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It's not the governments that envy us and wish to be like us, it is the people. Envy is probably not the best word, what most people do want is to be free and to allow their freedom and moral constraint to allow them to become the best they can be. Even with the difficulties, setbacks, inroads against it, that is what we have here and what has made us great.

So, it is true that there are many governmental forms and individuals involved in those governments that dislike us, but all you have to do is continue to look at the desire of millions upon millions to come here to know that the world looks upon us as that shining city on a hill. And that is not said with vain pride, it is said with humility and reverence, knowing full well what it is that makes it that way. People throughout the world continue to be drawn to it, irrespective of revisionists, naysayers, detractors, etc..

it is true that there are many governmental forms and individuals involved in those governments that dislike us, but all you have to do is continue to look at the desire of millions upon millions to come here to know that the world looks upon us as that shining city on a hill.

I advocate that annually, American citizenships should be auctioned off to qualified bidders. And anyone who has contempt for American citizenship should just sell theirs and move on. I imagine you could buy 40 acres and a mule in Africa for what your American citizenship would bring on the open market. Any takers?
Considering the things that run on electricity or gasoline, and medical care/technology, an American secretary is as well off as Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was.

And that is not said with vain pride, it is said with humility and reverence, knowing full well what it is that makes it that way. People throughout the world continue to be drawn to it, irrespective of revisionists, naysayers, detractors, etc..

People's minds exist to make sense of things; the freedom to express the sense that you can make of the world is therefore inherently valuble to humans. And much as you may want to consider all the sense that the naysayers think to make, IMHO patriotism makes far better sense. Superficial, arrogant negativity sells newspapers but is a grossly distorted picture of American reality.

I don't think we have the same conception of what sinful pride is.

Frankly, I don't care much for the American government itself, whatever party is in charge, which might be another major reason why such expressions of "We're #1 in the eyes of everybody who doesn't hate us" provoke irritated verbiage from me. My loyalty to the physical land of my birth and the people I actually know is prior in my mind, then less local areas gradually increasing to the abstract nation and then the very very general Globe. Nationalism strikes me as a half-way house between globalism and localism. I think of myself as a Coloradoan before I think of myself as an American, which is very strange because I have no connections to nostalgic Southern neo-confederates.