For the vast majority of Americans, I have no way of knowing, moment to moment, if they are alive or dead.
I am not disputing that I emotionally value the lives of loved ones and even acquaintances more than I emotionally value the lives of people I have never met. Emotional currency is not the only one that exists, however, and I do intellectually, economically, politcally, and a bunch of other ways value all people equally.
Bode Darkly wrote:
Even if you could not kill, you would have to be totally indifferent to the outcome of a fight between your spouse and a mugger to say you truly valued both lives equally.
No, I wouldn't. If I valued the mugger's life equally to a spouse's, I value the money of my spouse in our hands. I can value the health of my spouse over the health of the mugger. I can value the freedom from prision of my spouse over the freedom from prision of the mugger. There is more to value in a person than just a life.
There is no currency in which I value the lives of Americans I have not met over Sweds or Indonesians I have not met.
Nationality is an arbitrary grouping, while people known to me is not an arbitrary grouping. Some people might argue that I should value people from my culture more than people from other cultures, because I understand and "know" those from my culture. But there are a heck of a lot of cultures out there I like better than my own, so if it's an evolution of ideas sort of thing, I'd be willingly treasonous.
Essentially, the idea of "my country, right or wrong" is abhorrent to me. I could have an interesting discussion about whether I would go to the same lengths to stop, punish, or a kill a friend I thought was doing wrong as I would go to stop a stranger from doing the same thing. Such a discussion about country just seems silly to me.