Evelina Anville says that men tend to be more into patriotism than women. I never considered this but now I’m finding evidence that she is right. Compare the following statement from a female student’s essay with the penultimate post where I quoted a male student writing on the same topic:
The United States is a greedy country more concerned with enriching itself than with anything else. When I traveled to Mexico, I saw a very different way of approaching life. The people there are poorer than we are here in the US, but they were truly happy. They sincerely enjoyed life every day and didn’t concentrate on mindless acquisition of material goods.
Clarissa's Blog 
Thanks for the shout out! 🙂 I should say that I don’t base my observation on prolonged scientific polling….just my general impression after working with college students for years.
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..time for a female president??!!
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Honestly, I’ve noticed the reverse as being true, at least in so far as Canadian patriotism is concerned. Perhaps this comes down to different beliefs as to what constitute civic virtues between the two countries?
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From Catch 22:
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Just to put “More votes for the decent folk” in context:
Either Joseph Heller was a prophet or Texas was always Hell.
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“Either Joseph Heller was a prophet or Texas was always Hell.”
– Both, I think. 🙂
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The notion that poor people are happier than rich ones is a banality and also not true.
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Of course, the student is romanticizing what she saw from her experience as a tourist.
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Poor people are not happier necessarily because they are poor. They may have a different set of cultural values that don’t make material gain the core principle of their existence. I’ve already said that there was a tremendous amount of humor in hardship, in Zimbabwe. You can be happier with less if you don’t expect to have more. The danger would be if people come along and try to make an obvious cultural truth into a metaphysical formula, such as “blessed are the poor”. That would make the poor out to be passive recipients of blessings when, actually, happiness takes a lot of work.
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Fuck nationalism, fuck patriotism!
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