Originally posted by nunya13
Originally posted by OmegaPoint
... love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship."
~ Erich Fromm, American psychologist
What a beautiful quote and I do think there are a lot of people with this warped view of patriotism. These are the same people who think that
sacrificing rights for safety is okay. That killing and torturing for safety is acceptable.
Where's the humanity?
I bet some of the would reply, "To hell with humanity! I want to be safe!"
That's just my assumption though.
I love my country but I'm not willing to sacrifice my integrity/morality/humanity or hers for some twisted sense of security and feeling of being the
most powerful nation in the world.
I'd rather we be the weakest if it meant we at least had our integrity and strong sense of moral values to be proud of.
[edit on 26-8-2009 by nunya13]
I'm glad that there are others who understand that Patriotism, itself, is a trap to abandon humanity. I can be proud of my country, but that doesn't
mean beating up someone who claims the US was helping the coup in Honduras to oust an actual reformer.
People that can start a war for resources in Iraq -- and harm those people, could do such a thing here. The only difference is opportunity, and a
flimsy veil of rationalization.
What you would do to the least, you would do to anyone. Iraqis are not 2/3rds of a person.
I remember, along the trail of rationalizations, that we were fighting for Iraqi liberty, or Democracy. It quickly became spiteful, as people here
felt like this notion was rejected by all the civil wars there. Then the "easy task" was in hind sight --
obviously, these people cannot be at
peace, they've been at each other's throats for centuries.
I was actually for the war at first -- not that I believed the excuses. But I realized that the Iraqis could do better, and believed some of the hype.
But "success" was never intended for Democracy there -- the people perpetrating the war didn't believe in Democracy here. They betrayed that
nation's people repeatedly -- and then betrayed them again. Likely, a civil war was the goal, as this put pressure on the government to accept the
Oil deals that were being offered.