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Do you think Americans can begin to love their country again?
I think that we as a nation should pass legislation requiring people to love their country. My problem is that few other people think this way. Can you help?
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Want to answer more questions in the Health & Fitness category?
Maybe give some free advice about: Mental health?
No.
You cannot legislate thoughts or emotions.
Not only would any legislation requiring people to 'love' their country be completely ambiguous, arbitrary, and impossible to enforce without physic detectives; it would unconstitutional.
If there is only one thing worth loving about the United States of America, it is the constitution. The First Amendment to that Constitution PROHIBTS the government from making any law that infringes on freedom of speech, infringes the freedom of the press, limit the right to peaceably assemble, or limit the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
That means, the RIGHT to criticize your country and your government, is a fundamental right of all American citizens.
Countries where you don't have the right to criticize your leaders, your countrymen, your politicians or other leaders are horrible places to live. They are places where you can be fired, beaten or killed, just because you disagree with the group or person who is currently in charge.
No law requiring citizens to 'love' their country will ever pass in the United States as long as sanity prevails. Defend your country? Yep. Respect your country and its laws and fellow citizens? Sure. But NEVER will you be required to agree with everything your country has or will do and NEVER will you be required by law to ‘love’ your country.
Loving a country can, and should, mean always striving to make it the best country you think it can be. In that struggle for improvement, people will disagree. You don't get to throw someone into jail for disagreeing what kind of country it is they want to ‘love’.
Frankly, as more and more details of the torture and human right violations of the past few years surface, honest and decent Americans are going to have to come to terms with a kind of shame few nations have had to face. Those who do love their country will find that love has been disappointed by the behaviour of their leaders. I’m afraid the worst is yet to come from America’s self-image and laws about how American’s must feel will not be the solution. Transparency, accountability and laws limiting the government’s ability to break its own laws will be.
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Your question is a moral paradox.
America gives freedom of thought and speech, and is one of its defining traits that it is proud of.
Forcing people to love America would be against that, making them love an America that is not really America anymore.
Thus, unless you are saying you DON'T love America as it is now, then it doesn't make sense.
(None of this reflects my personal views one way or another, I love people not dirt.)
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The reason few people think the way that you do is that most people know and understand that you can't force someone to love something. If people don't like America, that's part of their free will. How would the nation pass legislation require people to love their country? Would that be a law or something? People can't express their feelings about America unless they're positive feelings of love? That just doesn't make any sense and goes against the whole free speech thing.
Sure, people should be more appreciative for what they have. Other countries are much worse than America, of course. It's great that you have pride in your nation, but no one else has to. The government can't require people to love America either.
Darby
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