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Pouring My Art Out by Arthur H. Browne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.Based on a work at https://pouringmyartout.wordpress.com/.
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Pouring My Art Out 
It may merely be the disparate ways linguistics shapes our thoughts but, insofar as I’m concerned, no person who claims to be a citizen of other than their country loves it. They are by their very feelings traitors.
well, that would certainly keep the wars going.
That’s a huge and mis-aimed leap of logic. Love of and true citizenship of one’s nation is not a cause for war against another.
uh… historically speaking, it is the most common way that countries get their citizens to fight in a war. Throw some religion into the mix, and that covers almost all the wars.
Yet it is almost never the reason for the war and even when used to sell a war to the citizenry it is almost always an addition to some other cause, such as an outside threat or, as is more common in America, a threat to some other nation.
Lots of countries have gone to war against only a perceived threat. Sometimes, the threat is made up… take, I do’t know, the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq… Germany’s staged raid by fake Polish soldiers on a radio station… I could go on. If love of country is a cause to die for, then love of planet might be a cause that brings us together. It is the perceived differences between the peoples of nations that makes going to war over the perceived threats possible. If we look at ourselves as humans instead of groups of humans, we might be better off. I am not trying to be argumentative, or discount your views. I think you are right. And my post was just supposed to be a cute little way to get conversations like this started. Thank you, fellow human being.
Actually, after careful study, I’ve concluded that the Iraq thing was a lie on our part. We had credible evidence – turned out to be false and we got played – that only one dept., the dept. of energy rejected.
It was, however in my opinion an act of cowardice on Pres. Bush’s part. He was so scared of another 9/11 that he failed to consider all the options. Or, at least, that’s my belief.
That should have been WASN’T a lie on our part.
We didn’t have credible evidence. We had one report from one guy, that a lot of experts said could be false and should be looked at more carefully… it just happened to support Bush and Cheney’s agenda.
Right… and it is often easy for leaders to lie to their people. If it can happen here, imagine how easy it is in a dictatorship like North Korea. But it does support my belief that wars get started for stupid reason.
… also, it is a huge and mis-aimed leap of logic to assume that loving the planet doesn’t leave room for love of a country… love is boundless. I just think that if we all thought of ourselves as living on the same sphere, it might be less likely that we hurl rocks… or nukes… at each other. But saying that I can’t love my country too much if I love my planet is like saying I can’t love my daughter if I use up all my love on my wife.
As I said, it could be a matter of semantics and the cognates we each attach to them. Citizen means something to me.
If you said you loved the world, the universe even, but were a citizen of America – assuming you’re American – I’d have taken it more like you seem to mean it.
I disagree with some of your later thought though. The very love I feel combined with the protective instincts instilled in me by the country I love can and does make me more likely to go to war with certain peoples due to how they treat their own and others. I don’t push for it though because I believe wars should only fought for the needs of my nation, not the needs of the peoples of other nations. Besides, “humanitarian intervention by force” seem ridiculous to me except in the rarest and most desperate of occasions.
I guess my problem is that wars are started by people… and people aren’t always as smart as you or I… and they have agendas and plans of their own. If each country could only go to war after all the citizens have a say, I might be for that. Except it seems like there should still be a better way to settle differences… like Nurf wars or something. Also, people tend to get swept up in the patriotism, as happened with us after 9-11, where voices of opposition were shouted down. Because people can be sheep, and patriotism is an emotional response to many people. High emotions make for bad decisions.
Sadly for Man the idea that if each country could only go to war after all the citizens have a say probably wouldn’t change much. Remember that 900K Chinese invaded Korea to fight us and the South Korean and they did so after a national vote on it and the entirety of their army was volunteer.
Maybe, but when else in history has everybody anywhere agreed on one thing… we can’t agree on climate change, health care, tax rates for the rich, left or right Twix, is the Cleveland Indian’s mascot racially insensitive, or whether or not the Three Stooges are funny.
And that is quite telling. The only thing we can as large groups agree upon is to make war.
that’s cast rather a pall of gloom over the evening, hasn’t it?
… and when you get right down to it, this is a silly little comedy blog… I just post weird things that pop into my head… and I was doing a series of flickering animation posts… and I thought it would be fun to stick some more stuff inside me… I don’t really pretend to be able to solve the world’s problems… and I felt it needed to have some words typed in there… so… uh… yeah
S’OK I take my gloom elsewhere. Hell! I’ve a whole blog sat aside for it.
I really do value you opinion, and am honored to have talked to you.
I mean, if you go back far enough in my blog, I am sure you can find things that will annoy you way more than that post.
Sorry. That’s my world. I’ve fought on four continents for various reasons and that’s how I see things.
I was in the Navy way back in the day.