Happy Independence Day!

[John Ryan]

Well, I love any films with priests or nuns so I will look for it, but honestly I thought you were seriously quoting from some centuries ago priest with some kind of clout! :)

 

And I guess I just had to leap in because I am so proud of my daughter. I personally could never choose the army as a career, but she seems to love it and, well, I think she's amazing.

 

But thanks for the explanation - it makes a lot more sense now.

 

I might be a Communist heavily influenced by the Christian Anarchist tradition, but I do not expect everybody to feel the same way as me. I simply have no patriotic or nationalist sympathies within me. I only intellectually understand patriotic sentiment, I cannot emotionally connect with it. Sometimes I feel that I am missing out on a sentiment that fills one with great meaning. 

 

The cult of the military is very much akin to the cult of religion, in fact. I find it rather fascinating that at how the military has become sacred under the tenure of the nation-state. 

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I might be a Communist heavily influenced by the Christian Anarchist tradition, but I do not expect everybody to feel the same way as me. I simply have no patriotic or nationalist sympathies within me. I only intellectually understand patriotic sentiment, I cannot emotionally connect with it. Sometimes I feel that I am missing out on a sentiment that fills one with great meaning. 

 

The cult of the military is very much akin to the cult of religion, in fact. I find it rather fascinating that at how the military has become sacred under the tenure of the nation-state. 

 

 

I'm a bit like you in that I really find it hard to get very nationalistic so patriotism for me is more cultural than emotional (like enjoying American holidays and food or the Australian attitude to work and life or the English sense of humor. My mother's family were very intense about being Scottish even though she was born in Australia. My father was American but his ancestors were from Europe. I was born and raised in the US but have lived half my life in Australia, and then spent about three years living in England, which I also love, so I can't really understand the whole emotionally patriotic fervor for any one country. I get torn between my love for all of the places I have lived (including Mexico and even Singapore). 

 

On the other hand, I admire those who offer to defend the values of a country (like freedom) and understand that some wars appear to be either unavoidable or even just (WW II springs to mind).

 

As for the military being a cult - there is no doubt in my mind that it has many features of a cult, just as religious life does (and many religions in general) -- but some cults are more benign than others, and some actually have a purpose (like defending a country from invasion). In fact, I think that a cult mentality exists in many aspects of society today - the trick is working out which ones are dangerous, which are basically benign and which serve some kind of purpose for society in general. But this is just my own observation from having lived in a cult in the early 70s and then reading a lot about cults after I exited. I have no facts to support what I am saying - just anecdotes and personal experience.