Quote Originally Posted by KristofferBodvin View Post
Your question is very difficult to answer, but there is something that America has that europe hasn't.
With barrack Obama USA have got a president that represents the nations highest ideals: loyalty, sacrefice, a will to work, duty, and most precious of all: faith. faith of the nation, of the community, faith of there being a contract not only between the leaders and the people, but also between the people and god.That nothing becomes without the pressense of god.These are words that no european dear to speak. In only 60 years we have lost faith. Even tough hundreds of thousends sacrefised them selves in fighting nazism, we have lost faith.It is unbeliaveble
This is what Obama and America can teach us, if we dear to commitWe don't have to replicate the americans, we have the treassure burried in our own history.Both men and women sacrefised everythingWe need those ideals.We need to see examles of those ideals.And I believe our people want to have faith I believe the time is has come to show patrionism, to show it without being umbarrased.The kind of pationism the americans embrace without blushing
The biggest obstacle is the -68 generation, they loath virtues such as these.Nationalism,paternalism,authority and God.The following generation grew up as ironic people without believes of any kind.The people who tore down the image of God in our society, got themselvesthe most bloody and horrid of all deieties: Mao and Pol Pot
The -68 generation did not gain so much power, but they had alot of cultural power. They severed a thread in our historical way of life, they broke a continuety.So that we now are ashamed to be europeans.We are only allowed to be it in a small and boring way.A flat, even and socialdemocratic way.
But such is not the original european patriotism, it has something volcanic.And this is what is missing in our self image. To be allowed to use the big words.The love for our countries have something strong and wild in it, like a force of nature.
We have become dobble people, we pretend to be nationals and cosmopolitans.
But we are neither, because we don't deare to be our selves.
This is what you amaricans do.You dear to believe.It is the faith that is the key, it is not a private thing I'm talking about, but the belief of the best for the nation.And the examples and the virtues, and these should have a national religouse background.In our time with so many cultures, a national patrionism may be the spark we lack.Honesty, sacrefice,loyalty and the search of truth never goes out of fashion.They are not local, but universal aspirations.Of course they have a local origin, we are in europe, and new imigrants would understand them.Like they have in the US.It is our history, but we should invite them to join us for shaping the future.It is a community, and a community demands.It is something we should reach for.

Peeowh...glad to get that of my chest
Very interesting to hear the European view point. I'm very refreashed by this. I alway thought that most Europeans looked down on Americans as those uncooth, uncivilized cowboys, with their guns, and their national pride.

Matt