there are different types of pride.
for one, there is group pride: gay pride, or national pride, or something like that. group pride like gay pride, as I see it, consist in being proud of having accomplished something alone or in a group, having overcome hardship and fear, and celebrating it together. showing compassion and support. national pride for me was always a bad thing. go figure, the nationalities I am ethnically closest to being Austrian and US-American. you can’t be proud of a nationality- it’s nothing you’ve accomplished yourself, and it’s bad because it’s nationalistic and uniformist. being here in Norway, things are a little different: I honestly get why people are proud to be Norwegian, and I don’t condemn that feeling. sometimes I find myself wishing I was Norwegian, just to have something to be proud of.
then we come to special connotations of this word which are better expressed in German: stolz and Hochmut. I prefer to consider stolz as in saying to someone, “Ich bin stolz auf dich”- I’m proud of you. To me, this implies: I’m proud of what you’ve done, of what you’ve achieved, of what you’ve overcome. The noun Stolz itself is trickier, it leans more in the direction of Hochmut- as in “Hochmut kommt vor dem Fall”- pride comes before a fall (hey, I didn’t know that proverb existed in that same form in English, but dict.cc says it does).
Ich bin stolz auf dich is furthermore about one person saying it to another- now Ich bin stolz auf mich would open up whole new ethical catholic territory. Is it right to be proud of oneself? Why not, if it means being proud of something you’ve accomplished, achieved, overcome, just as much as you would be proud of someone else doing the same things. It’s good to treat yourself as a good person. and it’s ok to be proud of yourself- as long as it’s not hochmütig, belittling others. just make yourself the size you are, and feel good with it.