"America-bashing is anti-Americanism at its most radical and totalizing. Its goal is not to advise, but to condemn; not to fix, but to destroy. It repudiates every thought of reform in any normal sense; it sees no difference between American liberals and American conservatives; it views every American action, both present and past, as an act of deliberate oppression and systemic exploitation. It is not that America went wrong here or there; it is that it is wrong root and branch. The conviction at the heart of those who engage in it is really quite simple: that America is an unmitigated evil, an irredeemable enormity.
This is the specter that is haunting the world today. Indeed, one may even go so far as to argue that this America is the fundamental organizing principle of the left as it exists today: To be against America is to be on the right side of history; to be for it is to be on the wrong side."
It's worth reading the whole thing.
3 comments:
Six: Tom, Nadir, and Howard Zinn are like those subburban kids who walk around hating their parents, piercing their cheeks and tattoing their arms instead of studying, complaining about how bad their parents "suck", etc. I used to be one of them. I hate my dad! He sucks! He's never home and he never hugs me! Just look at him!
This immature reasoning appears in their multitudinous demands for simultaneously incompatable phenemena, just like a child who can't understand why her mom can't buy everything that she wants in the store:
- Peace... without war
- "Free healthcare"... and people developing and delivering health services.
- Pristine landscapes... and "affordable housing"... and flush toilets. Good news: No new housing development in San Francisco! Bad news: you have to be rich to live here!
- Rent control... and people building and providing living space. Good news: Rent control in NYC! Bad news: Nobody's building and providing living space in the moderate price range.
- Pristine skies... and a robust economy.
- "Minimum wages"... and "affordable merchandise", and people producing and selling it. Remember the recent post about Chicago's city council requiring a "living wage" for Walmart. So Walmart kept its slave wages in the subburbs, where hundreds of thousands of Chicagoens travel to shop, and thousands travel to work.
- High tax rates on "the rich"... and high tax revenues... and a robust economy with low unemployment.
- High petro prices (so that people won't drive SUVs) and low petro prices (so "the poor" can "afford" to travel)
- Low "profits"... but companies that hire people, produce and provide services, such as low price petro (even though petro at any price is evil!).
- No "price gouging" during a catastrophe... and people providing goods and services to distressed areas. ("The good news is, we haven't increased our petro or bottled water prices since the hurricane struck yesterday. The bad news is, we sold out to the first people who raced here and got in line." "Give me names, so I can offer to purchase some bottles for $5 each." "Sorry, that's illegal.")
This is idiotic. What's wrong with wanting your country to do the right thing, not just the most profitable thing or that which brings you the greatest power?
I'm not anti-American. I'm anti-criminal, anti-imperialist, anti-torture, anti-fascist and anti-evil. When the US government isn't being criminal, imperialist, torturing, fascist and evil, I fully support it.
Which is when, Nadir? When in your view does America fail to qualify for all those adjectives that Six and I apply to the Taliban and the governments of Cuba, Zimbabwe, Syria, North Korea, and Liberia?
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