We fell in love like the Fourth of July. But there was nothing red, white, and blue about it, because we fell in love in England, despite the fact that the colors on their flag are also red, white, and blue.

It's such a shame that we know so little about our own country, that we can't find it in our hearts to love our own kind. Instead we admire those who show our country disrespect and betray its people.

Recognize at all times the paramount right of your Country to your most devoted services, whether she treat you ill or well, and never let selfish views or interests predominate over the duties of patriotism.

For months in the fall of 2001, our highways looked like a county fair on wheels. "Look out, Al-Qaeda---patriot on board!" I once saw a guy with five flags tell a guy with four flags to go back to Afghanistan.

The story of the American Civil War is essentially one of human beings––Northerners, Southerners, Blacks, Whites, men, women–– holding themselves accountable for the future of a nation.

I looked westward and marveled that, somewhere over those mountains, Kabul still existed. It really existed, not just as an old memory, or as the heading of an AP story on page 15 of the San Francisco Chronicle.

I’ve never really understood national pride, or even ethnic pride. It should be more about pride at being a human and living on this planet with fellow humans surely, let’s widen the parameters a bit

Patriotism ... is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.

I feel proud that I have been counted worthy to have blood shed by a traitor, and to suffer torture at the hands of those who have undertaken to trail our Flag in the dust. Signed, Yours as Ever, Franklin M. Haven.

And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don't want any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive.

Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance It is also owed to justice and to humanity Patriotism consists not in waving the flag but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong

People who make use of all their senses in trying times are no less patriotic than those whose restraint is lost, whose senses are dimmed and whose brains are washed. This is also the time for the patriot to say: Enough.

In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People."(Canton, OH, Anti-War Speech, June 16, 1918)

I had a dream about you. You wrapped the American flag around you like a towel, while I let Russia shower me with praise. The people over there really seemed to love me, probably because they are over there and I am not.


Culture makes lies plausible through exposure to time. It makes prejudice seem like physics intergenerationally. It is therefore the most dangerous opponent of philosophy, because it feels the most credible to the average person.