Monday, March 31, 2008

U.S. Pride: Where has it gone?


Being in the war has caused a lot of turmoil in the United States. People argue for it or they argue against. In this post, I do not want any of that argument. I want to show that no matter what, we are all Americans.

I went to New York for spring break and we went to ground zero. There was a display containing pictures from 9/11 when the tragedy struck, a time line of that day, and plans for the memorial being built. As I gazed upon the pictures of the burning towers and tears falling down innocent people’s faces, the emotions from that day came back to me very vividly. We were all upset that our country had been attacked and innocent people had been killed. After that day, the United States came together. We put differences aside and had a sense of pride and unity in one another and in our country. Every year when September 11 rolled around, almost every person wore the colors red, white, and blue. We were truly proud to be Americans.

Where has that gone? No one wears our colors anymore in remembrance of innocent workers, policemen, firefighters, or anyone who lost their lives on that dreadful day. It seems we have forgotten the day of September 11.

Presently, we have American’s throwing homemade bombs at the U.S. Army recruitment center in New York City. We have people saying they are ashamed of our country because of the war. Once again, I am not here to argue for or against the war. I am not going to say my opinion on that matter. What I want people to realize from my blog is when we put politics, republicans vs. democrats, or beliefs aside, we are all still Americans. However, we don’t show it. I think that is terrible.

We should be proud of where we come from. Maybe the war isn’t something you want and you are ashamed we are in it. However, we ARE in it and there is nothing that we can do about it as individuals. No matter if we agree or disagree with the government or each other, we need to stand by our country and its decisions. At the end of the day, we are all Americans.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I completely agree with you. 9/11 made us strong as a people by uniting us with a tragedy. We were proud to be American, we had American flags on our cars, we had posters in our lawns. Our pride made us stronger as a people against the evils of terrorism. But now we are in a war and people are getting restless. I am not going to state my opinion on the war either, but because terrorism is gonna take more than a couple days to root out of the entire world, people are getting annoyed and forget the emotions felt that day. Where are our flags now? Where is the insane pride we felt for months about our country? The saddest thing about it all is that it takes a national tragedy to bring out these feelings. We're in a war right now and we need to still have these same feelings of pride. How can these soldiers feel good about fighting for us while we as Americans do not support them or this country fully.

Beast said...

i like where you're at because I am a huge patriot, and love no other country but america. You need to be a little more open-minded though because you are indeed blogging to a world-wide audience. I know I'm being hypocritical, but our upcoming final paper is about being a good writer, and being a good writer means you must be open-minded. You have nearly all the other assets a good writer must show in this paper but the fact of the open-mindedness. Of course you and I can have our beliefs that theres no other way than the US of A , but we are trying to be writers, so we have to be able to respect the views of others and be open-minded.

Anonymous said...

We do need to become better citizens; people care about themselves, but not the country as a whole. The original post described going to New York City and the site of 9/11. That experience galvanized us as a people against terrorism. For a while. But that situation has become complicated, since the terrorists who attacked us were in Afghanistan, and Iraq has drained our troops away from the fight there and the search for Osama Bin Laden. Recently, I was in New Orleans, the site of another attack, this by natural forces. Our fellow Americans' lives were devastated, still are devastated, by Katrina, and you would think that our pride as Americans would not allow us to sit by and let people be homeless because of a natural disaster that happened over two years ago. I hope that the next adminstration acts, puts our taxes and our National Guard to work in the right places, and gives us something to be proud about again. The rebirth of New Orleans, with jobs and houses, would give us all something to take pride in as Americans.