Posted on 09/06/2002 2:29:10 AM PDT by kattracks
In one morally bankrupt sentence, low-wattage actor Woody Harrelson recently defined the self-hating American: "The war against terrorism is terrorism."Unfortunately, the star is not alone in despising his country for defending itself. Or in seeing no moral distinction between provocateur and protector.
Prominent Columbia University historian Eric Foner spoke for self-loathers everywhere when he proclaimed himself unsure which is "more frightening, the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House."
Too many literati, glitterati and academicians share that view - that America the beautiful is really America the ugly. They reflexively oppose American use of power and cringe when their country exercises its military might. They believe we must study the frustrations of the Arabs, Al Qaeda's grievances, the root causes of their behavior and, hence, their victimhood at our hands.
And out of this comes the wrongheaded conclusion that the U.S. must act as punching bag for those who hate us because terrorism and defense against terrorism are morally equal acts. To buy into this fallacy is to equate victims with murderers and murderers with victims.
Charter members of the I-hate-America brigade include:
- Novelist Norman Mailer. He suggested that maybe the Sept. 11 "perpetrators were right, and we were not." As if mass killers could have been right.
- Actor Richard Gere. He pleaded with his fellow citizens to "identify with everyone who's suffering." The poor terrorists are hurting because of the "negativity of the karma" and should be treated with "love and compassion." Try telling that to the victims' families.
- Rutgers University English Prof. Barbara Foley. She taught that "whatever the proximate cause of Sept. 11, the ultimate cause is the fascism of U.S. foreign policy over many decades." Really? And I thought the cause was hard-core Islamic fascism's plot to annihilate Americans.
- Director Robert Altman. In January, in London, he sneered that when "I see an American flag flying, it's a joke." The three firefighters who hoisted Old Glory at Ground Zero were not chuckling.
- Writer Katha Pollitt. She wrote in The Nation that when her daughter, a Stuyvesant High School student, wanted to fly a flag from their window, she put her foot down: "Definitely not ... the flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war." Not freedom?
The legacy of Vietnam conditioned a generation's elite to believe that their country could do no right. It was a message spread for 35-plus years in movies made in Hollywood, books written in Brooklyn Heights, seminars held in Morningside Heights.
But even as today's self-hating American struts the stage, there is hope for the breed's passing. If the anti-Vietnam movement gave rise to a loss of faith in the country, Sept. 11 could prove the historical moment that dethrones moral equivalence and gives birth, in the next generation, to the unabashed patriot.
What some now perceive as America the ugly will again become America the beautiful.
A.M. Rosenthal is on vacation.
Some people just hate us free, concordant, at peace with ourselves and unfettered in our destruction of enemies. Yes, I want peace too, but true peace, not this liberal tortured AIDS soul of "peace". .
If you can't see and identify the reasons why we should hit this region, it's too late to try and explain it to you.
You know, you're right, we should have waited until the Panzers were descending on Washington to get into WWII.
Main Entry: jin.go.ism
Pronunciation: 'ji[ng]-(")gO-"i-z&m
Function: noun
Date: 1878
: extreme chauvinism or nationalism marked especially by a belligerent foreign policy
Sounds like Muslim radicalism to me.....
I would say that hijacking three commercial jetliners and killing 3,000 with them is extremely belligerent!
Did you see Serbian tanks in Washington DC when the old stain-maker was making war on the Serbs? I imagine not.
Foner deserves special mention; his role as a "prominent" historian (U.S. History) shapes the teaching of American history at colleges and universities across this nation. He's highly published and widely used in colleges and universities throughout the country. We used a text of his back in the '80s when I was in college; his influence has only increased.
Take a look at an NRO review of Foner's latest book for a summary of his politics and wide influence.
1. Bin Laden family is/was rich.
2. Usama (dead or alive) still has friends in hometown. This was just the beginning.
3. 15 of 19 of them were from where?
4. Who was it celebrating deaths of 3,000+ Americans?
5. Who controls the press in the region?
6. Do your own scratch and sniff test of the region, I'm still waiting to wake up to hear "and this morning it was a million plus degrees in the gulf region with high winds, and way over the 400 roentgens at this hour."
Americans will buy it no matter what. No sure lock on the foreign market.
Socialists driven by Capitalism. Weird no.
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