"Oops."
PostPosted:Thu Apr 23, 2009 2:19 pm
What's the oops? Other than the profanity, this is absolutely no different from the usual neocon party line...
I mean, obviously it's ridiculous. "We are America. Ergo everything we do is right!"
I used to be freaked out beyond words when I found out what the party line was there. But thankfully my high school taught history very well. This is still awful, but America does have a rather unfortunate tendency to say that human rights only apply during peacetime. Strange as it may be to say, the Bush administration's policies were fairly mild as far as the historical tendency towards hateful "patriotism" in wartime goes...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918
"The Sedition Act of 1918 (May 16, 1918) was an amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917 passed at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, who was concerned that dissent, in time of war, was a significant threat to morale. The passing of this act forbade Americans to use "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, flag, or armed forces during war. The act also allowed the Postmaster General to deny mail delivery to dissenters of government policy during wartime."
I mean, can you imagine how many people would have been tossed in jail if that had passed in 2002?
We used waterboarding in the Spanish-American War, and "remember the Alamo" was really about losing a battle in spreading slavery into Texas, among a few other things. America, for all that I truly love our genuine tendency towards peace and freedom on our good side, also has a really ignorant nativist dark side, and it pops up every hundred years or so at least. It also tends to eat itself out after awhile, as hatred tends to do, and I think we're at the start of the downward trend now, but...still. It hurts my heart to see all this shit, but it's nothing new. There IS nothing new under the sun.