I am witnessing an interesting conversation between two people right now. It relates directly to what we have been discussing in class. As we said in class regarding what a patriot is, one person is clearly defending the decisions of the government and one person is standing up for their opinions and saying what they don't agree with. We were just saying in class that those are two views on what patriotism could be. They are discussing what is going on in Libya and each person has string views and stands heavily by these two sides. Here is where I see patriotism as not being able to be defined, each person will not stand down and both can consider themselves patriots. It is impossible to say one person is being unpatriotic and one is not. This very conversation shows how many sides patriotism has and how one side can not be seen as right or wrong. There are so many differing opinions held by all sorts of people. Those who follow Obama's decision do so because they feel that is was our duty to help another country whose people were in need. Those who do not agree say that it is not our place to involve the US in this issue, and also we are also not in a financially stable place by any means. During this conversation I realized that the topic of nationalism came up as well. This is a quote that stood out to me relating to that,
"It was in the National Interest of the United States..." - Barack Obama regarding the US decision to send troops over to Libya
I would have liked to have brought that quote up in class during our nationalism versus patriotism conversation. Since we have moved on to another topic I will as a question instead for people to answer if they choose.
Question: Do you think Obama was taking a nationalist stand point here, do you feel that he might call himself one?
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