PATRIOTISM is NOT NATIONALISM
Re: ‘Not a word against my country shall ever pass my lips on foreign soil’
Thanks for the Churchill quote, I'd not seen that particular one before.
While Churchill was fully engaged in the machinations of global dominance and imperialism (not to mention resource theft) in the last days of World War I, a different statesman was engaging in the debate which has raged off-and-on for the last century on the degree to which America ought to be an imperial power. Here's some advice and an opinion given by a much respected former American President who would unquestionably not be in agreement with Churchill on his unabashedly greedy and grasping course....
"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else." --Theodore Roosevelt, May 7, 1918
Churchill's penchant for secrecy, self-dealing and moral ambiguity was seemingly the moral antithesis of Roosevelt's version of what a public servant and a statesman ought to ideally strive for. |
