Comments by "Patrick Cleburne" (@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558) on "Are You Proud to Be an American? | Man on the Street" video.

  1. Being free to leave is of limited value if most other places won't let you stay there.
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  2.  @selohcin  The problems for the poor in the US are overwhelmingly cultural, and that's proven by how people with solid family structures and healthy work ethics regularly come to the US with nothing and quickly rise out of poverty.
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  3.  @MustafaMuhalab  I'm curious what reasons you would give. Why would you like so much to live and work in the States?
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  4.  @pavitrprabhakar3981  As an American with very traditional American values, one thing I'd note is that your list of reasons is very much at odds with what defined the United States at their founding. Having a large military, for example, is something I'm particularly not proud of. Americans used to think of a large standing army as a curse, not something to be proud of. Standing armies were even called out as being at odds with liberty in many states' original (1776-1783) declarations of rights, and the 2nd amendment to the US constitution indirectly does the same. Here's a quote from a famous founding father that highlights how much ideas of what Americans should be proud of about their country has changed. There's very good reason to think our founding fathers wouldn't be proud of present-day America. Patrick Henry: "You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your Government."
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  5. ​ @Kingepticon  Even in percentage terms, let alone total dollar terms, government spending in the US is extremely high, higher even than Russia and nearly double South Korea. What form those taxes take isn't so significant as the total take, and there's nothing exceptional about the US in that respect.
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  6. @Micloren That quote from that Iranian immigrant sadly highlights the degree to which Americans think in strictly material terms. It's sadly nothing new: Alexis de Tocqueville: "As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?"
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  7. "The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this – that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot." -Lysander Spooner "Ours is a government founded upon the consent of sovereign States, and will be itself destroyed by the very act whenever it attempts to maintain or perpetuate its existence by force over its respective members. The surest way to check any inclination in North Carolina to quit our sisterhood, if any such really exist even to the most limited extent among her people, is to show them that the struggle is continued, as it was begun, for the maintenance of constitutional liberty. If, with this great truth ever before them, a majority of her people should prefer despotism to liberty, I would say to her, as to a wayward sister, 'depart in peace.'" -Alexander Stephens "...it is forgotten, that the true glory of our government—the queen beauty of our system is, that it ceases with the will of the people. Its true strength lies not in navies and battalions, but in the affections of the people. Numbers in our midst... are vainly boasting that we propose to show the world that we have a government that is strong enough to meet the exigency and to suppress rebellion. But they fail entirely to apprehend and appreciate the true theory of the American system. Their is the old European, and not the American, idea of government... “The true strength of a free government—and they are the strongest of all, is in the devoted attachment of its citizen sovereigns. Let this be forfeited, and the government falls. “A government which is strong by the exercise of military power over its own citizens, is not a free government, but a despotism. “Instead of the peaceful separation of these States being a disgrace to our government in the eyes of the world, it will constitute in all coming time its truest glory, and will demonstrate the infinite superiority of the voluntary system of self-government over the despotic usurpations of the past.” -George Bassett
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  8.  @pavitrprabhakar3981  Thanks for sharing your perspective, by the way.
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  9.  @pavitrprabhakar3981  Your comparison of Phelps to India is very funny. I guess I don't see any advantage to living in the same country as leading scientists or athletes, though. I think it's pretty crazy how much money Americans spend on sports programs (including tax dollars for sports programs that are parts of schools), plus all the time spent driving children back and forth to sports programs and other activities. I think I'd prefer a mellower lifestyle where children just got to go outside and play (including playing athletic games with neighboring children, but not in highly organized and specialized ways), besides helping with their families' work. Wasn't Gandhi very supportive of initiatives for local self-sufficiency and critical of industrial dependency? Do any Indians still hold views like that? I'm personally inclined to views like that, but it seems like very few Americans think like me nowadays. I think there's a lot of common ground between those views of Gandhi (based on my very limited and possibly mistaken knowledge) and the Patrick Henry quote I shared. I see becoming "a great and powerful people" (quoting Henry), including Olympic champions, leading scientists, a powerful army, etc. largely as seductive things that lead people away from things of greater value like healthy and reasonably independent, self-determining families/homesteads/communities. How well remembered is the Bhopal disaster in India today? To me that disaster represents the modern American way.
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  10.  @pavitrprabhakar3981  I'm in my 40's, and I think I just randomly read something that mentioned the Bhopal disaster within the last 5 years and made note of it, but prior to that I don't think I knew anything about it at all, and I'd guess less than 10% of Americans (maybe more like 1-2%) know anything about it. I might ask some slightly older people to get a better feel. Shamefully, I had to look up what 26/11 was and when I did it seemed totally unfamiliar to me, although I surely must have heard about it at the time. When I mentioned Gandhi before I didn't mean to say anything about non-violence, only about the self-sufficiency ideas that I connect to him when I think about India (although not as much as non-violence, but that just wasn't where I was going.) It sounds like India is doing more to avoid dependence on China than the US is. I wish the US were more like what it seems India is. I'm also troubled by how much control a small number of large social media companies (facebook, twitter, etc.) manipulate and control the flow of ideas and information, completely apart from any international issues, but that's probably another subject entirely. You ask how lots of scientists and innovators can not be a good thing. I didn't mean to say that they're bad (although I do think the costs of scienc and innovation -- I would consider the Bhopal disaster one example of those costs -- are often poorly calculated such that the net benefit is exaggerated), but what I meant to say is that the benefits of science tend to be globally accessible, so it doesn't seem to matter much whether those scientists are in my country or another country. People can buy the latest cell phones anywhere in the world, for example, no matter where the technology in them was developed.
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  11.  @pavitrprabhakar3981  I really didn't hardly watch any of the Olympics but I happened to notice that an Indian competitor when a medal -- I think it was gold -- in the javelin throw this year. I thought of you and just wanted to say congratulations!
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