The land of the free. Fact or meaningless rhetoric?

The fact the french have no definetion for freedom does not mean that there is not one in english.

I think that GIA's point, Rabel, might be that this creation is simply one that has been developed just for its value as propaganda. The facts certainly bear this out.

Funny story, I said to a Frenchman that Liberté, égalité, fraternité, didn't mean ****.

He broke my nose.

In a society of humans there will always be limits on liberty. You want no limits? Fine, I have about ten thousand acres of Canadian wilderness where you can live alone.

Joe(until the bear eat you)Nation

I don't think that what you have said, Joe, addresses,

The land of the free. Fact or meaningless rhetoric?

The land of the free. Fact or meaningless rhetoric?

That was Greatest Iam's question but then GreatestIam went off on a tangent.

Never~mind, so now you want to hijack this thread and, instead of a discussion of whether a person can ever really be free, you want to make it about whether or not the USA needs to change the words of the Star Spangled Banner?

Okay. I vote yes.

Instead of "...o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave." we start singing "..o'er the bland and misery and the home of the naive." (rhymes with brave.)

Believe me, they won't notice at the Yankee games and, yes, that is how "Naive" is pronounced in Brooklyn. (Fiance is pronouned Fancy.)

(Would you ******* get serious about this, Joe Nation, you twit!)

Okay.
I think the USA is not as free as it could be, but freer than most. There are surveys to back me up on this. Presently, I would not want to be a brown skinned person in Arizona, nor a black skinned young male in a dozen States and cities, including New York City which is where I live.

We've done something wrong with a bunch of issues in the past four decades which has reduced our (or at least, my) sense of freedom.

The so-called War on Drugs has been a disaster, a , forgive me my Jewish friends, holocaust against young. black males. Gangs, instead of being eliminated by increasing economic opportunity, have become pro-forma governments in wide sections of LA, Chicago and New York. The people living in neighborhood controlled by gangs are not free. The gang members are not free (and they, greatestIam, think they are the ones writing the rules.)
No industrialized nation incarcerates more on its inhabitants than the USA, most of those in prison are there due to the War on Drugs and most of them are black.

The War on Terror and the Patriot Act has eroded the fabric of citizenship for hundreds of thousands. Our recent (well, twenty five years of recent) attitude toward immigration and the status of 18 t0 20 MILLION people in the USA has sown fear and resentment throughout whole regions and retarded industrial growth in others.

I could go on, but I won't. I will just say this: that no person calling themselves a Conservative ought to be allowed to hold any position of power in this nation for the next forty years.

They don't understand what they have done to the land of the free.

Joe(sleep well)Nation

Oh, thank God.


... you went on.

And I, for one, am glad he did.

Tell it like it is, Joe (great post!) Nation!

It seems to me that going off on "a discussion of whether a person can ever really be free" would be hijacking the thread, but I'll give you credit for an excellent opening shot, Joe.

It seems to me, correct me if I'm mistaken, that "land of the free" kinda encompasses the US, hence that could easily be part of the discussion.

But, having said that, you make some excellent points.

To me, it again boils down to the way over the top bragging that goes on about American exceptionalism:



History has shown, oh so clearly I might add, that this is, for lack of a better term, a steaming pile of bovine manure.

But to the idea that the US is the land of the free, what comes up, and it's so damn easy to find, is pervasive American conceit.

If it's not a fact that the US is the land of the free, and clearly it isn't, what is it?

http://www.stateofworldliberty.org/report/rankings.html

This website illustrates that, despite what most Americans think, the US is not at all exceptional. That so many Americans think it is is, IMHO, due to an unrelenting stream of propaganda.

What do you think?

There are some other excellent discussions that I've located.

Let me ask you something , Tico, my brother, when, at what point in our history, were the most Americans the most free?
It wasn't last week.
It wasn't anytime during the 1950's.
So, somewhere in between.

I'm going to say that, even after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, that under LBJ's leadership, with the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that more Americans were brought into the stream of free activity and participation that at any other time in our history.
It seems trivial now, but in the summer of 1964, interstate travel on buses was desegregated throughout the USA.
We seemed to have agreed to stop brutalizing 12% of our population.
I liked 1966, I liked 1967. (Oh, I haven't forgotten the War. It was a major source of my dislike for LBJ even though I admired his tough stand against the most Conservative factions of America on race relations, on Medicare, on Medicaid (that was 1965 as well) and on the War on Poverty. )
I would like to nominate Jan 1 1968 as the pinnacle of America's vision for the world, a world in which Christ's Least of These were embraced by the whole of the American people.
(It was also the day that Mike C. and I finished racing a '63 Mustang across eight states and two time zones at 110+ mph to get to our babies' embrace after partying in NYC ...but I digress.)
Since the murder of Martin Luther King, since the murder of Bobby Kennedy, since the election of Richard M. Nixon we have in this nation been the victims of persistent assaults against the rights of Americans to be as free as they were in 1966.

Tico: do you have a different view? A different date? Tell us, on what day in our history were the most Americans the most free.

Love you man.
Peace. Still Possible.
Joe(always)Nation

hmmm.

In 63 the mustang was still an allegro.

which concept were you playing with, the first or second generation?

aluminum bodied v-4, 109 hp?

please tell us more, joe...

It's not at all news that the US has its fair share of citizens who believe, without any real consideration, that they live in the "best" country in the world. And the pissing matches concerning "who is more free" are definitely obnoxious.

But buying in to propaganda; and perpetual cultural sentiments and behaviors, happens all around the world. So what exactly is your hangup with the US?

Nowhere is the conceit so front and center as it is in the US. Nowhere is the delusion so grand.

While this type of conceit has been used historically by other countries as a pretext to raping and pillaging the poor countries of the world, front and center right now, it is the USA who is the preeminent terrorist group/band of war criminals.

Just look at how the US jumps on the bandwagon decrying those who murder around the world when who is it that has just come off doing that to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The US is front and center screaming about all the other nations that are bad when their badness, in its totality, doesn't come anywhere close to the bad that the US has done and continues to do.



The websites I referred to are hardly pissing matches. They are, and this probably bugs you, sets of facts that bring the overarching notion among Americans that the US is so exceptional to a more sane level.

It is the unbelievable dishonesty from people who pretend to be honest, upstanding citizens. Something as simple as calling the invasion of Vietnam a war.

It most certainly was not a war. It was an illegal invasion, started with the usual CIA terrorist actions, against a people who wanted nothing to do with the USA, wanted nothing to do with another foreign occupying country stealing its wealth and making the citizenry feel like second class citizens in their own country.

And who, according to all the fanfare/propaganda about liberty and freedom, should understand this better than the US and its people. And yet, they sit back allowing successive war criminal presidents to invade sovereign nations on the flimsiest of pretexts to ensure a place for a rapacious group of American businesses.

So you're not concerned with atrocities against humanity in the world in general, just those that happen because of the US. Bully for you, Saint Some of the Time.


And it was egotistically presumptuous of you to assume I was referring to your links. Naughty naughty...

how's about you mention this to those you feel are actually responsible rather than incessantly coughing this **** up here like the whole of US citizenry has blood on their hands... drama queen

Crap, Rockhead, that's your question?

I dump my soul out and you want to know about HP.
hmmm.
Course it got me to thinking maybe I was wrong. I think now I was still in Monterey on Jan 1, 1968 and all the horrors of that year were still to come.

Mike's birthday is coming up. I'll ask about the details. Maybe he has more brain cells left from that era than I do, meanwhile, what's your answer: on what day were the most Americans free?

Joe(what year did we fly around the moon?)Nation

No, it would not have had an aluminum body. It might have had a six-cylinder engine, but i doubt it. It probably had a 289 Windsor V-8, the best small V-8 going in those days (there was a 302 Windsor, but those were not common). If it was a true muscle car, it would have had an American-built 390 or 428, 390 most likely--in which case it would have drunk gas like a wino drinks gray port.

This thread is officially hijacked.

Joe(who would have thought!)Nation

The 289 Windsor is arguably the greatest engine ever produced in North America. With a two-barrel carburator, it developed 195 horse power, and with a four-barrel, 210 hp. It would be interesting to get a 289 in mint condition and mount fuel-injection, to see what kind of power it would develop.

Yes . . . this is far more interesting than obscure lines from songs which only opera singers can sing without making fools of themselves.