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To: DieHard the Hunter
I'm sure you think you're a good friend to America, and compared to most of your fellow New Zealanders, you probably are. But I think you've absorbed a good dose of the anti-Americanism that's ambient down there. It would have been a miracle if you hadn't. You're probably unaware of the effects it's had on you but it's like neon to us.

I mention that this board is patriotic because it highlights the strangeness of your pissy/defensive/escalating response to our entirely predictable anger at your defense of our enemy. You could've gone to a Democrat website and they wouldn't have cared. But you chose to express these things here, knowing who you're expressing them to. You got the natural response, then you got defensive. It's just hard to feel much sympathethy towards that.

We're not asking you to acknowledge inferiority; we're asking you not to make excuses for our enemies -- or at least not in a way that's galling and quickly followed by the typical anti-American BS. Is this so hard to understand?

Fascism has been defeated. It's socialism that continues to be an ideological threat. Islamofascism is an opportunistic infection, so to speak, enabled by the weakening, demoralizing, confusing effects of the Left on our civilization.

Nazis may not have left a strong impression on America and Americans

The standard anti-American tropes come easily to you, don't they.

America left fields full of crosses fighting the Nazis. We transformed our country into an armaments factory fighting the Nazis.

What a despicable thing to say, "friend".

patriotic Americans to make excuses for Nazis

That is an odd indictment. Who has made excuses for the Nazis on this thread? Excuses for Franco, perhaps, in a realpolitik kind of way, because he was nowhere near the evil that Hitler was, and he was fighting forces loyal to Stalin. Hitler and Stalin were the great evils. Franco was not in their league.

True — and in many ways that is merely an accident of history,

All of history is an accident of history. As it happens, our continuing enemy is socialism -- and here you are on our forum making excuses for an instance of it.

71 posted on 05/31/2008 10:32:50 AM PDT by Yardstick
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To: Yardstick

Thanks for the civil tone in your response. You write:

> But I think you’ve absorbed a good dose of the anti-Americanism that’s ambient down there. It would have been a miracle if you hadn’t. You’re probably unaware of the effects it’s had on you but it’s like neon to us.

There are plenty of Anti-Americans in this world, that much is certain. Some of them do exist in a mild form in the South Pacific for excellent historical reasons, and it is true that there are a few “Anti-Americans” here in New Zealand.

I am not one of them.

> I mention that this board is patriotic because it highlights the strangeness of your pissy/defensive/escalating response to our entirely predictable anger at your defense of our enemy.

I don’t defend Socialism or Nazism: I hate them both. If I had a choice, I’d hate Nazism more, but that’s rather like choosing between being shot or poisoned.

> We’re not asking you to acknowledge inferiority

So the “American betters” thing in Post #53 meant what?

> Fascism has been defeated.

I’d like to think you were right about that, but you’re not.

For example, anybody fleeing Zimbabwe will tell you that it is alive and well: the only thing missing so far are the concentration camps, but they will come soon enough unless Mugabe is stopped. And, as goes Zimbabwe, so goes South Africa. There are other current examples, but these two spring to mind.

> It’s socialism that continues to be an ideological threat.

Socialism certainly continues to be an ideological threat, and it is a dangerous one. But not the only one.

> Islamofascism is an opportunistic infection, so to speak,

And a very powerful and dangerous one. Arguably more powerful than Socialism ever was, and probably more dangerous because they cannot be reasoned with, and are not scared off by threat of harm.

(Not more powerful? Sadly, most of the Islamofascists are squatting rather inconveniently on top of your oil.)

Certainly Islamofascists have caused more American and Western deaths and damage to property than the Socialists ever did. And until America begins ignoring the environmentalists and developing its latent oil reserve, the Islamofascists will continue to have a disproportionate amount of say over your oil, your currency and your economy.

As goes America, so goes the rest of the West. When you sneeze, we all catch pneumonia.

> enabled by the weakening, demoralizing, confusing effects of the Left on our civilization.

You aren’t saying that Islamofascists are of the Left, but rather because of the left, true?

I don’t think they have much to do with the Left/Right split at all, but if anything they are an odd ultra-Right-Muslim throwback to a bizarre age originating in the AD700 and coming to the fore for plenty of historic reasons and grievances that we do not fully understand in the West.

And neither do we have to understand their reasons or their grievances. The only thing we need to understand about Islamofascism is how to beat them decisively so that they never come back again.

> The standard anti-American tropes come easily to you, don’t they.

Please don’t take offense where none is intended. It is difficult for foreigners to fathom anyone defending the likes of Franco, as he was an ally to the Nazis, our deadly enemy. The best explanation I can come up with is that Communism left a deeper impression on America than did the Nazis. The same is not necessarily true elsewhere: certainly not here.

It’s not “Anti-Americanism” to note that: it is a best attempt to explain what is otherwise inexplicable.

> America left fields full of crosses fighting the Nazis. We transformed our country into an armaments factory fighting the Nazis.

It would be churlish to deny that or to say otherwise. Certainly, when America did eventually enter the Second World War, you did all of that. And you were in good company — something that often seems to get forgotten.

It’s not “Anti-American” to point out that America did not win WW-II or “save our ass” all by itself: anymore than New Zealand did. Fighting the Nazis was a team effort, and it is galling to that team to hear one of the Allies constantly taking all the credit.

As I said in #45, nobody likes a skyte.

> Hitler and Stalin were the great evils. Franco was not in their league.

He was a collaborator, tho’, and guilty of aiding and abetting the Nazis — and thus equally an Enemy. Just like Petain in France. Hitler got to test-drive and rehearse and fine-tune his war machine in Spain, thanks to Franco.

In a sensible twist on the old Arab saying, “The Friend of my Enemy is my Enemy.”

> All of history is an accident of history. As it happens, our continuing enemy is socialism

In truth, Fascism in the form of Islamofascism has been THE enduring enemy of the United States, ever since “the shores of Tripoli” — so for at least as long as you have had a Navy.

By way of contrast, Socialism has been a threat to the US for just about a century.

> — and here you are on our forum making excuses for an instance of it.

I hope that I have given some meaningful context to that. Sure, Socialism is bad. Nazism is bad, too: and Franco was a Nazi Collaborator. And, as such, one of the great unhanged villains of the 20th Century.

That’s not an Anti-American sentiment, nor is it a Pro-American sentiment either. I guess it comes down to whether you hate Nazis or Socialists more. For me, Nazis win that contest every time.


73 posted on 05/31/2008 2:36:27 PM PDT by DieHard the Hunter (Is mise an ceann-cinnidh. Cha ghéill mi do dhuine. Fàg am bealach.)
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