American Patriotism Terrifies me!!

We reflect the world we fear. Making it real, and proving it's truth by acts of fear. Guns are a fear made real. It gives you a power that justifies it's use. But it has no understanding, morality or righteousness you yourself do not bring to it.

I don't need a gun. Defense is more an act of intelligence. Not a gross material metal projectile weapon. Just a tool, not a license.

You would kill another, and pay that price to quench your fear? Too easy that your thinking such a decision is simple. Some would die to defend your rights, but your right to kill? I just don't know where I would find the right to kill. I don't even know how I deserved to have life in the first place, and when I cannot possibly understand the full importance and gift life is myself, how could I take that from another?

I don't need Patriotism, Nationalism or any ism. I have enough of an understanding to know we defend anyone needing help. Whatever is best for everyone is what we give if we see clearly.

I don't need a law or a constitution to know what is wrong or right or what rights we have. I'm pretty sure that is written on our hearts. If otherwise not obscured by fear, anger, ignorance, or lust for power .


ZG

Post clone attack.

What weirdness this system is playing. Sorry. Move along, move along.



[edit on 10/12/2008 by ZeroGhost]

Oh crap! Post Re- Cloned.

Sorry X2

Please return your meat computer to the upright position.


ZG

[edit on 10/12/2008 by ZeroGhost]

reply to post by ZeroGhost


Here are a few Men who would agree with your position on Gun Control:




Remember the Million Mom March against Guns?


*snip*


Adults should not be afraid of inanimate objects.

They should be afraid of the people trying to take away the one inanimate object that gives them a chances at defending themselves, their families and maybe even their countries.

In fact, just the mere presence of certain inanimate objects is enough to keep a government from becoming tyrannical and even helps to discourage foreign invasion (see Yamamoto's comments).



[edit on 12-10-2008 by TruthTellist]

Removed picture of mass grave.

[edit on 12-10-2008 by GAOTU789]

Originally posted by Niall197
reply to post by Merriman Weir

 

Oh come now. Even in my little part of Scotland we still had a street celebration that weekend of the Queen's Golden Jubilee ... alcoholic drinks all round (lemonade and coke for the kids, mind), sandwiches, quiche & sausage rolls, portable tv out on the balcony, neighbours & friends popping by who we hadn't seen for years ... all good stuff.

Yet, where I live in Manchester, I saw none of that. In fact, it was a topic of discussion at the time as to how little of it there was. Compared to the 1977 festivities, where it would have been difficult finding someone who hadn't partaken in some event or other, it was pretty lacking. I say this as someone who is actually in favour of a monarchy, if only as tourist bait.

And who could fail to be impressed by the pop concert & fireworks from Buckingham Palace ? And the parade through London the next day ? Most (republican) commentators were mightily disappointed that the public were so keen on the celebrations, although to be fair the public did warm to the whole thing rather late.

Yes, but these were fairly localised, specific and London-centric events. How much actually happened elsewhere and how did it fair compared to the celebrations of 1977?

As you admit yourself, what public support there actually was happened quite late. Not really great evidence of a patriot culture is it?

Roll on 2012 !! The Olympics and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee !!

Meantime lets just remind ourselves of the millions of folks on the streets of London that weekend ... great stuff ... you know, it takes being in the presence of an overwhelming number of Americans for Brits, Australians & Canadians etc to realise we do indeed have a unique common bond.

But again, these are very specific, localised and infrequent events. How often does Britain host the Olympic games? How often do the games come around anyway? Will the support in London, for an ostensibly London-centric Olympics be the same as everywhere else in the country? Again, you're talking about a Jubilee that happens only every 25 years? What about the years in between? How much patriotism are you seeing today?

*Sigh*

This kind of thing makes me sick and sad. Yes, I live in the UK, so I'm some of you may well call me biased, but I really don't care anymore.

I saw a documentary, by that Michael Myers guy, about gun crime and the differences between the US, the UK and Canada. Guess what? The UK came second, the US came first in which country had the highest rate of gun crime! It's the fear mongering that was happening in both places, caused by the governments, that was causing it. Since Canada didn't have that, people felt safe.

Gun crime DOES NOT go down with everyone owning a gun.

Gun crime DOES NOT go down when guns are banned

Gun crime goes down when people aren't that every other person is going to do something horrible to them. Btw, all those propaganda pictures are very good examples of the fear mongering.

On to the original topic, Americans who are Patriotic do not scare me. I know one who loves the State he lives in, he is very patriotic and he is a good person. However any kind of sheep-mentality, no matter what it's disguised in, does scare me. They tried to do that to us with the Iraq war, but guess what? Very few people had it. They still went ahead with it anyway. The ones who I saw who blindly followed the government simply because it is the government were the worst ones around to talk to.

Considering the question asked of do we have patriotism here: why yes, yes we do. But it is not tied to the government or the monarchy (if anything it's mostly tied to football). I went to a wrestling match last year that made that very apparent, since when Bryan Danielson (awesome wrestler, the American Dragon) was playing heel he said we didn't deserve to hear his entrance music. That got everyone from the UK to boo him and he could act as a proper heel the rest of the match. Then there was Nigel McGuinness (an English wrestler, also awesome) who started the old 'clapping' "England" chant. So yes there is patriotism, it's not just not quite so... exclusive to others (we let the Americans who came over have their "USA, USA" chant without ruining it)

So yes, there is patriotism here. We just seem to need to have a kickstart to realise it.


EDIT: Oh yes, one other thing. I saw someone bashing England for what it did 300 years ago. 300 years ago! Seriously, you won that war? You're independent, remember? That's where your Constitution comes from. STOP trying to blame us for things happening to you now. That is your/your governments/your companies fault and problems. It has NOTHING to do with us.

And there's NO reason to hate a country for what it's ancestors did/tried to do to anyone elses in the past. That goes for Russia and Germany too.

[edit on 12-10-2008 by ShiningSabrewolf]

Originally posted by infolurker
Ole Great Britain is talking about banning knives... LOL
news.bbc.co.uk...

www.express.co.uk...

So I guess, there will be no "knife crime" after this right?

Yeah, right. No "knife crime".

And then they will ban pointy sticks.

Followed by baseball (cricket?) bats.

Eventually everyone who is not "in the clique" will be confined to padded solitary rooms, fed a steady diet of nutrient-enhanced applesauce and allowed to play with non-toxic modeling clay while watching the newest "Big Brother" or "Torchwood" or some other mindless crap.

How civilized they will all be then, in their flavorless socialized Utopia. Oh joy!

Originally posted by ShiningSabrewolf
*Sigh*

This kind of thing makes me sick and sad. Yes, I live in the UK, so I'm some of you may well call me biased, but I really don't care anymore.

I saw a documentary, by that Michael Myers guy, about gun crime and the differences between the US, the UK and Canada. Guess what? The UK came second, the US came first in which country had the highest rate of gun crime! It's the fear mongering that was happening in both places, caused by the governments, that was causing it. Since Canada didn't have that, people felt safe.

I love the Michael Myers documentaries. My favourite is 'Sicko (Yes, I'm a Sicko)' but I also like 'The Big One (My Favourite Killing Blade, I Mean)'.

You might want to edit that.

So yes, there is patriotism here. We just seem to need to have a kickstart to realise it.

I think this is part of the issue. Whilst, to use your own examples, British patriotism generally needs to be kickstarted get going, it appears that for many Americans, that particular engine is ticking over and revving 24 hours a day. Also, it's a particularly loud, noisy engine which drowns out the more moderate American engines out there.

[edit on 12-10-2008 by Merriman Weir]

reply to post by Merriman Weir


I'd love to, but to be honest I've forgotten what the documentary was entitled XD

Sounds to me, my friend, you are in need of some infOmation.

It's right here on ATS.

What are you waiting for?

It's free.

Isn't that the majic word of the day?

I'll repeat, it's free.

Should you not respond in kind with Glee?

Now get on with it.

Think some people are confusing Michael Myers and Michael Moore!!

Originally posted by Merriman Weir

Originally posted by Niall197
reply to post by Merriman Weir

 

Oh come now. Even in my little part of Scotland we still had a street celebration that weekend of the Queen's Golden Jubilee ... alcoholic drinks all round (lemonade and coke for the kids, mind), sandwiches, quiche & sausage rolls, portable tv out on the balcony, neighbours & friends popping by who we hadn't seen for years ... all good stuff.

I live in Glasgow and didn't see any of that! Sounds like an idealistic dream rather than something that actually happened.
Was just another day for most people unfortunately.

reply to post by TruthTellist


That cartoon about UK got me thinking. More often than not people break in when your not in and when they do they dont just just shoot their hostages, they usually tie them up ect. Dont get me wrong there are occasions when people just get shot but they are not as common. We have no need to feel we have to sleep with a gun or knife under the pillow. Our Alarm systems re enough to keep us feeling safe. We are more likely to keep the phone at the side of the bed to call the police. So this made me think, you cannot really comare UK to America because it isn't the same. UK has more of a Conscience but is is vastly smaller so its easier to police.

Americans need guns to feel safe, am not if any other country feels so unsafe in their homes that they feel threatened unless they have agun for protection. This this would be intersting to see how many diffrent countries feel about how safe they actually feel in thier homes.

The word Conscience got me thinking too - who invented that word, is it made up of smaller words taken from latin?? Con-Science? I dont know, Iam simply just guessing but breaking it up like that is wierd, eh?

en.wikipedia.org...



[edit on 12-10-2008 by MCoG1980]

Originally posted by Thebudweiserstuntman
Think some people are confusing Michael Myers and Michael Moore!!

I think there's only one poster that's confusing the two.

I know some of the American right like to demonise Moore, but I hope no one other than ShiningSabrewolf is making that mistake!

reply to post by MCoG1980


This is quite interesting too:
en.wikipedia.org...

[edit on 12-10-2008 by MCoG1980]

reply to post by MorningStar8741


The rioters in CA are very fortunate that those holding the guns are "responsible gun owners". I dare say that, should the rioters have been armed,
and not the onlookers, the outcome would have been very different.

reply to post by Thebudweiserstuntman


I live in a village in deepest darkest South Lanarkshire where folks still celebrate such things. Glasgow has its own sectarian divide ("Belfast-lite") so no doubt things there were rather more subdued.

There's been a cultural shift too since 1977. Few folks nowadays are willing to organise even the most basic local event, many see more of tv celebrities or youtube personalities than they do of their own neighbours. Generational thing, I guess. But nothing to do with public support of the monarchy or any lack of patriotism.

Minus even those rare jubilee events there's very few public expressions of patriotism in the UK at all really. And I'm quite happy with that, having the Union Jack or Saltire stuck in my face every day would be rather annoying.

Originally posted by Niall197

There's been a cultural shift too since 1977. Few folks nowadays are willing to organise even the most basic local event, many see more of tv celebrities or youtube personalities than they do of their own neighbours. Generational thing, I guess. But nothing to do with public support of the monarchy or any lack of patriotism.

I'd argue that it's symbiotic in nature, one of the reasons that people aren't organising at least certain public events is because there's a lack of patriotism to support them and that lack of patriotism is one of the reasons why few feel a need to organise certain events in the first place. Kind of like a 'chicken and the egg' scenario.

Minus even those rare jubilee events there's very few public expressions of patriotism in the UK at all really.

Which is where we came in. This was my point; there's very few public expressions of patriotism in the UK and I'd hedge a bet that there's as few private expressions of it too. As you point out earlier in your post, there's been a shift in culture over the last 30 years and those shifts have impacted on patriotism too. It's been on the wane for a long time and I think any alleged similarities between the last remaining bits of patriot culture in Britain and America are fairly inaccurate.

And I'm quite happy with that, having the Union Jack or Saltire stuck in my face every day would be rather annoying.

I find any flag stuck in my face every day rather annoying. It could be the flag of 'MyIdealPorn'-land and it would still get tedious.

Originally posted by pyrytyes
reply to post by MorningStar8741

 

The rioters in CA are very fortunate that those holding the guns are "responsible gun owners". I dare say that, should the rioters have been armed,
and not the onlookers, the outcome would have been very different.

And....? Your point. I cleared this up 6 times now, are there people out there that still do not get what I was saying? What does your point have to do with anything?

We have patriots here claiming that all you need is a popilace armed with guns and the country will never suffer riots like they had in France, where it happened because people had no guns.

Pay attention, I know this is only 7 times that I am clearing this up so I can understand that it is tricky.

The U.S. is an armed populace.

The L.A. riots still did happen.

The people still handed over their guns when the right was revoked during Katrina.

-Point:Having guns does not PREVENT riots from happening.

That is it. Argue around it all you like. Finesse some other point out of it all you like. What I said is pretty clear, indisputable, and true. That is the only point I made. It was not anti-gun or anti-America. Just stop reading things into it that are not there and arguing points that are irrlevant.

Originally posted by MorningStar8741

Pay attention, I know this is only 7 times that I am clearing this up so I can understand that it is tricky.

The U.S. is an armed populace.

The L.A. riots still did happen.

The people still handed over their guns when the right was revoked during Katrina.

-Point:Having guns does not PREVENT riots from happening. ading things into it that are not there and arguing points that are irrlevant.

And this too:

-Point:The idea of gun ownership to protect people from the government, when it comes to the push, is a little flimsy when it actually comes down to it.

Whilst not everyone handed their guns over, quite a few did despite the idea of it being an American right. I can't see the point in more government measures to prevent this from happening again; didn't the government say it wouldn't happen in the first place? Isn't that what the right to bear arms is about? Why believe them again.

For all the people sat here reading ATS whilst polishing and cleaning all manner of assault rifles, hand guns and home-rigged napalm machines, the reality is when people are asked, some at least will hand them over. If that's the case, what is the point of a right to bear arms if it's so easily overturned without a bullet even being fired.

In a sense, people were lucky with Katrina. As devastating as it was - absolutely terrible - at least some normality has resumed, if only in the rest of the country. Anything bigger, such as the kind of scenario that people are alluding to with the right to bear arms, and there's not going to be an opportunity for the NRA to be demanding the guns are given back. There won't be an NRA and there won't be a constitution which gives you that right in the first place.