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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: oconnellc who wrote (8112)	10/29/2001 10:11:23 PM
From: tfrugal	Respond to of 281500

We shouldn't feel bad for being critical of our country. Consider the differences between Tiannamen square and Kent State. One government closed the world's camera eye and butchered unknown numbers of students, jailing how many others. The other one was forced to make sure it never happened again, and even pulled out of a war. Today nobody in one country demonstrates, or even whispers against their government, while citizens of the other country debate racial profiling for drug enforcement/counterterrorism efforts. Care to choose which to live in? When I was a kid, some smartmouth black Muslim boxer got kicked out of boxing because he had wouldn't fight in Viet Nam. That Muslim spoke for half a generation of draftable American men, and love him or hate him, his exercise of free speech was a nobler path than either Clinton or Bush Jr walked. Where else but here? A culture that reads "1984" avoids living 1984. Or Farenheit 451 or "Mein Kampf" Compare the works of John Lenin (Imagine, Revolution) to that Russian Lenin. Where else but here? Tell you what,if you put the most obnoxious American stereotypes in an airliner, heading to a Jerry Springer love-in and stirred then up real good, what would happen if that instant a hijacking was attempted? E Pluribus Unum, just like the coinage states. From many, one. Look at the diversity of opinion about our last election. Does anyone truly worry that the Union is in mortal danger? Tricky Dick, Peanut Teeth, Ronnie Raygun, Quaker Oat Lady's Husband, Scumbag-Slick Willy, Uhhh, Dubya. Such fallible clowns, ridiculed by their own countrymen. Better to be deified in majestic portraits, like bin laden, or Saddam, or Mao? Stalin never got laughed at. Hitler either. Diversity of opinion is our strength. Just as we whipped the Nazis with an Eisenhower, the dude that pops bin laden might just be named something like Abdul, with a Malcolm X T-shirt on under his fatigues. Where else but here?