Tacitus reminds us, sort of, of Loyalty Day (which a few in the blogosphere thought was some new nefarious GroupThink holiday thrust upon us by Bush and company).

Turns out it was made official way back in 1949.

To most, it sounds creepy, reaffirming adherence to a set of national ideals.

In response, I posted this comment over at Matthew Yglesias' thread on the subject:

Well paint me a howl-at-the-moon patriot, but personally I'd like to think there's a tad more to being American than being born on a particular piece of dirt.

Sure, you can legally be American and hate every principle it stands for, from free speech to democracy to human rights...that's part of the beauty of it.

I don't think your citizenship should be revoked if you don't share our Constitutional values, and I don't think such people should be censored or locked away. But I'd like to think most Americans do share a core set of values, and I don't see anything wrong with acknowledging, or hell...even celebrating it.

So are we just on arbitrary teams, or is there more to being American than just having been born here? Is there anything wrong with acknowledging that some countries, including our own, are generally better at protecting rights and liberties? Is there anything wrong with being a little proud of that fact?