Love of Country


18-03-2017 02:11 PM

AMMONNEWS - By Abduulillah - What makes a certain people love their country while others cannot or will not? It seems strange to me that a person cannot love the place he was born or the country that has afforded him and his family for decades if not centuries a place to call home and a people to love and be a part of.

As I travel the globe for business, I am always struck by the fact that in many very prosperous nations love of country comes without any reservation. They seem to love it even when the leaders chosen do not represent their political views or in some cases are tyrants.

Yet; for some reason in many of the Middle-East countries that I get a chance to visit, and in my own, the indigenous peoples seem to always curse it for some reason or another.

Is this because we generally do not like where we live? Is this because we have had a long history of non-representative governments where we can have an actually stake in our own affairs? Or is it just the way we are?

Note, that this observation is not limited to the poor of these Middle-East nations, but also the rich who reside and have been afforded such wealth. Yes the same rich who control 97% of the country’s total wealth! They seem to grumble the loudest and in many cases do not spend that much time in country to actually suffer from whatever they seem to be howling about.

Let me tell you, when I go west say to America or England or Germany, I hear the same grumbling about this political leadership in their own countries. They call them names, they even have the gall in some cases to actually call them bad names to their faces or on television or on social media or elsewhere. They however, NEVER EVER, say bad things about their nation. They always seem to love it unequivocally without reservation or shame. They stand up when their flag is raised. They sing their anthem enthusiastically; they pay their taxes even though they feel them onerous at times or unnecessary,moreover, what astonishes me, they say and do this even when they despise their leadership.

After they spill their vitriol out about this leader or another that presently rules over them, they always add,“Although I cannot stand that such and such; I hope and pray they succeed in making this country great”. Yes they pray for the best. They don’t curse their nation, they surely don’t ask God to bring it down or curse it under their breath, but always ask for God to raise it up and even pray of the leader they do not like to guide him or her to raise their nation state above all others.

This occurs even in some countries that have harsher laws and taxes than we do and even under tyrannical rule. Look at North Korea for instance; we all know what they have to deal with on a day to day basis. Yet they seem to be able to manufacture and have their own industrial base and work hard. They have been able under very dire conditions and under heavy sanction to be able to make their country strong. When it comes time to standing and singing their nations anthem they seem happy to do it without reservation or shame. They love their country. Yes some are fleeing to South Korea but in both countries the average person wants reconciliation between each other and all view the Korean peninsula as one nation.

Why not us I ask? Why can we not love our country so stridently no matter what may. Why can we not sing our anthem and love each other as much as they do? Why do we always seem to curse our country and then trash it? Why do our rich who made their fortuneshere run abroad to spend it or worse to steal it from the coffers of our own nation and run? When I ask the average person these questions they always seem to have some gripe not only with the life they have but with anything under the sun that happened to them today. They always seem to blame it on their nations and leadership. They even fault each other. Worse than that they never pray for guidance for their leadership but their down fall.

I don’t get it! How can anyone pray for their country to be left in chaos? How can they not pray for guidance, how can they not pray for betterment and even work towards this? Why do we even need a leadership to tell us to clean or streets and not throw trash in them. Why do we have to steal from our nation either by not showing up on time to work or just stealing from its coffers or industries?
Don’t we understand that God in heaven hears our prayers and sees how we treat our nations and each other? Yes he hears and withholds his bounty from us because we ask him to. We don’t ask for betterment and guidance for our leadership, we don’t ask to make our country great, in fact we ask for the opposite. How in heaven can we ever get any reprieve if we don’t clean our own selves up first and always ask the best for our country and act upon it? Why can we not stand up each morning and salute our flag and pledge allegiance to our country? Why can we not teach our children to love it by showing them how much we love it? Maybe one day they will grow up and love it even more and God will increase our bounty because we and they will be working for it.

Please don’t get me wrong here, we do need a few things changed, such as what Adam Smith articulated approximately 250 years earlier; “little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.” That it is clear; prosperous countries specifically establish and embrace institutions that protect property rights, individual rights and profits and have laws that don’t work against free information, incentives and innovation as well as free trade, but mostly that they encourage peaceful social order.

That being said, I don’t feel it gives us the right to steal our countries wealth, or bash our country or trash it along the way because we feel it has not gotten to the levels we believe it should politically or socially. We need to love it even more, and work to make it better. Our leadership cannot do it all by themselves, they need us to carry the water back from the well so we can all drink. Can they and should they carry the banner ahead of us and even pave the way to make it easier? You bet they should, but it’s our country and we need to love it, by showing it, by praying for it repeatedly and for guidance, for no people can get ahead when they don’t try to in their hearts and act on it with their own handsfirst.
May God Bless Jordan and its People.




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