Carlin Fan: George Carlin- Dumb Slogans

Source: Carlin Fan- Not a fan

Source: The New Democrat

I get George Carlin's point about ethnic or national pride that we shouldn't look at them as being accomplishments even though I'm sure that there are some Anglo-Saxon ( people of English ethnicity ) families in Manhattan and New England who would disagree with that. For them being born in America is like winning the Super Bowl during your rookie season. Winning a 20 million dollar lottery the first time you ever played the lottery. A lot of these families tend to be born rich to the point they never even have to worry about college or even finishing it because they'll probably have a million dollars or more by the time they hit 21 in life.

But for the 90-99% of us that have to work for a living from the time that we're probably teenagers and looking to buy our first car and not sure how we're going to pay for college because we know our parents can't just write a check to finance that for us and buy us our own car, ethnicity is just about who we're born to, who our biological parents are. Passing the bar exam, or graduating college, getting a promotion at work that we deserve, perhaps becoming an executive, those are real accomplishments in life.

Being born English, Italian, Jewish, Japanese, Latino, African, etc, in America that's just about who our parents are that we have no control over who were given to us. Not something that we ever worked for in life. It's not like we can decide before we're are born that we want to be Italian or Chinese in America and decide that's who we're going to be. As a German-American, I'm all in favor of people being proud of their ethnic people. ( Let's say ) And being proud of what they're community has accomplished in America. And being a member of the largest ethnic group in America as a German, I'm proud of what Germans have accomplished in America. But I'm not proud to be German just because I'm German, but because of what we've done in America and the country that Germany has become post-World War II as one of the greatest liberal democracies in the world.

As far as God Bless America, I'm an Agnostic myself not Lutheran or Catholic as Germans trend to be, so I'm not a fan of that expression. Especially when it comes from politicians especially career politicians who believe they can do whatever the hell they want to ( but I do believe in hell ) because they represent a deeply religious community and believe that if their voters believe they're devoutly religious and moral, that's all they'll need to do get reelected .

But I believe in free speech which covers religion and other personal beliefs and as voters if we don't like hearing that or believe we're getting played by some slick Willy politician who when they say that, we can always hold them accountable and look to see if that politician actually lives by the religion that they claim and doesn't have a handful of mistresses on the side and a fixer to pay them to keep them silent, while they bitch about the so-called immorality of others and then act accordingly.

Pride, whether it's ethnic, national or anything else, should be about what people accomplish themselves or what others have accomplished for themselves that people around them are proud of. Parents being proud their son or daughter graduated college, got married to someone they love and respect, had kids that made them grandparents. Things that we accomplish or that others accomplish around us that make us proud for them. Instead of being proud because of how we born or buying one of the first 5 new I-Phones, or getting 1000 friends on Facebook, when maybe we only personally know 100 of those people and are only in contact we maybe 50 of them. And as far as God Bless America, again we have a First Amendment and that means hearing things we don't like and that doesn't even make sense in many cases.
Carlin Fan: George Carlin- Dumb Slogans