Why do Americans Hate America?

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I love America for the ideals of freedom, justice and self-government upon which it was found.
Those ideals are what make America special.

I like my fellow Americans because they tend to be cheerful and positive. But sometimes they are so damned silly and that annoys the hell out of me. I find that most Americans are a decent lot. Many tend to be helpful of their own free will.

After the San Francisco earthquake of 1988 up near where the freeway collapsed in Oakland the folks in the neighborhood immediately went into action, spontaneously, not waiting for orders or authorization from the local "authorities". They grabbed their ladders and climbed up to the collapsed roadways and help as many motorists as they could out from under the ruble. I find this to be very typical.

Just the other day in Cheektawaga N.Y (a suburb of Buffalo) when they had the blizzard, up near the part of the N.Y. State Thruway that was totally blocked the local neighborhood types immediately got their ladders up onto the roadway and helped motorists and truck drivers trapped in the drifts down to the ground. Then they gave them hot food and drink and helped them get their wits gathered so they could take what steps were necessary to get their vehicles freed up. Again, a very typical happening here in the U.S.. Alex de Toqueville wrote about such spontaneous actions in his book, -Democracy in America-. He noted that Americans tended toward ad hoc, spontaneous actions when the need arose. When the need arises, Americans, often, will go into action mode automatically and not wait around to be told what to do.

ruveyn

I've never heard anybody say it that bluntly. Who are you quoting? I'm not saying you're making this up, but I'm just saying it sounds like you might be over-generalizing. Usually when people want to limit freedoms, they don't believe in getting rid of freedom for the sake of it. They usually argue it along the lines of public safety or security or something like that, which I believe there are sometimes valid arguments for. Like with drug abuse, there's strong arguments that the freedom to abuse physically addictive drugs should be limited because it causes increased rates of domestic abuse, violent crimes, and that being strongly addicted to a substance works against the freedom to not be dependent on a a substance. However, there's a lot of complex arguments for keeping addictive substances off the black market as well.

The same goes for gun laws. While I believe that common people should own, keep, and bear arms, and not just a particular social class or the government, most anti-gun advocates argue it from safety. I disagree with their position, but if I was around inner-city gun violence and experienced drive-by shootings, I might have a different perspective on it. I don't think its productive to over-simplify arguments so much and to always assume stupidity. Its not a good way to win people over to your argument.

I think its short sided to conflate the limitation of freedom with the hatred of America because there's so many different ideals of freedom. Maybe the constitution limits the freedom of wealthy people to enslave other human beings. but that limitation preserves the liberty of everyone else. Limiting the freedom of the government to do whatever they want and to be accountable to an electorate preserves, too, preserves the freedom of everyone else.

Just because someone wants a certain type of gun regulation doesn't mean they have a seething hate toward America. The more staunch anti-gun people may think the founding fathers were fallacious on the issue for putting it in the Bill of Rights, but it doesn't mean they'd like to see a bunch of atom bombs rain down on the country or the complete dissolution of our form of government for some totalitarian alternative.