Patriotism a Dirty Word in America Today

We as society have been slowly moving into a more fragmented society, beginning in the 60's. That fragmentation of society helps explain such things as the current societal mood to patriotism and the like. The 60's and 70's was an awakening period for our country. When the youth born after WWII started becoming adults, they began to rattle the rigid societal structure the previous generations had put in place in response to the effects of the 30's and 40's on the country. Even though the awakening period has long passed, its effects are still present. They, who are known as "Boomers", initiated the cracks in the system, these cracks, decades later, have now widened into gaping holes and crevices. Now, in the 2000 decade, we as a nation have become very fragmented in our values. We have (almost) forgotten what it is to be a nation.

What does this mean in the long run? Well, eventually, as history has shown, we will be in for a serious crisis. So serious of a crisis that it will rock the very foundations of society and survival as a nation will be in peril. Such a crisis will force the nation to unify if they are to survive. We got a glimpse of this unity in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, when the country temporarily forgot its political differences and came together as a nation to defend freedom. Our nation will face another one of these great crisis, just as it has before (eg. WWII/GD, Civil War, Revolutionary War, King Phillips War) and it will remember what it is like to be a whole nation again, with all of the fixings that come with such a condition: renewed patriotism, renewed sense of direction and values, and things like "duty, honor, country" will be an ingrained thing once again.

So fear not, while there will be troubled times ahead, our nation will reform back into what you are longing for. We will just have to put up with some hardship in the meantime, but guaranteed, we will be a patriotic nation under God once again!

Remember the famous phrase, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."? It is true to the extent that every society has a certain amount of memory, and because of this, they are doomed to repeat some aspects of history. Some say that this memory lasts about twenty years, but that is ridiculous. A societies memory really only extends out as far as the oldest people who exist in the society. This amount of time is, roughly, 80 years. What is unfortunate about how true the above quote is that we, as a people, tend to get ourselves into a bit of trouble that seems oddly familiar, at least in principle, to several such events in the past. There is a great deal difference between reading about history and or watching the history channel, versus interviewing someone that lived during the time.

And thus, we end up getting into as much trouble as previous generations. Think of it as young adults get into the same set of trouble as their parents did, despite the fact that the parents try to steer their children away from making the same mistakes --mistakes that the youngin's end up committing anyway. There is really is no way to stop it, it just seems to be part of life. So too, do we as a society get into trouble every so often because our "parents", or older generations, who had lived through the rough times, attempt to steer us away from committing the same mistakes, but fail because they can only live so long to be around us to constantly give us wisdom.

On a different note, I also agree with you about your assessment of Hillary's electability chances. I concur that many people just do not like her personally and this will be a great hinderance that she, and the media, will try very hard to work around. I should have included what you had said, but I didn't expect to write so much at the time! Thanks for the reply yourself. Enjoy your weekend!

Weebork, I read your bio. You are a very young man who seems to have the "memories" of one of us seniors. I am 66 and have lived thru almost the beginning of what we are experiencing now. I was a witness to the degredation of society. It wasn't supposed to be this way of course. Oh no. We activist had glorious dreams of a society where poverty did not exist and therefore crime would not exist, thus all the social welfare programs. Well to my dismay at least these programs only made the problems worse as the recipients got lazy and dependent rather than independent with a little help. So poverty increased, dependency increased, crime increased, irresponsible behavior increased, and on and on. How arrogant we middle class baby baby boomer were!

My problem on my blog however is not the length of the collective memory, but the seeming total lack of memory. Even those with some higher education seem not to realize that what has gone before affects what is. I am so often amazed when I read these people's blogs and their attempt at logic. So I do my best to educate as I share my thoughts. In some cases it seems to penetrate the sludge of MTV, and for that I am grateful.

Thank you for stopping back. I took your first comments to my home blog because I wanted to share them with hopes of reaching another mind with words other than mine. I hope you don't mind.

Home is: http://triadblogs.com/BrendaFayBowers Greensboro. North Carolina. I also blog on Townhall when I have a post for a broader audience because Greensboro blogosphere is rather "ingrown" with only glancing awareness of a world beyond the borders of North Carolina despite being made up of well educated and intelligent people. BB