You can drive all day in England and never see an English flag. I suppose the nazis and their Nurenberg rallies put us off ranks of huge massed flags.

Before we say the English are not patriotic, we should switch the world to nationalistic

We in Europe know the logical outcome of of all that stuff with gold edges and eagles on the top too !

I think all the 'overly nationalistic' stuff in the USA was just a way of trying to pull all these different people together and it worked generally speaking - so it was a good thing.

BUT - If you don't know when to stop then it ends up as 'We are better than anyone else' , or as Mitt Romney puts it 'This is the finest country that ever existed in the history of the world' - and that's when it starts to get dangerous - ask any Jewish person. It's only a short step from that to declaring other people 'untermench' - inferior countries and a lower class of people who's lives and laws and traditions are not as valuable.

I just spent today in Jacksonville Florida away from the glitsy centre, and boy it didn't look like the finest country in the world. I was scared. Before you say 'well get out then', you should admit that the USA is not perfect by a very long way and that makes it the same as France or England or a whole lot of other countries.

Its only the 'we are better than you' that is getting out of control and it scares the world because we have seen it before in 1933 and it looks very similar to an outsider. When the government engages in torture and kidnapping and claiming the right to kidnap foreigners such as British bankers to be brought back to American courts, then it just adds to this feeling that the USA is claiming the world

The more I read about the history of the US, the more I like the sentiments on which it was based. What is happening now is nothing to do with the future that the founding fathers laid down. I will stay and help a tiny bit to take the US 'back to the future' and recapture the fine sentiments that propelled it right up to recently when it was taken over by merciless religious people. As ghandi said 'I like your Jesus a lot - why can't your Christians be more like him?'

The US will catch up - it followed Britain in abolishing slavery and it followed Britain in votes for women and I think it will follow Britain in getting rid of executions and torture and establishing a health system for all. That is not socialist - it's just civilized.

If I become American and just help by one vote to move it in these directions, I think that I will be more 'patriotic' and add more to enhancing America's well-being than all these tub thumping, flag-waving, cross-erecting supremacists put together

I haven't gotten used to the flag thing yet. Maybe if I understood "why"....

I have to be careful of not doing what the Brits accuse immigrants to the UK of doing which is coming all the way across the world voluntarily and then complaining about how things are done in the new country and wanting to change everything..

For instance, some Moslem staff asked for their checkouts to be 'no alcohol or pork' checkouts and the supermarket said no so far

Sometime in the next century, the majority of people in the UK will be moslem and that will re-surface and democracy says that the majority rule.

The first immigrants to the US did not start to speak Cherokee and live in teepees - they changed everything to suit what they thought was best.

A Brit in America is not a majority so all I can do (eventually) is put my one little vote in like everyone else.

I will struggle with whether to express my opinions or not because my wife says it can be dangerous here and people are killed by christians for their position on abortion ...

tricky situation and this isnt as safe as debate in the women's institute in Ambridge

Oh well, there is always the sunshine and the cheap dollars so I will take a low profile for now...