Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel

[Knoxville]

IRRRRROOONNNNNNNNYYYYYYYYY



(although technically, since you didn't actually say anything other than the quote, I'm working on the implicit rather than explicit message)

I was in a lazy mood, still am if i'm honest.

[Andy3536]

British and proud, doesn't make me a scoundrel or suddenly decide i hate everyone else. Also doesn't mean i don't hate everything our government does Not about to overthrow them though.

Those quotes in the OP were writen in a different time when being patriotic required violence. Now it's just about being proud of where your from and supporting your nation in sports. Nothing wrong with that.

[TooNice]

but he is right that blind patriotism is both rife and potentially dangerous.

That's would be fine, but nowhere in his post does he differentiate patriotism. In essence, the OP is saying that anyone with any love/pride/devotion for their country is 'dangerous and ruining mankind', 'greedy, ignorant and lacking brain', 'ignorant to what happens in other' (and that's somehow is the cause of starving children in Africa), 'have a devilish attitude', 'self-absorbed' etc. Apparently, it is also fact that ALL patriots are blind ('follow the idea mindlessly').

I would agree with you if he had implied anywhere that blind patriotism is both rife and potentially dangerous. But that's not at all what he said. What he did was paint a a large group of people with the same brush, and I find that about as ignorant as people who thinks that all Muslim are terrorists.

Oh and that catchy title. Suits the point he was making, but if you look it up, it's suggested that the author made a difference between "self-professed Patriots"/"false" patriotism and "true" patriotism, and the quotation is not aimed at patriotism in general, so it's likely used out of context here. Such use of quotation is about as dodgy as the way we see politicians manipulate statistics to support whatever point they are trying to make.

[Whiternoise]

I'm extremely proud of not being English


But other than that, I hate all forms of racism, and thats pretty much just another one

A comedian made a great joke recently (think it was on Live at the Apollo) that was completely true - basically, everyone is pretty patriotic to varying degrees.

For instance, take Nottingham. Notts Forest supporters hate Notts County with a passion, each group is fiercely proud of their team's heritage and wouldn't hear anything else. However, you can be pretty damn sure that both of them hate Sunderland. The best football example would be the World Cup, supporters who would normally attempt to brain each other at a "friendly" match all club together to watch us get beaten by the Portuguese every four years.

This is applicable to loads of different things. Northern counties are particularly proud of being separate from each other. Derby hates Yorkshire, for example. Expand this a bit, and you find that the North (inbred colliers) hates the South (bunch of soft speaking pansies). Well, that my be true, but we pan out a bit more and we see that we both hate the Scots (and indeed they hate us back). Though, bear in mind that we'll club together against the Welsh (and indeed, who wouldn't?).

Continue to Europe, The kingdoms of the UK hate each other, but the UK will more than happily curse the French, the Germans and the Spanish. The EU no doubt secretly hates America and so on. If we were invaded by Aliens, sure the world hates each other but we'll all club together in beating the crap out of the Martians.

And so it goes. Everyone is a "patriot", it just depends on your point of view.

---

Humour aside, i'm proud to be British. Regardless of the stuff that the government has continually screwed up recently - Clive James made an excellent point about this on radio 4 - the simple fact that we are dismayed about them doing bad things should be encouraging (and, critically, democracy gives us the power to do something about it). At least the general public sees MP's fiddling the books as a bad thing. Besides the fact we live in, effectively, a Big Brother state, the UK is fairly relaxed about a lot of things. Generally it's a nice place to be in, we're still a pretty high-tech country and most people can afford to live in relative luxury compared to a lot of other countries. Food is cheap, as is the beer, education and healthcare are mostly free, and we're not religiously oppressed (always a good thing). I see no problem being patriotic, why shouldn't you be proud of your country?

Compared to the US where patriotism and the right to bear arms go hand in hand for most of the deep south - the UK is pretty damn good.

[funke_munke]

Like the welsh?

Nah we just hate you guys mate!

[TheAnimus]

I just find it odd that people spend all that money on something like the welsh language, which harms integration with other people. Why teach kids a useless language, when you could teach them Spanish or Mandarin or German or French or ........?

http://media.ebaumsworld.com/picture/rattlesnake93/troll-web1asd.jpg

[funke_munke]

I don't know, I don't speak it myself, and I was only joking anyway ! I wouldn't say it harms integration with other British people though - all the welsh speakers can speak English too!

Back to topic!

[TooNice]

I just find it odd that people spend all that money on something like the welsh language, which harms integration with other people. Why teach kids a useless language, when you could teach them Spanish or Mandarin or German or French or ........?

Someone at Uni made a speech at the start of the year about languages, and made a point why it is good to learn little used languages (if you are interested) to ensure their survival. The question that came to my mind is probably the point you made here. 'Why? Why is it important?'

And sometime, in my frustrations in learning a foreign language, I wonder why we don't just have an 'Universal Language'. Now it looks like I am a couple century too late with that idea: that even before me. But if we are going to make a point that language is a barrier to integration, then how far should we take this integration? Compared to English, none of the other languages used in the EU except Spanish comes close in terms of terms of worldwide usage. So from an integration perspective, surely it would make sense for everyone to be taught English as first language and Mandarin/Spanish as close second/third? Aside from being impractical though, there would be riot everywhere if that were to happen.

From a learning perspective (as a second/third language), I think that the kid should have a choice in the matter. If most Welsh kids want to learn Welsh, then by all mean let them do it. If they want to learn French, or Mandarin, then that's what they should be allowed to do. I reckon that you can try to persuade them to learn something over another, but if you force them to pick a language, they'll probably drop it as soon as they can. Happened to me with Spanish (looking back though, the teaching environment was nowhere as good as I am in right now with Japanese - so that also count for something).

[IBM]

I'm proud of being British - and yet most aspects about the UK make me sick.

I realised that I'm proud of the potential of Britain, not the actuality. I'm proud of all the wonderful things that make Great Britain (and to a lesser extent Northern Ireland ) such an incredible place. But I still want to get out of here because unfortunately the reality is considerably less wholesome.

If only we could get away with all the lying, cheating, self obsessed, self serving scum - at all levels of society - and let the decent people get on with things....well, it'd probably be the best country in the world.

[TheAnimus]

From a learning perspective (as a second/third language), I think that the kid should have a choice in the matter. If most Welsh kids want to learn Welsh, then by all mean let them do it. If they want to learn French, or Mandarin, then that's what they should be allowed to do. I reckon that you can try to persuade them to learn something over another, but if you force them to pick a language, they'll probably drop it as soon as they can. Happened to me with Spanish (looking back though, the teaching environment was nowhere as good as I am in right now with Japanese - so that also count for something).

A friend of mine is multilingral, he can speak excellent english, spanish, portugease, german, french and italian.

His parents are entirely to blame, he had learn't most of them by the time he was 6.

Giving kids a choice, sounds all good and everything, but at the end of the day, its like a kid who has johavas whitness parents would "choose" to die rather than get a blood transfusion.

Its very hard to see why anyone would want to cripple their child, by making them less 'fit', but many people do, and still manage to keep passing on their DNA!