Nationalism in Russia and the US

Several thousand Russian ultra-nationalists whose ranks include fierce Kremlin critics have marched through central Moscow calling for President Vladimir Putin's resignation and an end to illegal immigration.

Armed with anti-Putin slogans and black and yellow flags of pre-revolutionary Russia, the black-clad participants in the "Russian March" took to the streets on Sunday.

The march was timed to coincide with the Day of Popular Unity, a national holiday which this year marks the 400th anniversary of the 1612 expulsion of Polish occupiers from the Kremlin.

"We are the authorities, the authorities are us," some participants shouted.

"Putin's clique to trial," shouted others. "We beat Hitler, we will beat Putin."

Putin has been facing a nascent protest movement against his rule since an election that returned him to the Kremlin for a third term in May, and the anti-Putin cause has become popular with ultra-nationalists.
 

I've always supported a sense of nationalism in general.  There is a pride represented of past accomplishments and a vision of purpose on a purely sovereign basis.  However, nationalism translates to "racism" and "xenophobia" in the Utopian world of the politically correct. 

Were a defined Nationalist Party to pop its head up in the United States, it would be lopped off in the press and emphasized by no-nothing half-wits in the street screaming racism at the top of their lungs...and that's a shame. 

The truth of the matter is that nationalism has nothing to do with your skin color or even your origin.  It's about being all in on the country you call home.  You learn the language.  You learn the customs.  You try to fit in and succeed.  Rather than require street signs in your language, you learn to read those in the country to which you emigrated.  Rather than requiring special privilages and rights to correspond with the amount of melanin in your skin tone or the country of your birth, you accept that there is more to country than individual self.  You bask in the pride that you live in a country that best represents your ideas of freedom and liberty.

All that being said, I find it amusing that the press (and the Left, which is the same thing) haven't recognized that a good majority of the Tea Party is steeped deeply in nationalism.  Ah...they have a taste of that, but haven't realized the depth.  There's nothing racist about the Tea Party.  And, yet, the Left goes out of their way to call it just that.  Still, they don't truly understand the full nature.  The Tea Party doesn't dress in a uniform way.  But, they carry their country's flag.  There is uniformity in that.

In a sense, the nationalism represented in the above article is the same in the United States.  However, we are a bit more subtle.  It will be interesting to see which bloc is more successful, and whether the other learns from that result.