by Tom Camp
Nationalism is a perverse ideological cancer on humanity. Things like nationalism, religion, racism, sexism are stunting human growth. Just look at nationalism for what it is. It is pride in an accomplishment that you had nothing to do with. Now with that being said, if you are someone who has escaped the clutches of a third world country, worked hard, faced hardships that I never faced to become a citizen of a place that you CHOOSE to be, then I commend you.
By all means, be proud. As for the rest of us, this wasn’t a choice. We don’t get to play the pride card or brag how much better we are than everyone else, especially when we aren’t better by any statistical measure. There is always an excuse that plunges us into war after war. George Carlin once made the association between the language that we use in this country. “War on Terror”, “War on Drugs”, “War on Poverty”, etc. You cannot have hate without there first being love. There is no love in these things.
There is no love in war. As cheesy as it may sound, there isn’t. War doesn’t create love. It only destroys it. Now there is love in the motive to gain support of these things. That’s how you rally for support (You hurt someone I love. I enlist to protect those that I love. Your marriage threatens the sanctity of mine. Your actions go against my God whom I love).
It is a shame that these positive emotions can be used as a weapon to destroy themselves. The war on drugs created more drugs. Then there was the war on “support our troops”. Realistically most don’t offer support, time, or money to them. Certainly not to the veterans. Otherwise you would be spending more time helping the homeless instead of stepping over them. What many people do is a misguided idea that they are supporting our soldiers through bumper stickers manufactured by a communist country that say “support our troops” (which we will inevitably end up at war with).
So perhaps some people’s idea of supporting the troops is by making sure we strengthen the other country enough to keep our troops busy and employed. Good for you. I am a man without a culture, without a religion, and realistically without a country. I am a man of passion, pride, and love. I take pride in what I do and what I achieve, not what my forefathers achieved. This isn’t to say that I don’t value their words. I have studied them immensely and I think that their democratic ideas were fantastic.
Sadly, these ideas exist as ghosts in the history books now.
