Yes, we can.

[Alex]

It isn't a word that has distinct lines in colloquial use.

What is gay "pride"? Black "pride"? Why would I say to Lani at the completion of a marathon "I'm proud of you"? I can be proud of my good works and charitable giving.

Do all of those have a common element or are they just the same word used for completely different things?

For me, the closest I can come to saying I'm "proud" to be an American is in the same sense of "gay" or "black" pride. Where the meaning isn't so much pride in an accomplishment but pride in the act of refusing to be ashamed of something over which you have no control.

While I wouldn't really say I'm "proud" of being an American, despite attempts by others to feel I should be, I am also not ashamed. I'm not happy with much about this country but I also think it is, overall, at least as good as anywhere else and in certain ways much better (and in certain ways worse).

And to an extent, we are all active participants of this grand thing that is the United States and therefore a certain sense of participatory pride seems appropriate but for that I tend to associate it with certain things. I'm proud of X policy or Y action (particularly if I was somehow involved just beyond being within the sphere of jurisdiction when it happened) but it still seems to me like a really odd construction to just be proud of being an American.

Like I said above, for me the formulation is too much like saying "I'm proud I have a nose." The "pride" I feel at being an American is, I imagine, the same pride I'd feel at being German if I had been born in Germany.

But it is interesting because Lani's relatives were one who were so disappointed in their born culture that they actively sought to leave it and made that commitment and very actively chose to become Americans. So she and I discuss this every year or so, whether her being "proud to be an American" has a very different qualitative element than when someone else says the same thing.