"I'm Proud to be an American." I saw quite a few of these bumper stickers while driving around Long Island yesterday. I wondered to myself, what motivates people to place these stickers on their cars. What need does this declaration fulfill? Are people so proud that they need to shout it from the mountain top, and in leu of no mountains in their particular region they opt for a bumper sticker. Is it a message to all the non believers, a not so subtle message that America is a country of whom its worth being proud.

Then I wonder, why aren't people proud to be inhabitants of the planet earth. Maybe they are, but they just don't have an overwhelming need to declare it. Maybe there is a geographical limit to the breadth of proudness. Can people only be proud within a particular region. Maybe human beings are incapable of being proud if a land mass is greater than three thousand miles wide, or their affinity for a particular region is unable to span large seas or oceans. This proudness also seems incapable of moving too far north or south, and tends to limit itself to a east west directional movement.

In Germany there were no "I'm Proud to be German" bumper stickers or "God Bless Germany" tinted rear truck windows with a mountain goat proudly clutching the German flag between its teeth. They seemed to have a much different perspective on the concept of nationalism.