grd just described the profile of the anti anti-gloria school:

people “who are not too dependent on the govt and are not deterred by bad politics” and who “can see the bigger picture.”

great post.

i cant really understand some ex-pinoys. they already have abandoned their first country, and yet they insist on putting it down further

“My fellow citizens: there is one thought I want you always to bear in mind. And that is: that you are Filipinos. That the Philippines are your country, and the only country God has given you. That you must keep it for yourselves, for your children, and for your children’s children, until the world is no more. You must live for it, and die for it, if necessary. MLQ

dodong,

don’t worry about us filipinos. we will take care of our bad leaders when the right time comes. just like what the late pres Manuel L. Quezon said, “however bad a Filipino government might be, we can always change it”. marcos stayed for almost 20 years but it’s not going to happen anymore. you only see the bad side of the country but some of us who are not too dependent on the govt and are not deterred by bad politics can see the bigger picture. there is great hope. there are plenty of good leaders out there and there are good citizens as well who are ready to serve (not necessarily in the govt) and who would never sell their souls as you’re trying to portray here (re selling of votes).

our country, the phils, as described by pres. Quezon is a great country. the reason why others who already left always come home to spend the remainder of their lives in the phils. (unless they want to stay in a nursing home). that goes also to those captivated foreigners who fell in love with this beautiful country and preferred to live and die in the phils. i have friends who left for the US but came back for good and i have an american neighbor now who likes the phils so much he doesn’t want to go back to the US anymore. then there’s Dylan Wilk of GK saying: “The Filipino is worth living for… when you start living for others, …that’s when you truly live.” how can you not appreciate such an unselfish act coming from a stranger?

as for you dodong, better enjoy your good life there in your adopted country and don’t stress yourself with too much negativity concerning the country you left. where you are now, you are blessed. enjoy the full benefits and protection of a great country where you don’t need to make your own sacrifices to reap it. it was laid to you unselfishly by others before you who did the hard work and made the ultimate sacrifice so that their future children (including you) will have a better life.

maybe so, but in this day and age of revisionism, re-writing, propaganda masqueraded as history, wikipedia as infallible authority, you-tube, fabricated tapes and composite pictures, etc., it’s not easy to separate authentic history from that which is fraudulent. the credibility of the historian as well as irrefutable basis of his/her account are important factors to history’s authenticity.

Filipinos simply don’t rectify their mistakes, they are repeated over and over and over and over and over again, again and again. Like selling their votes to landholder wealthy families who control senate, congress or any positions in the government – you can see the father, wife, sons, relatives….. or just the basic issue of using local resources (agriculture) to become self-sufficient on food supply as opposed to import mentality (may tong kasi). Philippine leaders have found errors to their advantages -making profitable deals here and there while doing band-aid solutions.

The establishment of the Philippine Commonwelath by imperial dictat was helped along by America’s economic distress in 1933. FDR then increased the dollar price for gold effectively devaluing the dollar and banned the private ownership of gold.

Off course that meant that all gold in the Philippines became property of the U.S. state directly.

By 1942 FDR had to make sure the Pinoys stayed with the U.S. versus the Japs.

Even though by 1944 -45 it was the Huks who were carrying the fight to the Japs, the Americans betrayed the Pinoys after the kanutos favored the Japs in reconstruction over the Pinas. That is history and how can anyone change the facts. Again and again the Kanos betrayed their most faithful and trusted ally – the Pinoy.

No longer, KG., We’ve graduated with flying colors from OJT under supervision by IMF. We’re now a contractual employee – renewable every six years. Or until a new management takes over in between.

Nationalism
By Manuel L. Quezon III
Inquirer News Service

AFTER THE MASSACRE at Amritsar, Mahatma Gandhi said to British officials led by the viceroy of India: “I beg you to accept that there is no people on earth who wouldn’t prefer their own bad government to the good government of an alien power.”

About 10 years earlier, a Filipino said basically the same thing: “I prefer a government run like hell by Filipinos to a government run like heaven by Americans.” It was a sound bite heard around the world. But what all too few recalled was the essential sentence that came next: “Because, however bad a Filipino government might be, we can always change it.”

To this day, there are Filipinos who, whenever something goes wrong, cackle and say, “Look, Quezon got his wish. We have a government run like hell!” As if it is something uniquely Quezonian — and Filipino — to want to run our own lives, badly as the case may be, rather than entrust it to the guidance of foreigners.

What Quezon and Gandhi said roughly a decade apart is the essence of nationalism: a people, a nation, must have the chance to make good and bad decisions, because there is simply no substitute for decisions made for one’s self, by one’s self. Government will not always be good, leaders will not always be the best, but in the end, a government and its leaders must be selected by the people and no one else. Love of country, nationalism, requires that a people have the freedom both to make mistakes and achieve great things. After all, the lives of individuals as well as nations require learning, and one cannot learn without, at times, doing wrong or making mistakes. Surely it is better to make one’s own mistakes, to collectively endure errors of one’s choosing, rather than undertake the same risks at the direction of a colonial power.

Nationalism is not my country, right or wrong, or everything for my countrymen at the expense of all aliens, but rather a more fundamental appreciation that one belongs to a people who have a country, and that the destiny of that country is in the hands of a people free to make errors but at the same time rectify their mistakes. It involves a sense of stewardship over a particular territory that geography and history have made the primary responsibility of no one else on earth but those who inhabit that territory.

When, as a child, I first asked what nationalism meant, I was simply told, “It means love of country.” There are many kinds of love, as we all discover as we grow up, but fundamental to understanding love is that it requires a sense of self-worth and dignity. You cannot love and be loved, first of all, if you do not love yourself. And you cannot love properly if your love is the kind that is dependent merely on the approval of others, or measured by what you might believe to be the superior love of others. To love one’s country is to love one’s land and people with all their flaws, despite all their wrongs; and to maintain, at the same time, a conviction that one’s love for nation and nationhood will result in a better, stronger country.

As a child, every August 19, I would look at the statue of Quezon in Letran and wonder what it was he was portrayed as being in the act of saying. Eventually I asked one Dominican, who looked at me sternly and thundered, “He is saying, ‘I love the Philippines!’” And the answer satisfied me.

Many years later, I came across a recording of one of Quezon’s speeches, and it is the only one I have committed to memory both due to its brevity and its being to the point. The speech was recorded in the 1920s, when he was first diagnosed with tuberculosis and assumed he didn’t have much longer to live. It goes like this:

“My fellow citizens: there is one thought I want you always to bear in mind. And that is: that you are Filipinos. That the Philippines are your country, and the only country God has given you. That you must keep it for yourselves, for your children, and for your children’s children, until the world is no more. You must live for it, and die for it, if necessary.

“Your country is a great country. It has a great past, and a great future. The Philippines of yesterday are consecrated by the sacrifices of lives and treasure of your patriots, martyrs, and soldiers. The Philippines of today are honored by the wholehearted devotion to its cause of unselfish and courageous statesmen. The Philippines of tomorrow will be the country of plenty, of happiness, and of freedom. A Philippines with her raised in the midst of the West Pacific, mistress of her own destiny, holding in her hand the torch of freedom and democracy. A republic of virtuous and righteous men and women all working together for a better world than the one we have at present.”

These are the basics we often overlook, but which are the requirements for true love of country: A sense of identity. A sense of belonging. A sense of responsibility and accountability to the past, to the present, and to the future. Most of all, a dream of a country that is no one’s but our own, and for which we must always retain the fondest dreams to inspire us as we go about our daily lives.

thanks mlq3. it’s a beautiful masterpiece as i have expected and very inspiring specially those quotes from your grandfather.

between me and my wife it was her whom i think has innate qualities of being nationalistic. i’ve been guilty at times of leaving the country too. i had suggested to her in the past about moving out for the sake of the children but she has been steadfast on her resolve to stay put. she always says, “i can be of better help here instead of going out, perform my social obligation and serve my country by offering my services to those in need. i love this beautiful country and i will live and die here.” who can beat that?

“I LOVE THE PHILS.”

here is “nationalism” from aug. 19, 2004:

http://www.inquirer.net/globalnation/sec_fea/2004/aug/19-02.htm

and a more recent one,

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=97121&d=6&m=6&y=2007