But that wasn’t point I was trying to make. To analogize for your Aznar example, are you telling me you wouldn’t have a problem with some fat, drunken, Appalachian redneck waddling into Juan Carlos I’s living room between 5/5/96 and 17/4/04 and belching out “Y’all Span-yards is a bunch of pussies, is all.”
Because, that’s kind of the point I was trying to make. :rolleyes:
[OFF-TOPIC]So… just how many people were speaking Espanol in Tenochtitlan in 1491?[/OFF-TOPIC]
False analogy. Chavez said nothing about Americans as a whole. Besides the obvious fact that he wasn’t drunk and his waist size rather irrelevant to the conversation at hand.
It’s much more like this: Had some other leader – say, Jacques Chirac – come to Spain and said similar comments about Aznar (who had, roughly, 90% of the population (left AND right) against his alliance with Bush vis-a-vis the Iraq invasion) I would have cheered him on.
Point being, I don’t wear a flag around my eyes. 'cept when footie comes into the equation.
You seem to think you are Pitting Der Trihs. Sure, America has many collective crimes to its account, but what nation this side of Iceland doesn’t? My position is and always has been simply that America ain’t so special. We no more have any grand historic mission in the world than Canada has. The difference is that we are a great power, doing as great powers do. Sometimes we are the Evil Empire, sometimes the Beacon of Hope, sometimes (more often, really) both at once. In all circumstances, however, it is more patriotic to focus attention on what America is doing wrong than on what America is doing right. We cannot amend our faults until we recognize them, which is always more difficult than self-congratulation; and since we are a great power, our faults are everybody’s business, i.e., their damage doesn’t stop at our shores and borders. (And if America really is special, shouldn’t it be more appropriate to hold it to higher standards than any other country?)
Loyalty to one’s country should be like loyalty to one’s family. You’re not loyal to your family because it is the best in the world, but simply because it’s yours. However, loyalty to country, like loyalty to family, should be unconditional but never unlimited. If your brother is caught robbing a bank, you say, “You disappointed us, Bro, but hang in there, I’ll get you the best lawyer in town if I have to take out a second mortgage on my house.” You don’t say, “You did the right thing, you deserved that money, and those guards deserved to die.”
“The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, ‘My country, right or wrong.’ In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”
I am a better American patriot than you will ever be, smiling bandit.
PS-As for the King, I don’t give a rat’s ass what they call him, as I believe Monarchies are about as archaic and insane a from of Government as they get. Fortunately, in Europe, they only matter as a from of pomp and tradition.
OTOH, funnily enough, I actually think that as far as Kings go, JC is a pretty cool guy – he’s famous for his escapades and for mingling with the ‘common folk’. Copes with the royal BS in order to live…well, like a King. And his kid married a (gaaaasp!) pretty wild divorcée.
As long as you never criticize an American going to another country to tell them how they should live their lives, like “which leaders they should have?”. Fair’s fair, right?
“Fat and drunken” was the red flag.
That’s because your country actually knows how to play soccer/football. Easy for you to say!
+1.
Very well said.
Awwww SNAP! 
Only if you fall into (the dubious) 51% of voters who actually backed the dimwit. And I say “dubious” for many reasons, not the least of which is I refuse to believe that most Americans really back such a murderous and greedy bunch. I spent too many wonderful years (decades actually) living Stateside – and have my own American offspring – to allow myself to think that way. At least in my experience.
Bah! We might, but all I’ve ever gotten out of my passion for our NT is heart-aches a plenty. OTOH, don’t despair. I think the US is slowly coming around to the true world sport and getting better and better. Hell, I wouldn’t be overly surprised if you won a WC before we do. 
Of course, I always have Real Madrid to rely on for my share of joy.
Peace.
Via an interview with Noam Chomsky:
Well, the OP has more letters than “Saddamite” and more words than “Why do you hate America?” I suppose, then, that we should regard it as an improvement. Somehow it is hard to do so.
How I wish we could make the dullard and his ilk understand what you mean by this. America would be so much better for it.
@ RedFury
I’m a n00b, but one of the first exchanges I had on this board was with you regarding the name of the town where I grew up, which was named after an early practitioner of biological warfare, who brought smallpox blankets to the natives during the Seven Year’s War. I have no illusions about the purity of my national legacy. That said, I would still find it really irritating to have a foreigner come to my country and harangue me about this sordid part of my nation’s history.
No Zidane for you! Ha! 
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
gasp
No…wait…
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Jesus Christ you’re a fucking douchbag. You? A patriot? YOU??? You’re the biggest fucking traitor on these boards. You mistake criticism for content, and slavishly lust after a political philosophy of legalized theft that is an anathema to those individuals who sweated and fought and died to make this country great. The ONLY reason you and your kind haven’t been stood up against a wall like you so richly deserve is that the people who founded this country-those rich old white men that you so despise- made sure to codify your right to be an idiot and a traitor into law. And you have the gall, the unmitigated gall, to imagine yourself a patriot??? Jesus wept! Your delusion knows no bounds, you have no fucking shame at all.
To the contrary, I mostly admire them, even the slaveholders. They weren’t right about everything, but they were fine men of their time. And I’m also a better patriot than you, Weirddave. (And a better Democrat, but let’s not be having that one out again.)
You’re certainly a better egoist, if nothing else.
So, Weirddave, exactly which types of dissent count as treason? Or do you not know what the word traitor means? I just want to get this straight so we know where you stand.
That you equate the public discussion of political positions with which you disagree with treason shows you’re a pretty lousy patriot yourself, Weirddave.
Eugene Debs, BTW, was at least as good an American patriot as Teddy Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson, as was Norman Thomas, and I’m proud to belong to their tradition even if I don’t agree with their ideology in all respects.
Those people who “sweated and fought and died” think you’re a fucktard. You’re exactly what’s wrong with this country. You have to hold the government accountable for it’s flaws, but you refuse to see any.
You’re a piss poor American.
I notice that people with empty heads have the loudest voices, I wonder if they’re used as some kind of resonating chamber…
I think you mean “egotist,” and I will admit to vanity without hesitation or shame, but the vain are not always wrong. (“Egoist” means something different.)