Why You Love America

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Originally Posted by The_Rorschach

nor can I begin to concieve the brand of logic which would equate anything which the US has done with the acts perpetrated under 'Uncle Joe' Stalin. Maybe that is why this piece did nothing for me. It struck me as a weak attempt to find a middle ground between American nationalists and American socialists, a wasted attempt at that.

Well, first off, to be fair to the author: "and even as a child you grasped the mortal stakes of the conflict with Joseph Stalin and were not wrong."

So anyway...

American nationalists such as Harry Truman who dropped two atomic bombs on Japan??? I know, I know, war is war, it supposedly saved American lives, the Japanese supposedly never would've surrendered, etc. I know all the arguments that "nationalists" such as these tell themselves to justify large body counts, but that's just the point. Stalin justified madness, brutality, and genocide through the theory of perpetual revolution, constant strife, constant disorder. Nothing the United States has EVER done is as bad as Joseph Stalin, but I think you're missing the point of the article.

When you are born an American, you have it pounded in to you that you come from a land that can do no wrong, or if anything, merely "outgrows" her mistakes. I submit to you pundit Ann Coulter, who despite her lunacy has developed quite a fan following in this country. As it has been pointed out in the Coulter thread, this woman is currently doing the talk show thread dismissing the gravity of HUAC and the McCarthy nightmare. A great man, a war hero, etc. This is revisionist, it's dangerous, and it's just one example of how introspection has often been a difficult task for America and Americans. Now you can say that every nation is the same, which is most certainly true, however not my problem. I live in America, and America is my problem. And I'll say this now, more certain of it than ever. It has NEVER been the actions of those who found this place to be in fallible that has made this place great. Those who have sat back and accepted the proverbial status quo of things are not what makes America great. Jackasses like Vince blabber on about the meaning of independence, what it was about, blah blah. Clearly, the needs and wants of colonial Americans differ in comparison to that of the progressives of the late 19th-early 20th Century, and the womens sufferage activists, and the civil rights activists of the 1960s, etc. Their wants may not have been the same, but their desire to make this place a better place to live in freedom and comfort certainly were.

The Vinces of the day bitched and whined then, too. They whined about how America already is great, and how submiting to the demands of such people who ruin everything great about America. Progress and stagnation have always been in competition here, and the rallying call of the latter has always been things such as values, "nationalism," tradition, and patriotism.

And as for "American Socialism," well, the interesting thing, if you go back and look at the platforms of a lot of the old Socialist candidates, you'd see that a lot of what they stood for has now become accepted. What you might call "creeping socialism" others would call progress, and I place myself in the latter category. Just look, President Bush is out fighting for medicare extension to prescription drugs. The John Birch Society must be going nuts!!

The argument that violence within our culture is causing its deterioration is ludicrous. There has always been violence, from the frontier period when settlers travelled under armed escorts and relied upon the Union soldiers to curb Amer-Indian aggression to post-WW ][ Hollywood productions. However successfully that strawman has been established, it is no more legitimate now than it was twenty years ago when I first heard of it.

Haven't you in fact made this very same argument to me in the past, Ror? Despite the fact that crime dropped throughout the 90s, clearly, compared to 1850, America seems to be a more dangerous place, right? I could've sworn you made this same argument.

Equally, statements like: "Voices of protest from around the world will grow louder as this hemorrhaging worsens. . ." are only so much hyperbole. The protesting reached a crescendo and has since been reduced to a disconcordant muttering. In the near future it will be strangled off and forgotten -If the Iran/Contra crimes could be forgotten in a mere decade, how much longer will this last?

Well, uhhh, the war ended. Would you like them to keep protesting???

The protests seen here and around the world shattered past records, btw.