(Disclaimer for the benefit of others: I know HeruFeanor in real life and consider him a friend)

Whowha?!

Huh. I only know one Doug, so I can extrapolate… That’ll teach me not to get the last names of my friends. I had no idea it was you. :-)

Now, I’ll admit that one’s CULTURE can somewhat affect one’s value as a person, but culture is not neatly divided on the lines of countries. What I think of as my personal culture is spread across the entire Anglosphere, and there are a number of cultures which are an inherent part of America which I am not part of, and actually find very distasteful. Gangster culture, and what I’d call redneck or hick culture, come to mind as two prominent examples.

So, I’m somewhat proud to be a member of the dominant Anglosphere culture, (spread across the U.S., Canada, the British Isles, Australia and New Zealand, all of which also have their own separate sub-cultures, of course), but that’s not the same thing as being proud to be an American.

(Disclaimer for the benefit of others: I know HeruFeanor in real life and consider him a friend)

> Most of us honestly have little basis to be proud of our
> country, because A) being an American doesn’t make us
> better people (Americans are flawed humans just like every
> else) and B) we’ve done very little, if anything, to make
> America a better place.

Heru, even though we disagree on a number of points, I know you to be intelligent, intellectually honest (i.e., you would never intentionally mislead someone in order to score a point in a debate) and I know you to have a decent set of values. (i.e., you don’t want to see innocent people come to harm, etc.)

Given that disclaimer: your statement above rates an *epic* fail.

I hope you’ll agree that, were all borders to be opened tomorrow, the United States would be the destination of choice for most of the emigrants of the world, and population of the United States would go up, not down.

I am as disgusted with the current administration and their actions as you are, and I fully recognize the many, many imperfections of the United States… but I’ve travelled a fair amount and despite the many issues of the United States… there is nowhere I’d rather be. (I have to admit… if the tax situation gets much worse… that may change.)

In the first century of our nation, more than 300,000 men gave their lives to eliminate the scourge of slavery.

When disaster strikes… people look to America for help.

Americans are, per capita, the most generous nation in the world (I don’t have the source for that information at my fingertips, but if it’s important, I can find it.)

The vast majority of major medical advances in the last 50 years have come from the United States.

The vast majority of the technology that has all-but-eliminated the natural causes of starvation came from the United States. (Google the name “Norman Borlaug”)

The United States (for better or for worse) represents the largest redistribution of wealth from the “wealthy” to the poor *in the history of mankind*

The communications technology that is changing the world for the better was invented almost entirely in the United States. (though I have to give a nod to Englishman Tim Berners-Lee)

I think that the ultimate compliment that can be paid to the United States is being payed by my many friends whom originally hailed from first-world foreign countries. They tend to be among the best their country has to offer… intelligent, kind, thoughtful, generous… and they have chosen the United States for their home.

If a sudden disease were to take hold that wiped out Americans and only Americans, killing no one of any other nationality, and leaving behind all of our physical property and assets… the world would be a much, much poorer place.

– DW

P.S. If you really believe that, on the whole, Americans-as-a-cultural-norm aren’t more trustworthy, industrious, and honorable than other cultures, I invite you to spend some time in Latin America. I would invite you to spend some time in any number of deeply Muslim cultures, except that I like you, and want you alive.

Honestly, though, if Obama had completely rejected Wright at this point, would you feel better about him? To me, that rejection would be insincere, because it would indicate that Wright did not, in fact, have any redeeming qualities worth maintaining a relationship with, which would draw into question much stronger why he didn’t reject Wright earlier. By maintaining some degree of relationship with Wright, he backs up his point that he has always maintained that relationship based on Wright’s positive qualities.

Actually, I would feel better about him. Anyone can be wrong, and it is easy to end up in a situation where you really don’t see gradual changes around you. Wright could have incrementally gotten to where he was, and Obama just didn’t realize how bad it was. Or it could be that he really just didn’t see how the things he was saying could be considered insulting to non-Blacks, but now he does.

But that isn’t what he said. He said Wright’s accusation that white people conspired to murder blacks with AIDS and cocaine and that we deserved the WTC attack was no worse than an elderly white woman being scared after she was nearly mugged by a homeless black man. That does not reassure me that he understands the situation.

Good works don’t give a white person who makes racist remarks any breathing room. I don’t see a reason to start discriminating on the basis of color for anyone else, either.

Phelps’s last blog post..Citizen Journalist

You have quite a penchant for hyperbole. Your comparisons fail due to matters of degree. Rev. Wright’s church, for all it’s rhetoric, falls well short of the KKK. In fact, if actions are what matters, not words, then you should be hailing Wright’s church for all the good and charitable works it’s done. After all, all those controversial things he said were just words. To the best of my knowledge, he never acted on them. As to Michelle, in all honesty, I empathize with her comments.

Most of us honestly have little basis to be proud of our country, because A) being an American doesn’t make us better people (Americans are flawed humans just like every else) and B) we’ve done very little, if anything, to make America a better place. However, high level politicians get the chance to shape America, and thus have a basis to be proud of it, and their wives typically have the opportunity to be part of that process.

(After watching the insanity that occurred in the name of patriotism in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I’m hesitant to declare myself a patriot. In my mind, the term is now shaded with irrational hatred and violence. I like America, and I want to see America rise to it’s potential, to be the best it can be, but “patriotism” as it’s often used seems barely distinct from nationalism, which is an ugly thing.)

Anyway, to Phelps,

Okay, you got me. I shouldn’t have defended that comment in the way I did. I honestly don’t believe Obama intended it to be that misleading, but having not been watching the Wright thing much until after his speech, I had initially missed the detail that Wright had resigned.

Honestly, though, if Obama had completely rejected Wright at this point, would you feel better about him? To me, that rejection would be insincere, because it would indicate that Wright did not, in fact, have any redeeming qualities worth maintaining a relationship with, which would draw into question much stronger why he didn’t reject Wright earlier. By maintaining some degree of relationship with Wright, he backs up his point that he has always maintained that relationship based on Wright’s positive qualities.

Maybe I’m odd, but to me all “former pastor” means is that he isn’t Obama’s pastor anymore.

Really? Then why did you write:

First of all, note all the places that Obama said “my former pastor”. Keyword on the former.

That seemed to insinuate that Obama had indeed rejected him. Now that it turns out that he really didn’t reject him, it doesn’t matter?

I’m not accusing you of spin. I’m accusing you of falling for deliberately misleading phrasing from Obama. I don’t fault people for getting mislead, especially by a skilled lawyer and politician like Obama. I do find fault when people have this deception pointed out and then try to defend it.

Phelps’s last blog post..Hypothetical Candidate

As for Dean’s point that only hard core Republicans won’t accept Obama’s little speech, I disagree with the implication that that is because they are being partisan. Instead I think part of what makes a person Republican is often their view of things, and in that worldview Obama’s little speech is just more political blah blah blah. Nothing courageous about it. Just a fancy CYA that naive people can swoon over.

Actions speak.

That was my initial interpretation as well. I thought the firestorm over that comment was a bit crazy, at first. Based on that comment alone, I would have supported Trent Lott, despite the fact that I typically consider myself a Democrat.

However, over the course of the next few weeks, Lott’s attempts to backpedal and qualify his statement kept making it worse. Every statement he issued contained another faux pas which could be read as a racist remark. Any one of those statements, taken alone, wouldn’t have indicated much, but all put together it shows a pattern that seems to indicate that Lott was a closet racist, which is why he was finally driven to resign.

If you accept, then, that Lott is a closet racist, then it seems logical to assume that the media’s initial interpretation of Lott’s comment at Thurman’s funeral were accurate. Though admittedly, there is some heavy interpretation involved there.

That wasn’t my interpretation of Lott’s comments. What he said was that the US would have fewer problems if Thurman’s third-party Presidential run had succeeded. I think Lott meant that the Strom Thurman he knew and worked with for over a decade was a good man who would have made a better President than Harry Truman, not that the racist views Thurman ran on in 1948 but reputiated decades before Lott first met him. If you don’t think about the context in which Lott knew Thurman, it does sound like an endorsement of Thurman’s old racist views, which is why Lott got in trouble for it, but I very much doubt that’s how Lott meant it.