That paranoid, Manichaean mindset has Europe in its grip in some very powerful ways, and now the United States has joined it. This 21st Century war against Islam is the issue. The war in Iraq is making America the enemy of Muslims. And radical Muslim movements are on the upswing because of us. Because of us, not because of the jihadists from Saudi Arabia.
In our lifetimes, Islam has been a dozen different things. Islam in Indonesia, Islam in India, Islam in Bangladesh -- all very different from Islam in Saudi Arabia or Iran. Islam in China is very different. And yet all Muslims have reason now to suspect that they’ve been targeted in this broad, sweeping war of civilization, articulated by Huntington, and now really being waged by the Pentagon. It’s a terrible mistake, and it’s going to put its stamp on the 21st Century. It’s a nightmare.
PING!
These idiots are so tedious. At least the guy comes across as an unvarnished anti-American, sans the usual lipservice from the left about "love of country."
Ah, I was waiting for the Democratic response to the fireworks ever since the last cannonshot of the 1812 Overture in Washington DC.
Here it is.
An idea that obsesses the liberals. I've never once--not ONCE--heard a conservative talk about American innocence. But the left, which worships the imaginary "childlike" innocence as being a folk song-singing outstretched hand holding "bread" or "comfort" can't get over these ridiculous myths.
Carroll is adamantly anti-American and anti-Catholic, to boot. No wonder the Globe loves him.
Bull. The clash is a war between civilization and barbarism, and anyone who fails to see that isn't fit to be included among the *civilized.*
Did this a$$hole just wake up ala Rip Van Winkle? Hey Carroll! What about the last 50 years (acutally the last 1400 years)? What part of submission don't you understand? Sheesh.
I guess being a dickhead comes easy to some people.
5.56mm
"Can we think about what, exactly, we were celebrating?"
Freedom, country, courage, our ancestors, the valiant dead who defended our country from its enemies, our children who will inherit what we leave them?
We sure weren't celebrating James Carroll and his friends.
If this doofus has to ask (whether rhetorically or literally) what we are celebrating, then he's not the kind of American worth sacrificing a single soldier's life for.
Who is James Carroll and why do we give d@mn what he thinks? Esp. since he seems to be from the PRM that continually re-elects scum like Ted Kennedy?
Oh yeah, if we'd only given Al Qaeda in Iraq therapy instead of shooting and bombing them, they wouldn't be murdering Egyptian Envoys in Baghdad or blowing up busses, trains, and subways in Spain and Britain.
Not!
I thought most Americans enjoyed the 4th of July - until this prophet of doom started his handwringing.
I went to the link.
Carroll's unguent assertions would gag a maggot on a gut-wagon. The smarmy interviewer is a towel-holder of the lowest type.
These people have no shame. None.
You know if those of us that fight ever lose it will be the worthless scum like this terrorist sympathizer who the mullahs will come for first.
Yeah, it's not like the Muslims ever attacked the U.S. We started this, right? :-b...
I will wiz on his grave when he dies. This will keep me alive a long time. At least long enough to outlive this turd.
Is this written in Dan Rathers Pseudonym?
"Today's date puts the question of how high-flown American ideals square with the quotidian reality of what the nation is becoming."
Funny, but I can go hours, maybe all day without using the word "quotidian." Perhaps, weeks and years. In fact, I doubt I've ever used the word. Yet, I've been getting paid weekly for 35 years to get my point across to readers.
How did I ever do it without saying or writing "quotidian?"
I mean, it's not an everyday word.
Then again, I've never knowingly deconstructed anything. I think it would just take too long to break that idea down into concepts.
I'll betcha a buck E.B. White never used either word. And, he always got his point across.
I have trouble celebrating a country so fully engulfed by a cultural revolution led by communist PC liberal idiot homosexual panty-waisted faggots like the author of this article. Good thing the so-called revolutionaries that infiltrated us don't have a man's worth of testosterone in the whole bunch of them because it's going to make it that much easier to go through them like the proverbial feces through a goose when the counter-revolution comes.
See you soon girly-boys. Don't soil your knickers.
James Carroll: "The "bursting in air" of July 4th is an implicit glorification of war."
What is implicit is that on every July Fourth patriotic Americans celebrate America's colonists' victorious revolution in 1776 with picnics and fireworks!
Carroll asks, "What kind of nation does our flag fly over now?"
Our flag flies over a brave and civilized nation - a constitutional republic which under attack by terrorists, leftists and the ACLU.