quote:

Originally posted by Kinezi And poor and halfway/less educated people tend be more patriotic.. Hmmm? What do you guys think?

Could you at least provide some sort of link that you believe supports causality or correlation before making such a provocative (and potentially quite idiotic) statement?

Personally, I think there is no particular reason to believe either case would be true. People is people and their beliefs are their own. We all make our own reality. I know plenty of people from both spheres that would render that argument both relevant and completely irrelevant.

Therefore, I'll say false (though the opposite is not necessarily the case either.)

I guess it depends what you mean by patriotism.

quote:

Originally posted by Kinezi And poor and halfway/less educated people tend be more patriotic.. Hmmm? What do you guys think?

Why?
Where's the argument?

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I think poor/uneducated people are more likely to be "blindly" patriotic... That is, they don't take into account the bigger picture...the repercussions of their government's policies towards the rest of the world...so they have more of a "We're always right...God bless America" attitude. The more educated you become, the less black and white the world seems.

quote:

Originally posted by Capitalizt they have more of a "We're always right...God bless America" attitude. The more educated you become, the less black and white the world seems.

very true.

personally, i think i'm very patriotic, however, i'm neither poor nor uneducated.

quote:

Originally posted by Kinezi And poor and halfway/less educated people tend be more patriotic.. Hmmm? What do you guys think?

My neighbors once asked me, "why don't you fly an American flag, like everyone else in the neighborhood in support of the troops?" and I say, "Fine, YOU can fly a flag in support of the troops, it's literally the LEAST you can do." I tend to take a more active and direct role in my patriotism, where I can see the results of my actions, not just fly a flag. (...and take a look at where those American flags are manufactured)

I also don't tend to throw it in anyone's face, I do my part silently.

People, like in that last picture, hold signs that say "BUY AMERICAN" and then they go and shop at Wal-mart or Harbor Freight tools and support the Chinese.

quote:

Originally posted by zookeeper People, like in that last picture, hold signs that say "BUY AMERICAN" and then they go and shop at Wal-mart or Harbor Freight tools and support the Chinese.

+1

the great hypocrisy of middle america.

quote:

Originally posted by Capitalizt The more educated you become, the less black and white the world seems.

Hmmm, I don't know if I agree with that one...

I would say that the more "experienced" you become, not just "educated", you view the world MORE in black and white/right and wrong.

quote:

Originally posted by jerZ07002 +1 the great hypocrisy of middle america.

We don't seem willing to accept that fact that we are cutting our own throats by continuing to "hoard" all of this cheap overseas crap, not saving our paychecks, just verbally complaining about gas prices instead of actually changing our travel habits, and having Mexicans do all of our landscaping because we don't want house work to interfere with our Saturday golf match at the club.

Flying an American flag everyday does not relieve you of your responsibilities to this country.

I think I would actually have to say that being an "inactive patriot", ie: just flying the flag or having a yellow ribbon bumper sticker, is worse that a person who is a non-patriot and hates his country.

quote:

Originally posted by Kinezi And poor and halfway/less educated people tend be more patriotic.. Hmmm? What do you guys think?

I think you need data and/or arguments. But, let's see:

quote:

More patriotic countries have greater equity home bias. In a panel of World Values Surveys covering 53 countries, measures of patriotism are positively related to home bias measures after controlling for transaction barriers, diversification benefits, information and familiarity. Changes in patriotism vary with changes in the home bias. The results are robust to using ISSP measures of patriotism covering 24 countries and within-U.S. data from the Survey of Consumer Finances. Instrumenting patriotism with social variables uncorrelated with economic and political factors confirms that patriotism affects investment. The average country invests $18 to $30 billion more abroad with a one standard deviation drop in patriotism.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....tract_id=406200

Applying this to a more personal level, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the more cosmopolitan a person is, the less patriotic they tend to be. Therefore, the less one person knows about foreigners, the more they seem to think their kind is somewhat more special.

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not sure why you all want the OP to provide links or arguments, he's put a statement up there for debate, and so far the point is being debated pretty well.

it is a very broad brush to paint people with. A lot of poor people came from other parts of the world, so can be more experienced in international issues than rich folks. Plenty of rich folks live in a cocooned world.