be good, wanting it to be better than it is, or being disappointed or even angry when its not as good as it should be - all that shows up emotional ties to that very country, commitment to it, as much as waving the flag and exclaiming, "I'm lovin' it!" would. Its your country, not Mc Effing Donalds.

Albania is fun. Chaotic and poor but fun. Id love to live there for a bit, some time - but I dont think I would last very long.

In his dictionary, Samuel Johnson wrote:

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

To which Ambrose Bierce retorted:

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first.

And finally, H. L. Mencken riposted:

But there is something even worse: it is the first, last, and middle range of fools.

So, knock the US off the list for you then?

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H. L. Mencken

The greatest country in the world today still, after many years of decline for the genre and for the man, is Willie Nelson. Whatcha gonna do?

No, not at all. I like it here because I was born here, I live here, and I think its a good country and I get tired of people knocking it. For people that live in Mexico or Canada, or anywhere else, I hope they like it there. If they don't like the government or the politicians there, they can still like their country for crying out loud. Even Cubans should like their country even if they despise Castro. Loving your country involves a whole lot more than government, although that helps alot. I have plenty of complaints about government, but on balance it is better than most countries.

Maybe people here on this forum are frightened at someone being such definite opinions, as mine are. Oh well, maybe I was hypersensitive, carry on, but I don't apologize for standing up for the good old USA. I love it and always will, for lots of reasons, and I think everyone should.

Okie, we in the rest of the US of A refer to you as an "Okie"

I gotta say, for me, "I love my country" just means that I love the soil and rocks and trees that I grew up on in the Sierra Nevada. I feel better when I'm standing on that soil, dusty as it is in the arid pine forests. Can't say I feel beholden to the people in general who live on it, who buy it up and build their little stucco (white, not pink) houses on it. But, hell, my roots are getting covered in concrete that isn't my country at all.

Dear America:

See the stone set in your eyes
See the thorn twist in your side
I wait for you


Sleight of hand and twist of fate
On a bed of nails she makes me wait
And I wait without you


With or without you
With or without you


Through the storm we reach the shore
You give it all but I want more
And I'm waiting for you


With or without you
With or without you
I can't live
With or without you


And you give yourself away
And you give yourself away
And you give
And you give
And you give yourself away


My hands are tied
My body bruised, she's got me with
Nothing to win and
Nothing left to lose


And you give yourself away
And you give yourself away
And you give
And you give
And you give yourself away


With or without you
With or without you
I can't live
With or without you


With or without you
With or without you
I can't live
With or without you
With or without you