I have always taken great pride in being an American, as I am sure many people do. There are times though, when I listen to the rhetoric and am not so proud of what our political leaders say or the decisions they make on the policy that America uses to moves forward.
American pride, to me, was and has always been about pride in the "American Experiment". Our judicial system and way of deciding constitutional law, the way people are represented, and the process of electing a new leader every four years--this in our time might not seem remarkable. It is really remarkable, that from a revolution came a stable government, much less a system that has as much flexibility as ours does. America is a culmination of hundreds of years of history, philosophy, and legal practices--formed into ideas about what we the people wanted from the government, not what the rich or powerful wanted.
But now it seems, our pride in being American is about money and power. We no longer tout about the superiority of our legal justice, about our freedoms, or opportunities, more because those have evaporated. We don't brag about our education system, our highways, or our environmental bounty, because all of it is degrading slowly without the attention it deserves. We don't brag about our diversity, equality or about why America is unique and to be the envy of the world.
Instead we have allowed corruption, greed, and anger cloud our public policy. Where once the Supreme Court had to slowly ease into developing jurisdiction over commerce more far reaching that interstate commerce, we now have a Supreme Court that grants personhood to corporations and allows them to contribute to campaigns through super PACs without limit or telling people they did. These same corporations however, don't have to pay an "income" tax like people do, nor can they be convicted of crimes and jailed for them--because they are not people. They can legally bring forward lawsuits though and exercise free speech just like real people do.
No instead, we are suppose to be proud of the size of our military and the size of our economy. We are suppose to feel American pride at our excesses and brash/rude behavior (if anything is to be learned from tv).
What we should be proud of is our history, even though there is much that is completely morally reprehensible, there is also a lot that we have done at least sort of right. We all love America, but I think the fear and worries that we can't articulate is that to Republicans, the government is worthless except for making business better, controlling people's choices, and bombing foreign places they can't pronounce. Regardless, all of it typically has one primary objective--to make more money for whoever is making the money. Be it through defense contractors, taking away access to birth control, or making sure the companies they are invested in or would like a job at when they retire from public life, or just a lobbyist with some money to grease the wheels.
But if we focus on the economy, on our military being the best--and that being the source of our national pride it will be very easy to deviate from the course set by the founding fathers (though granted I'm sure none of them had ever thought we would make corporations people).
We need to focus on our civics being why we are proud of America. We need to focus on what makes America great. It's not war or money, its our people and our many investments that have greatly paid off for our country in the past. If we don't focus on the innovations and investments we have made since 1776 while still revering the Constitution and Bill of Rights--we might actually be able to create problems that cannot be solved.