How Un-American
Time for me to get political.
I get barraged with emails from a number of friends who are conservative discussing all these terrible things we liberals do to America. The themes are many, but mostly they are about how the liberal media fails to tell the whole story in Iraq (I received one where an artist who'd been forced to do all of Saddam's artwork was so grateful for his freedom that he built a statue out of scrap metal of an American soldier kneeling down and a little Iraqi girl thanking him) to how un-American it is to dare to question the government at a time of war -- how detrimental it is to our troops for us to do so.
I'm sick of it.
This country was founded on liberal ideas. Any progress we have ever made as a nation is, in itself, liberal. Think about it:
To be a "revolutionary" is to be liberal. Therefore, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Franklin and the other founding fathers were the liberals. The Tories -- the ones who wanted to keep the Americas as colonies -- were conservative.
Eighty years later, the Civil War was fought. There were the conservatives who wanted to go against the concept of the Declaration of Independence ("...that all men are created equal") and maintain slave states against those who wanted to abolish it. Again, those darn liberals.
Fast forward to the new urban America at the turn of the century. Irish, Italian, Jewish and other eastern European immigrants flocked to the cities, changing American culture. Yes, changing, as in liberal. What did conservative America attempt to do? Well, aside from including Jews and Italians as targets of the KKK, they fought to establish a new amendment that outlawed alcohol. Anyone who's ancestry is not part of the religious conservative right would know that wine or beer is practically a food group to many of the "new" cultures coming to America at the time. It took that most awful liberal of liberals, the welfare-maker (and person who got us out of the Depression) to restore that culture.
1950's. McCarthyism.
1960's. Generation gap and Vietnam.
And now today. I'm "un-American" because I question our right to invade another country. I'm "un-American" because I believe that we as a nation owe our soldiers more than a mistake to send them to war, to risk their lives, to die. I'm "un-American" to wonder how someone can be against abortion because of the belief of the sanctity of life, yet can bomb the bejeezus out of a village filled with not just soldiers, but women and children. I'm "un-American" to point to where it talks about separation of church and state and ask why we have a president that cannot separate it himself.
Oh, and the Iraqi artist? He has been interviewed several times. In his interviews, he says he was paid by Saddam to do his art, just like he was paid by the U.S. military for his statue.
I guess that being un-American is the most American thing we can be.
I get barraged with emails from a number of friends who are conservative discussing all these terrible things we liberals do to America. The themes are many, but mostly they are about how the liberal media fails to tell the whole story in Iraq (I received one where an artist who'd been forced to do all of Saddam's artwork was so grateful for his freedom that he built a statue out of scrap metal of an American soldier kneeling down and a little Iraqi girl thanking him) to how un-American it is to dare to question the government at a time of war -- how detrimental it is to our troops for us to do so.
I'm sick of it.
This country was founded on liberal ideas. Any progress we have ever made as a nation is, in itself, liberal. Think about it:
To be a "revolutionary" is to be liberal. Therefore, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Franklin and the other founding fathers were the liberals. The Tories -- the ones who wanted to keep the Americas as colonies -- were conservative.
Eighty years later, the Civil War was fought. There were the conservatives who wanted to go against the concept of the Declaration of Independence ("...that all men are created equal") and maintain slave states against those who wanted to abolish it. Again, those darn liberals.
Fast forward to the new urban America at the turn of the century. Irish, Italian, Jewish and other eastern European immigrants flocked to the cities, changing American culture. Yes, changing, as in liberal. What did conservative America attempt to do? Well, aside from including Jews and Italians as targets of the KKK, they fought to establish a new amendment that outlawed alcohol. Anyone who's ancestry is not part of the religious conservative right would know that wine or beer is practically a food group to many of the "new" cultures coming to America at the time. It took that most awful liberal of liberals, the welfare-maker (and person who got us out of the Depression) to restore that culture.
1950's. McCarthyism.
1960's. Generation gap and Vietnam.
And now today. I'm "un-American" because I question our right to invade another country. I'm "un-American" because I believe that we as a nation owe our soldiers more than a mistake to send them to war, to risk their lives, to die. I'm "un-American" to wonder how someone can be against abortion because of the belief of the sanctity of life, yet can bomb the bejeezus out of a village filled with not just soldiers, but women and children. I'm "un-American" to point to where it talks about separation of church and state and ask why we have a president that cannot separate it himself.
Oh, and the Iraqi artist? He has been interviewed several times. In his interviews, he says he was paid by Saddam to do his art, just like he was paid by the U.S. military for his statue.
I guess that being un-American is the most American thing we can be.
posted by E-Luv at 8:48 AM
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