Latest news with #nationalPride
South China Morning Post
07-07-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Shandong's visit a ‘patriotic lesson', Eric Chan says as Chinese warships depart Hong Kong
Hundreds of people have flocked to the Hong Kong waterfront to catch a final glimpse of the Shandong aircraft carrier and its fleet as they conclude their five-day port call to the city, with the No 2 official saying the visit has boosted residents' national pride. During his speech on Monday, Chief Secretary Eric Chan Kwok-ki said the port call, which was part of the celebration marking the 28th anniversary of the city's handover to China, had demonstrated the country's care and staunch support for the city. '[It] gives Hong Kong residents a precious opportunity to see with their own eyes the country's first independently designed, built and equipped aircraft carrier, and to feel the strength of the country's military power and progress of its scientific development up close, enhancing our national confidence and pride,' Chan said. The senior official also said the visits, exchanges and seminars held during the fleet's five-day visit to the city, provided a lesson in patriotic education for Hongkongers – particularly the youth – deepening their understanding of the country's national defence infrastructure. Play Shortly before 11am, the Shandong was seen passing through the East Lamma Channel, with crowds gathering hours before at the South Horizons private residential estate in Hong Kong Island's Southern district to take a final glimpse.
CBC
06-07-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Can rising patriotism save the Snowbirds?
As the Canadian government weighs whether to replace the Snowbirds' aging fleet of Tutor jets — scheduled to be retired from service in 2030 — some say a surge in national pride may make a difference.
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
There's a sinister reason for Democrats' collapsing pride in America
One of America's two great political parties no longer thinks of itself as proudly American. As recently as 20 years ago, Democrats were almost as keen on their country as Republicans were, according to Gallup polling. In 2005, fully 81 per cent of Democrats said they were 'very' or 'extremely' proud of being American. Today that number is just 36 per cent. Republicans have hardly changed in that time: 93 per cent were 'very' or 'extremely' proud 20 years ago, and 92 per cent feel that way now. Their national pride didn't decline much even during the Democratic administrations of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Democrats have grown more disenchanted with America whenever Donald Trump has been president, but their alienation isn't only about him. There was a time when even the Communist Party USA went out of its way to present itself as patriotic, insisting that 'Communism is 20th-century Americanism'. The 21st-century Democratic Party is rather less eager to present itself as characteristically American. If the Gallup surveys provide one indication of a post-American mentality taking root among Democrats, recent events supply further evidence. When illegal immigrants clash with law-enforcement in cities like Los Angeles, many Democrats, including office holders, side with the foreign lawbreakers. There are some 212 Democrats currently serving in Congress, but only seven voted for a House of Representatives resolution condemning the recent violent protests in LA. The Democrats have come to see themselves as a party that represents populations other than just American citizens. The charismatic 33-year-old who is the Democratic party's nominee for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, is himself an American citizen. But in 2013 his mother, the filmmaker Mira Nair, was quite emphatic in telling the Hindustan Times that Zohran 'is not an [American] at all. He was born in Uganda, raised between India and America. … He thinks of himself as a Ugandan and as an Indian.' That may have changed since he acquired US citizenship in 2018. Then again, his mother was already a US citizen when she made her boast to the Indian newspaper. Mamdani's father, for his part, is a professor at Columbia University renowned, the New York Times notes, as 'a major figure in the field of post-colonialism'. Mamdani might very well tell Gallup he's very or extremely proud to be an American, if he gets called during the next poll. But it's still fair to suggest that a Democratic Party already drifting in an ideologically 'post-colonial' and post-American direction is apt to accelerate down that path if the son of a top post-colonial academic becomes one of its future leaders. At the elite level with the Mamdanis and at the street level with the riots against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Left side of America's political spectrum is consistently committed to breaking down the connections between citizenship and the nation-state. Instead of the American federal government serving as an instrument of its citizens, the Left envisions a government administered by an elite without strong national loyalties, which rules in the name of humanity. To their minds, citizenship and national pride are anachronisms, indeed barbarities, that prevent the realisation of a more just, redistributive, 'post-colonial' society – the kind of thing that Mamdani's mayoral campaign might well have in mind with its call to 'shift the tax burden … to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighbourhoods.' Republicans have a steady sense of pride in being American because their view of politics prioritises country over party: America doesn't stop being a source of pride simply because Barack Obama or Joe Biden is president. Democrats, however, clearly have a weaker attachment to the country in general, and that attachment is more party-dependent than it is for Republicans, according to the data. This suggests that what is a source of pride for Democrats is how well America's government approximates the Left's post-national ideal. Trump moved steadily away from that ideal during his first term in office, causing Democrats' degree of pride in America to slump, dropping every year to a low of 42 per cent of Democrats who said they were very or extremely proud of their country in 2020. (The number then shot up to 62 per cent – still 25 points below the Republican mark – in Biden's first year.) In his second term, Trump has asserted national distinctions against transnational ideals still more aggressively, triggering a corresponding collapse in Democrats' sense of pride in America, to today's record lows. For Democrats, 'national pride' means being proud of transcending the old nation. This wasn't always the case. For all the bad publicity Democrats rightly received for the antics of their anti-American, radical Left-wing during the Vietnam War, the party had a patriotic mainstream. The high levels of pride in America recorded by Gallup's polls of Democrats 20 years ago attest to how long that mainstream survived. But since then the party has adopted a new outlook, fostered by a highly educated elite. This first cost the party much of its working-class white support and is now eroding its working-class Hispanic and black support, while Democrats have picked up new donors and publicists from the ranks of old guard Republicans with an internationalist outlook. Yet this influx of a few libertarians and neoconservatives isn't nearly enough to offset the loss of working-class voters, and what's worse, it contributes nothing to restoring the party's feel for the nation – quite the opposite, in fact. One of America's two parties is now a world party instead. Yet voters, especially Americans, prefer the nation to the world. Daniel McCarthy is the editor in chief of Modern Age Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Associated Press
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Thousands of voices unite in song at traditional choir festival celebrating Estonia's culture
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — The voices of more than 21,000 choir singers rang out in the rain in Estonia, and a huge crowd of spectators erupted in applause, unfazed by the gloomy weather. The Song Festival Grounds, a massive outdoor venue in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, was packed on Saturday evening despite the downpour. The traditional Song and Dance Celebration, that decades ago inspired resistance to Soviet control and was later recognized by the U.N.'s cultural agency, attracted tens of thousands of performers and spectators alike, many in national costume. The four-day choir-singing and dancing event centers around Estonian folk songs and patriotic anthems and is held roughly every five years. The tradition dates back to the 19th century. In the late 1980s, it inspired the defiant Singing Revolution, helping Estonia and other Baltic nations break free from the Soviet occupation. To this day, it remains a major point of national pride for a country of about 1.3 million. This year, tickets to the main event -– a seven-hour concert on Sunday featuring choirs of all ages -– sold out weeks in advance. Rasmus Puur, a conductor at the song festival and assistant to the artistic director, ascribes the spike in popularity to Estonians longing for a sense of unity in the wake of the global turmoil, especially Russia's war in Ukraine. 'We want to feel as one today more than six years ago (when the celebration was last held), and we want to feel that we are part of Estonia,' Puur told The Associated Press on Friday. Soviet occupation The tradition to hold massive first song-only, then song and dance festivals dates back to the time when Estonia was part of the Russian Empire. The first song celebration was held in 1869 in the southern city of Tartu. It heralded a period of national awakening for Estonians, when Estonian-language press, theater and other things emerged, says Elo-Hanna Seljamaa, associate professor at the University of Tartu. The festivals continued throughout a period of Estonia's independence between the two world wars and then during the nearly 50 years of Soviet occupation. The Soviet rulers were into 'mass spectacles of all kinds, so in a way it was very logical for the Soviet regime to tap into this tradition and to try to co-opt it,' Seljamaa said in an interview. Estonians had to sing Soviet propaganda songs in Russian during that time, but they were also able to sing their own songs in their own language, which was both an act of defiance and an act of therapy for them, she said. At the same time, the complicated logistics of putting together a mass event like that taught Estonians to organize, Seljamaa said, so when the political climate changed in the 1980s, the protest against the Soviet rule naturally came in the form of coming together and singing. The unity extended beyond Estonia's borders. During the Singing Revolution, 2 million people in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined hands to form a 600-kilometer (370-mile) human chain that protested Soviet occupation of the Baltics with a song. In 2003, the United Nations' cultural body, UNESCO, recognized Estonia's folk song festival and similar events in Latvia and Lithuania for showcasing the 'intangible cultural heritage of humanity.' 'We sang ourselves free' Marina Nurming recalls attending the Singing Revolution gatherings in the 1980s as a teenager. This year she travelled to Tallinn from Luxembourg, where she currently lives, to take part in the Song and Dance Celebration as a choir singer –- her longtime hobby. The Singing Revolution is a time 'when we sang ourselves free,' she told AP. Seljamaa says the song and dance celebration may have suffered a drop in popularity in the 1990s, a somewhat difficult time for Estonia as it was emerging as an independent country after the Soviet Union collapsed, but has since bounced back. There is a tremendous interest in it among young people, she says, and always more performers willing to take part than the venue can fit in, and there are people who had left Estonia to live abroad, but travel back to take part. Nurming is one example. She is part of the European Choir of Estonians – a singing group that unites Estonians from more than a dozen countries. Many opportunities to sing This year's four-day celebration, which started on Thursday, included several stadium dancing performances by over 10,000 dancers from all around the country and a folk music instrument concert. It culminates over the weekend with the song festival featuring some 32,000 choir singers, preceded by a large procession, in which all participants -– singers, dancers, musicians, clad in traditional costumes and waving Estonian flags –- march from the city center to the Song Festival Grounds by the Baltic Sea. Those taking part come from all corners of Estonia, and there are collectives from abroad, as well. It's a mix of men, women and children, with participants aged from six to 93. For most, singing and dancing is a hobby on top of their day jobs or studies. But to take part in the celebration, collectives had to go through a rigorous selection process, and months worth of rehearsals. For Karl Kesküla, an electrical engineer from Estonia's western island of Saaremaa, this is the first time taking part in the song celebration as a singer -– but he attended it before as a spectator. 'I got the feeling that what they did was really special and almost, like, every person you meet has gone to it or been a part of it at least once. So I just wanted that feeling too,' Kesküla, 30, told the AP at the procession on Saturday. High emotional point The theme of the song festival this year is dialects and regional languages, and the repertoire is a mix of folk songs, well-known patriotic anthems that are traditionally sung at these celebrations and new pieces written specifically for the occasion. The festival's artistic director, Heli Jürgenson, says that although the audience won't know all the songs -– especially those sung in dialects -– there will be many opportunities to sing along. The main concert on Sunday will end with a song called 'My Fatherland is My Love' –- a patriotic song Estonians spontaneously sang at the 1960 festival in protest against the Soviet regime. Every song celebration since 1965 has concluded with this anthem in what both performers and spectators describe as the highest emotional point of the whole event. An emotional Jürgenson, who this year will conduct a combined choir of about 19,000 people singing it, said: 'This is a very special moment.' She believes that what drove the tradition more than 150 years ago still drives it today. 'There have been different turning points, there have been a lot of historical twists, but the need for singing, songs and people have remained the same,' she said. 'There are certain songs that we always sing, that we want to sing. This is what keeps this tradition going for over 150 years.' 'We forget our troubles' Participants described the celebrations as being an important part of their national identity. 'Estonians are always getting through the hard times through songs, through songs and dances. If it's hard, we sing together and that brings everything back together and then we forget our troubles,' singer Piret Jakobson said. 'It's really good with all Estonian people to do the same thing,' said engineer Taavi Pentma, who took part in the dance performances. 'So we are, like, breathing in one and the heart is beating (as one).' Some 100 members of the European Choir of Estonians came to the Song Celebration this year from various corners of Europe. Among them is Kaja Kriis, who traveled from Germany, where she's been living for the last 25 years. 'Estonia is my home,' she said, adding that it's important for her 'to be together with my friends, to keep my Estonian language, to maintain the Estonian language and Estonian culture.'
Washington Post
03-07-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
How people are celebrating, protesting and traveling for July Fourth
LOS ANGELES — Recent polls will tell you there's been a drop in national pride among Americans, particularly Democrats in the Trump era, with some questioning whether to celebrate July Fourth at all this year. But Scott Allen, a registered Democrat in southern California, isn't one of them. He planned to commemorate the nation's 249th birthday with a politically mixed group of neighbors who will grill out and light off fireworks.
