Posted on 12/08/2003 10:29:25 PM PST by Prodigal Son
Well, check it out lefties: As many as 7 times as many people showed up to celebrate the Rugby World Cup victory.
Yeah, I'm not too much into rugby myself. For me, this article was about the anti-Bush protest a couple weeks back. It was supposed to have been a huge protest and a big success but compared to this it was nothing.
You have to understand where he's coming from: patriotism is not viewed the same way in Europe as it is in the US. Since WWII it is frowned upon by a great many people. English soccer hooligans give patriotism a bad name with their brand of flag waving. I found Barnes' comments quite reasonable in their context. His prose is a little over-flowery but again- he's a sports writer. I don't expect a whole lot more from him.
Well, I guess that when a sports writer starts out with the belief that patriotism IS ugly (or as he put it, needing to be cleansed of its intrinsic malice), and that "nationalistic celebrations" are rooted in "hatred or bile or bitterness or resentment or defiance or bigotry or boasting", inevitably evoking the Nuremberg rally he can't help but mention even in a sports article-- I suppose that when such a person admits that patriotism doesn't have to be all bad, it could appear to be quite open-minded and benign to some of his readers.
But not to me. What a miserable puke...
Overt patriotism is not really "in style" in the UK and much of Europe.
OK, he's a miserable puke AND a slave to fashion. Lousy left-leaning metrosexual...
Do I need more than his own words?
Since WWII it is frowned upon by a great many people.
Yes, I know. Patriotism is bad. Turns people into Nazis. Never mind the patriotism of those who fought the Nazis; that's irrelevant.
I find it very sad that this seems to be the lesson Europe took from WWII. If it happens again, there may not be sufficient people who care enough to fight.
It is safer to say his entire nation starts out with that view. Europeans don't have a positive view of patriotism thanks to Hitler. You'd have to live here. Overt patriotism of the kind Americans are used to is not viewed the same at all. It is usually frowned upon as jingoistic. There's a lot of historical baggage you have to look at when trying to understand this.
You have to understand that for many people- even conservatives here- when they think of flag waving nationalism the very first thing that pops into their heads is Nuremburg. When people see flag waving Englanders on the telly, often it is those from those ugly soccer crowds. It is a good thing, I think, for patriotism to be seen in a positive light here and that is exactly what Barnes is saying.
The Times might very well be a Communist rag in disguise and Barnes, I suppose, could very well be a subversive communist but I don't see anything wrong with him putting a positive spin on patriotism.
What a miserable puke...
You don't even know the guy.
OK, he's a miserable puke AND a slave to fashion. Lousy left-leaning metrosexual...
Oh bollocks. You're just being silly now. Unless you know something about Barnes that I don't. I take him at face value here without more info. He is happy England won and he is happy patriotism doesn't have to be ugly. What's wrong with this?
So do I.
If you take his words out of the proper context... Think about what he's referencing here:
In the 1980s, English clubs were banned from playing in Europe because they had caused too many deaths.
This is what he's talking about here. He's contrasting this event in Trafalgar Square with that ugly image. To me it's pretty clear.
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