Or maybe he knew when to toe the line. Really, what possible point could you have, Sam? In times of war, everybody snaps to and obeys The Leader? Which, you just gotta understand, means that all some villain has to do is provoke a war, and his troubles are over! That just is such a bad idea!
rjung - well, that’s sappy, but more truth than poetry. I am a Tom Paine kind of patriot, I love the American Revolution, warts and all. (Yeah, I know, the whole “Sons of Liberty” shtick was a bit of a steamin’ load, but, what the hell…you’re in love, you overlook some shit.) The human revolution started here (well, ok, maybe France had something to do with it…) and that’s what really counts! Next to that, all flags are toilet paper, all anthems mindless catwaulilng. And, of course, all prayers for victory are blasphemy.
God blessed America. Lets make an effort not to make Him look stupid.
I’m afraid that it quite is based on ideals, however dilluted they have become over time. You are right that it is not the 1989 Constitution - that document was meant to be a living one, constantly changing as America’s society and needs change. But that is rooted in several sound principals outlined in the Bill of Rights and other documents.
To me, if those documents and rights die, then America dies. Any government rising after that isn’t America, just as Italy isn’t Rome.
[quotea distinct ethnocultural entity with a recognized historical territory. [/quote]
What ethnocultural entity are we? We’re a freaking ethnocultural mutt. This country is about as diverse and divided as you can get without having a civil war. Wait, oops.
And what historical territory are we? Good chunks of America are less than 150 years old, and remained outside of the “ethnocultural” sphere of America into the 1900s. You later compare this with China, which has been a mostly united entity for 4,000 years. America is WAY too young to have that kind of identiy, much less that kind of ethnoculturalism. We’re still rooted in ideals, just like China was rooted in ideals when it united so long ago.
China is much more ethnocentric than America. You basically have 2 very closely related ethnicities by geographic location and a centralized government of some kind ruling over the lot of it for 4,000 years. The cultural fringes of China get reguarly cut off. America is much more fragmented. In the eventual event of the Federal government collapsing, it is very likely that America would split into several nations along geographic and sketchily ethnicultural lines.
Defeatist talk. Russians talk like this, because they derived nothing but absolute negative from their Revolution, so they wish they never had it. Even French don’t talk like this. French still believe that their Revolution, with all its butchery, forever improved the whole World.
:rolleyes: Irrelevant. The French do not believe that their Revolution (nor any of the constitutional changes they’ve gone through since 1789) makes them any more French then they would have been without it. IOW, republican government is not essential to their conception of national identity; nor should it be to any country’s.
It should be essential to the US; it is one of the principles we were founded on. If we became a monarchy or something, we wouldn’t be what we started out to become.
Republican democracy is a good big chunk of what defines the idea of America.
But we still have a distinct, if diverse, national culture. An African-American, for instance, is not an African in America, though “black nationalists” like Louis Farrakhan may insist otherwise; he or she is a member and product of a subculture of the American national culture – a subculture which really does have a lot in common with mainstream American culture (and has been influencing and being influence by it for 300 years); which is otherwise unique in the world; and which bears little resemblance to any black ethnic culture in Africa, the Caribbean or Latin America.
From from The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution by Michael Lind (The Free Press, 1995), Chapter 7, “Liberal Nationalism: The Trans-American Melting Pot”:
What two ethnicities? The Han-Chinese and who else?
I doubt that. The cultural differences between, say, the Red and Blue states, or the East Coast, West Coast, Midwest and South, or even between Alaska and Hawaii, are very much less than those between, say, Guangdong and Beijing, whose peoples do not even speak mutually intelligible languages. What is more, except for the Indian nations there are no ethnic minorities in America who have any specific territory which they can regard as “theirs.”
But it would still be the same people, Shodan, with the same culture, language, history, traditions, family stories. Those are the things that make up a nation. If we had a dictator, what would that make us – Russians?
And what do Communists and Authoritarians have in common?
Come back with an answer and you’ll find out that even though it wouldn’t make us ‘Russians’ like you say, the practises of violence and repression they did to others would of made us at least similar to them.
Please do not confuse the American nation with the United States of America. The first is a people and culture, the second is a government. And “patriotism,” as I am using the term in this thread, means loyalty to the nation, not to its government or political system or social system or economic system.
The nation of Russia existed before the Communist revolution. It continued to exist under Communist rule, within the larger USSR. And now that the USSR is no more, Russia continues to exist.
The nation of Poland was partitioned by foreign powers in the late 18th Century and did not re-emerge as an independent state until after WWI. Nevertheless, Poland continued to exist, as a nation, for all that time – otherwise it could not have been resurrected as a state.
The American nation existed, under monarchical rule (usually rather indifferent rule), for at least a century before we won independence from Britain. It existed under the Articles of Confederation and under the 1789 Constitution. It has continued to exist through all the social and political changes – emancipation of women and blacks, extension of voting rights to the propertyless of both genders and all races, legalization of homosexuality, creation of the New Deal welfare state, centralization of more and more government functions in Washington, acceptance and assimilation of tens of millions of non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants and even nonwhite immigrants – which frankly would have horrified our Founding Fathers to no end. And it will continue to exist, no matter how we evolve (or devolve, or just plain mutate) politically or socially in the future. Nations are not immortal but they live a long time, usually much longer than their governments and even longer than their political cultures.
The British nation is in party defined by its political culture – but how much does that culture have in common, really, with British political culture as it was at the time of the first Parliament or the signing of the Magna Carta? As George Orwell wrote in The Lion and the Unicorn, “What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.” And, in predicting a postwar socialist transformation of Britain (which didn’t happen, but to many intelligent Brits it seemed a reasonable expectation at the time):
And he was right! That is, if the socialist revolution he expected had come to pass, England would have remained England. And if some such revolution (whether violent or electoral) happened here in America, America would remain America.
Personally, I find this concept extremely retrogressive, but it’s your thread. In view of clarification, I have to withdraw my earlier statement that it is possible to be a patriot and wish defeat upon your own country. That is only possible if you act upon ideas and ideals, motivated how you wish your country to be. In that case, personal ties and affections can be overcome for perceived greater good for many unknown people. If we are talking strictly about animal ties of blood, language, favorite foods etc., then NO, it’s not possible to entertain a thought about my side defeat, because it means simply a victory for those foreigners, who talk, eat, spit and shit ‘not like us’. And that’s all that matters, right?
I think getting our place shown to us would be great for this country - or more accurately, for this administration, before they go on more damned fool crusades.
Crusades. Well we know where your sentiments lie don’t we.
Well it should compute, when you are part of a nation, its your duty to defend it and its rights in any way you see fit, not undermine it by hoping its enemies, which I might add would weaken the country if it succeeded, defeat it somehow to show ‘Imperialistic US etc appoint leftish slogan here’ how the Administration was wrong.
If you have a problem with the way the governments being run go find some grassroots political change, but don’t take the foundations from under the state to prove you’re patriotic.
It is my duty to prevent, in any way possible, the Bush Administration from screwing up the next 50 odd years of international relations. Getting expelled from Iraq would be a smack to the nose and would fulfill this ends. Therefore, I am patriotic and I do hope that they kick us out.
I am active in grass roots campaigns.
What foundations of America are built in Iraq?
Except Georgie’s buddy’s oil. (just had to tack that on)
How is it patriotic to see American soldiers being killed and your own military under a democratic government, pulled out in anyway being patriotic? Theres a saying ‘cutting your nose off to spite ya face’ you just proved it. None of this is confounded in patriotism, its just another cheap shot yet again to say the administration is useless at everything, well if you got a problem I consider you take action against it, if not, then put up and shut up.
Nice to know you’d welcome a Taliban style theocracy to emerge just to prove your mortal enemy BUSH, wrong. This is what I cannot stand, people like this who would willing advocate futher and even more horrendous bloodshed just to prove a few political points.
This is the crux of the paradox. The effort in Iraq, being devoid of justification or legitimacy, is now a 100% damned-if-you-do-or-don’t affair, with no desirable options, because by far the greatest mistake was to have started it in the first place. We failed before we began, and the damage is done. Hoping for more damage is pointless. We are literally in a position of seeing a colossal blunder through to its logical conclusion (qualified failure), because to do otherwise is to invite a regional catastrophe. If we leave now, Iraq will most certainly Balkanize immediately, with all the strife and ethnic cleansing that comes with the process. It’s not unlikely such a collapse will follow our eventual exit from the scene, but in the mean time, we dispense with even the dubious pretense of legitimacy if we do not leave Iraq with, at least ostensibly, a stable and representative government. How long will that take? Killing insurgents has no effect on their numbers. Hearts and minds have not been won. The Shia have been fairly cooperative, but it is primarily because they are desireous of their inevitable majority position in any semblance of a democracy we can contrive, which a militant and numerous core of Sunnis apparently can’t abide.
We’re stuck with this, completely, and we can’t get out. If you ask me, patriotic motivations and considerations one way or another have gone right out the window. We’re stuck with brutal reality to dictate to us what simply must be done under the circumstances, and for some of us, that’s a horribly pathetic and shameful position to be in.
How about me? I have family there too. How can you possibly support this war? Why are you justifying it and supporting the propaganda?
I would speak out against anyone or anything for speciously putting my son’s life in danger…get your son and family back safely, do everything in your power to end this unjust and foolish war/occupation and see that they all return unharmed.
I would speak out against anyone or anything for speciously putting my son’s life in danger.
Ohh…What’s that you say? Honor, Courage, Duty? Man, those words don’t mean shit! It’s just a freakin’ earwig that the military inserts to give reason to the deep dark, meaningless, abyss that is war.
Love your family, hate this war that is founded on lies and greed.
How about you? Obviously you are not me. Had you actually read some of my posts you’d know that while I didn’t support the invasion I reluctantly support the continued occupation…simply because of that nasty reality stuff. See, we ARE there now. Wham! Reality rears its ugly head. Unlike you, I have this nightmare that if the US pulls up stakes instead of thousands or 10’s of thousands that have died (and will die) so far in the invasion and occupation, the death toll will be hundreds of thousands…or even millions. You can blithely screech for the US to run away…but its the Iraqi’s (and maybe even the rest of the region) that will have to face the music…and the reality of civil war. Think its bad now? To quote our ole pal Alde quoting Bush: “You aint seen nothing yet”.
We DID fuck it up. Its our duty as a nation to fix what we broke and have enough balls to stay there until either the situation gets better, the Iraqi’s have a stable government, or until the situation is hopeless. As neither of those happy situations have happened yet my feelings are we should stick it out until one or the other comes to pass. The Iraqi people deserve at least a chance to make this work.
Well, thats your right as an American citizen. Knock yourself out. Perhaps you and your compatriots will change the attitudes of the majority of voting citizens…it happened before during Vietnam after all.
I don’t personally think that my son going to Iraq now is ‘speciously putting’ his life in danger. Reguardless its his decision and while I’m not too happy about it (and my wife less so), I’d be pretty hipocritical if I told forbid him to go…not to mention that he’s a man now and would politely and respectfully tell me where to go.
As to this ‘unjust and foolish war/occupation’ I don’t see the war as unjust…though I do see it as foolish. I also feel a bit differently about the occupation than you obviously do. Personally I feel a responsibility for what my country has done and am not prepared at this time to endorse a ‘tuck tail and bolt’ agenda.
Those things may not mean shit to you, but then your opinion on the subject of Honor, Courage and Duty are something I’m militantly indifferent too. Reguardless, as I’ve already said, I think the US owes it to the Iraqi people to at least attempt to set things right at this point. You are free to disagree all you want. Aint America grand?
Well, thats your opinion of the reasons for the war. My own differ. I think the issues were a lot more complex than you obviously do. I don’t hate the war…nor even the fools who got us into it. I think it was foolish for the US to engage in another potential long protracted war…especially when it wasn’t absolutely necessary…and to my mind Iraq was far from necessary to either the security or the interests of the US, and has put us in a bad position from a strategic perspective with reguards to emerging threats.
Here we go again. Don’t you realize that present Iraq situation is a result of a long crisis, starting from first Gulf War at the latest, but most likely much earlier, since US oil companies went to Middle East to do business? That prolonged crisis was presided over by many administrations of both parties and no one was able to resolve it. In retrospect, many things were done wrong, and may be US indeed deserves our ‘place shown to us’, but to heap all blame on Bush is extremely myopic. It’s like blaming a surgeon for excising a cyst.
Again, Russian revolutionaries desired defeat upon Russian gov’t, because they hoped it would bring democratic reforms and greater freedoms for Russia. What reforms and what freedoms will US derive from defeat in Iraq?
What two ethnicities? The Han-Chinese and who else?