To the American: Are you proud?

[Sailor Steve]

I don't usually think of it in terms of pride. Pride to me is thinking you're better than everybody else. I think it's cool that America was the first country created from scratch; that is after they separated from Britain they sat down and said "What kind of government are we going to have?", and I think it's great that we stand for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", but sometimes pride leads us to think that we have to "help" people who don't want our help. Sometimes we think we have to make others live up to standards we don't live up to half the time ourselves.

America has been an ideal for others to live up to, a goal for others to achieve, a destination for others to move to; but Americans have also been just as spiteful, just as hateful, just as superior (in the worst way - our own minds), just as arrogant and just as blind as anyone else. People point to our Founding Fathers as though they were gods, and actually they spent as much time fighting each other as they did any outside enemy. They had ideas, and they disagreed on what would work. I'm pretty sure Washington, Adams, Jefferson and the others never looked at themselves and said "I'm proud to be an American". I think they mostly said, "Okay, what do we do next?"

I'm glad that I have some amount of personal freedom, and I wish everyone else could. That's about it for me.