Posted on 10/10/2008 1:54:32 PM PDT by mojito
...On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed. Is not nationalism—that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder—one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?
Patriotism is perhaps the single concept in greatest need of being subjected to intense scrutiny and questioning in our country today. We live, after all, in a time of empire resurrected and unapologetic, of war without borders and seemingly without end, of greed enthroned and of a rapidly widening gulf between rich and poor, of the elusive and seemingly intractable barriers to racial justice, and of patriotism rehearsed and paraded in every corner, and yet the basic questions of who we are and where we are eludes us.
....This enforced ignorance is part of the logic of patriotism, which is of a piece with the logic of nationalism: anyone who by chance was thrust onto this small specific patch of earth is to consider himself or herself superior to all those unfortunates who were thrust onto some other patch. This beatified place is imagined to be qualitatively unparalleled, so different from all other places that it’s as if a high wall shuts it off from the rest of the world. And walls as metaphors are reinforced with barbed wire erected in East Germany, Israel, and now the US on its southern border. Here, within the wall, a chosen people, so to speak, live blessed lives that are nobler, greater, deeper and wiser and more beneficent than the lives led by any other human beings anywhere else.
This is the constant conceit of patriotism, the narcissistic and arrogant stance. The result is that we are willing to fight, kill, and die—or as is almost always the case, to at least send the children of the laboring classes as proxies to do the killing and dying—in a patriotic fever for real estate before reason.
Samuel Johnson called patriotism “the last refuge of a scoundrel,” and Bertrand Russell, “the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons”—patriotism is justification for murder. And the great Malcolm X advised that no one become “so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality…Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.” Howard Zinn describes the typically disingenuous justification for war: As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: “The American solider is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness.” We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture. Yet they are victims, too, of our government’s lies.
I don’t mean to sound hateful, but tell me something new
This looks like it’s straight from Hitler’s typewriter. brainwashing example imo “vote for Obama or you’ll feel guilty and not be able to sleep. repetition of website url at the end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU3unz1oboI
Does he want to lose??
Nonsense!
It’s too bad Timothy McVeigh is dead. He would be perfect to use in an analogy.
Would you want your senator hanging around with Timothy McVeigh if he got off on a technicality?
The maximum number of basic concepts Ayers can fail to understand in a single paragraph of his own writing has not yet been identified.
Ayers, you complete idiot. It’s not patriotism you disdain. It’s American patriotism.
And Bill. Since you show no ability to conceptualize the larger concepts, I will educate you as follows:
The motive to sacrifice life and limb for the sake of ideas is not limited to patriots. Communists and jihadists do the same thing.
The difference is that patriots, when fighting for right over wrong, are morally justified.
If you are confused by the notion of absolute morality, as was Russell, then I understand your anger. But calm down a little.
I would also say to Bill Ayers: if your philosophy is so great, why can’t you come out in the open and offer it to the American people?
And if you wrote Obama’s book for him, why don’t you and he announce it publicly? Surely the magnitude of intellectual depth enveloping yourself and Senator Obama will launch your ideological platform to victory.
You don’t consider your own thinking inferior, do you?
Hannity has him Monday night. Unfortunately, the show speaks to the choir...for the most part. Maybe, wishful thinking, the Lame Stream Media will pick it up. I don't think anyone, other than Foxnews, covered the detainment of Corsi.
Foxnews, to its credit, has been covering, in a big way, the ACORN stuff and its relevance to Barama.
The MSM tried to portray McVeigh as s super patriot, as an ultraconservative. In the end, he was as nutty as any FOB.
Copying & pasting & sending out a LOT of stuff...!!!
Please say you're messing with me........
What a picture. Ayers is such a lowlife.
Ayers is such an unrepentant immature douche. What a loser. Like any of us know an immature freak who would stand on our flag and state, "We didn't do enough." In regards to killing and bombing people, quoted on 9-11-01. Obama and Ayers were still attached at the hip during this time frame. Loser Hussein Obama expects us to receive his lies regarding when he met killer Bill Ayers. Yo Obama, quit being such a douche. Ayers was on the FBI most wanted list, they KNOW when y'all hooked up. And it wasn't, like ummm....10 or 15 years ago. If you think the FBI doesn't track the whereabouts of freaks Dorhn and Ayers, you're a fool.
Obama’s close friend is an unrepentant terrorist. Osama Bin Laden set out to kill Americans. Bill Ayers set out to kill Americans. Bill Ayers should be behind bars. He is not worthy of our nation's patriotic youths who are overseas protecting our nation from terrorists like himself. Bill Ayers is still a self-identified terrorist. Obama has a long standing relationship with Ayers and Dorhn. Sen McCain and Gov Palin's family members are defending this anti-American's right to protest our democracy. Ayers has obviously had a profound impact on Obama’s campaign. Obama is a liar and untrustworthy in regards to his very close friendshp with William Terrorist Ayers.
Now if 50.1% of the folks in the Wal-Mart parking lot can follow it, we got a shot. That is if ACORN hasn't illegally registered 55% of their neighbors over in the Target parking lot.
Tell them what shows that Barack Obama is a stealth Marxist.
That's right. Communist mole Ayers and the rest of his Marxist comrades have been planning this since the drug crazed 1960s.
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