swstephe wrote:
Meanwhile, the "America Lovers" club is the arm of suppression of the government. To allow it to defy the will of the people...

swstephe wrote:


That's "tu quoque"! The thing that we America haters love is that we have the right to call foul on our own government. Maybe some other country can wiretap its citizens, imprison them without charges or access to lawyers, torture POW's and deny access to Red Cross and get away with it, but as long as there are some people who can say that we won't stand for it, then we are *supposed* to be somehow better and different. It was once a beacon of hope for the rest of the world, that they could also overcome the corruption of their own countries, (without "becoming" another country). Now its like watching the hero of a Hollywood movie giving up and going home rather than saving the day.

Meanwhile, the "America Lovers" club is the arm of suppression of the government. To allow it to defy the will of the people it is supposed to be representing. Just recently, we finally got the episode where O'Reilly went on Oprah, (syndication is *really* slow out here). I found it painful to watch, not because of anything O'Reilly said -- I could understand where he was coming from -- but the most obvious flaw that the people in the audience was ignoring. He was, (in his book), labeling America lovers as "Traditionalists" and America haters as "secular progressives" or "SP's". I thought it would be a neat internet meme to set up a web-page honoring the America loving "Traditionalists" over history and the "good" they brought to the country. McCarthy's gang, who helped to define what it meant to be "American" and the gravity of having different opinions. All the Southern governors who fought for the tradition of segregation. The simpler days when the topic of the day was marriage between races and religions rather than gay marriage. Nobody in Oprah's audience seemed to notice that, had "traditionalism" been a noble position, there would be no Oprah's Show, (not that I like it that much).

alliop wrote:
I love property rights, freedom of expression, and many other of the essential freedoms as much as you do but just because I am not spitting rhetoric about how horrible america is (notice I have also not vehemently talked about how great america is either) doesn't meaning I want to suppress all opposition to the government. I just ask for some reasonableness like not calling the United States the statanicly possesed monster many make it out to be. I would never want to make a law to keep these people from expressing thier opinions I juyst really disagree.

Not to get off topic but I don't seem to understand where this whole allegiance to tradition comes from. I mean some people would slam their head against the wall if it was tradition. Oh and is that MST3K on the television?

cortes wrote:

Ooops, I forgot that argueing with an American-hater is "supression". American-haters have a God-given right not to be contradicted in public by contrary facts and opinion.

My bad.

Benkei wrote:
You're free to argue but you didn't offer any facts. Instead I took the time to provide an example of US govermental suppression of facts as reported in a reasonably good newspaper. There are plenty of facts pointing to the current administration's corruption and attempts at influencing public opinion by misrepresenting the facts.

Benkei wrote:
It has rather little to do with hating or loving the US but more with critical and uncritical review of governmental policy and every shade in between. By any standard, European and American, liberal or conservative, the current administration is appaling without even having to go into people's predispositions towards "americanism"

Benkei wrote:
The distinction between US-haters and US-lovers is basically a false dichotomy, because I assume all Americans would want to life in the "land of opportunity" and the "greatest country in the world". Some people prefer to live in that dream by ignoring reality others complain, still others go out and become active to make that dream a reality.

Benkei wrote:
Based on convincing evidence, like the testimony of these very same consultants. It's revealing that you do not take the time to look into any of the evidence and attempt to refute it on the basis of arguments, instead of offering another blanket denial. Let's not forget all the memo's, signing statements and ludicrous legal wrangling by the current administration. And if a government actively promotes false information to sway public opinion I call it suppression. Suppression in the meaning as to withhold from disclosure or publication the truth or evidence.

Benkei wrote:
And here I thought the US was supposed to be a pluriform society that allowed for different opinions but if a US citizens want to have a European model (whatever that might be) in the US you're automatically unpatriotic and a US-hater. That's what's truly revealing.

Benkei wrote:
But please, indulge me, provide me with evidence that rendition has not happened, torture was not committed by US officials in Abu Ghraib, the US government did not deliberately lie about the grounds for the Iraqi war, they have not and do not continually lie about the progress in Iraq and the time-frame of the surge. I'll promise I won't feel "suppressed" by any evidence you might cough up.

Benkei wrote:
Cortes, I'd suggest you reread what the claim was: America-Lovers are the arm of suppression of the government.

swstephe wrote:
Meanwhile, the "America Lovers" club is the arm of suppression of the government. To allow it to defy the will of the people...

Benkei wrote:
I have noticed you prefer making sweeping generalisations and therefore tend to read them into everyone's posts but within the context of swstephe's post I doubt that was what he meant. And since I have such a radical different reading of the claim you'll have to ask him what he really meant.

swstephe wrote:
Yesterday, there was a major blackout in this country. That meant I had to read a book (gasp!) and picked up one by a famous America-hater, Noam Chomsky ... and there was passage in his book "Hegemony or Survival" about this very subject:

[size="1" wrote:
Noam Chomsky[/size]]Kagan's concept of "anti-Americanism," while conventional also merits reflection. In such pronouncements, the term anti-American and its variants ("hating America," and the like) are regularly employed to defame critics of state policy who may admire and respect the country, its culture, and its achievements, indeed think it is the greatest place on earth. Nevertheless, they "hate America" and are "anti-American" on the tacit assumption that the society and its people are to be identified with state power. This usage is drawn directly from the lexicon of totalitarianism. In the former Russian empire, dissidents were guilty of "anti-Sovietism." Perhaps critics of Brazil's military dictatorship were labeled "anti-Brazilian." Among people with some commitment to freedom and democracy, such attitudes are inconceivable. It would only arouse ridicule in Rome or Milan if a critic of Berlusconi's policies were condemned as "anti-Italian," though perhaps it would have passed in Mussolini's day.

swstephe wrote:
The implication is that such labels tend to aid fascism. I guess I should re-address my previous point -- when I say that someone who uses the phrase is an arm of an oppressive state, I didn't mean that the state was telling people to call them that in any way. Instead, it is the people freely transferring the authority for the course of the entire nation to the state our of a sense of patriotic duty.

swstephe wrote:
Perhaps this position is used as a counter-balance to the total demonization of certain political opponents. When many Americans talk about Iran or even France, they see red and assume that the will of the state/religious authority is necessarily the will of the people and universally hate everything related to the name. It was the "America lovers" who decided to hate France to such a point as to start using the term "Freedom Fries", (on something not even French. Why do *those* Americans *claim* to hate France and everything connected to it, rather than just the decision of their leaders or policy? Now we have to go through the hypocricy of "hating China", despite founding our entire economic structure on their cheap producee, (by communists, no less).

Tobias wrote:
Hey that is rich, even if I don't call myself an America hater, than I am a de facto America hater if I would wish America loses in some war. Which war? Any war. This alone reveals your totalitarian collors, because no matter what war is being fought, I hate a country in this case the US when I wish for it to lose the war. It is also of course utter nonsense. I like Argentina as a country. Argentina lost the falkland war and this ended the military regime there which killed scores of people it considered a threat. A military junta which waged a dirty war on its people. Yes, a highly capitalist regime so you might applaud it, but that is another question. Anyway, Argentina losing the war ended one of the most brutal regimes in the region. Does it make sense to call someone an anti argentine if he or she would have wanted argentina to lose because it woud oust the military? Of course not.

Tobias wrote:
Totalitarianism with curtailing contractual freedom and tax regulations. This alone doesn't make a state totalitarian though. A totalitarian state sees itself as absolute and first and foremost feels that the freedom of its citizens is bounded by its allegiance of the state. A totalitarian state controls the ideas which are prevalent in the state and demands conformity of its citizens to the goals and ideals set by it. There are no totalitarian states in Europe at the moment.

Tobias wrote:
Can it be Cortes that some people who disagree with US politics, might wish for the US to abide by notions such as international law?

Tobias wrote:
Perhaps they would prefer a non essentialist notion of what being American is? Perhaps they feel the US shouldn't go to war as often as it does. Perhaps they feel that there is a current social climate which they want to change? What you do is totalitarian, America vs Europe, as if there is an essence of Europe and an essence of America.

Tobias wrote:
I feel in Europe there is a strain of racism which is very hard to beat and which most Europeans aren't even aware of but is still there. No one is his right mind would want the US to embrace this. Perhaps some Americans feel there are good notions coming from Europe and would like to incorporate those, but would leave others aside. Why is that anti American, or America hating?