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Thu 28 Oct, 2004 11:12 am
Exluding anecdotal evidence to the contrary, has the Democrat party rejected traditional American values and adopted an anti-military mindset?
Will this after all be an election to determine what American values will prevail?
From the article below:
"Elites. A wider problem is that a strong segment of the Democratic Party now opposes basic American values once shared across the whole political spectrum. Lawrence Summers, Harvard president and a former cabinet member in the Clinton administration, put this issue on the table when he criticized America's "coastal elites," i.e., the backbone of the Democratic Party, for disregarding mainstream values and urged Harvard to show respect for patriotism and the military. Kerry's people acknowledged Summers's critique when they turned the Democratic National Convention into an improbable flag-waving, pro-military pageant. But this was marketing, not conviction."
Quote:Science & Society
By John Leo
Democrats and terror
On his popular blog, Andrew Sullivan made this case for John Kerry: "9/11 has changed things--even within the Democratic Party" ; the war on terror "has to be a bipartisan affair"; Kerry clearly says he won't relent in that war; electing Kerry "would deny the Deaniac-Mooreish wing a perpetual chance to whine and pretend that we are not threatened." These are serious arguments.
But consider the background music here. "Even within the Democratic Party" is an acknowledgment that a good many Americans don't trust the Democrats to run a war on terror. "Has to be a bipartisan affair" blinks the message that the Democrats, as a national party, often seem detached from that war, not just from the campaign in Iraq.
Many of the doubts that hover over Sullivan's case for Kerry are rooted in the value system widely shared among Democrats: Most people are basically good; wars are caused not by evil motives but by misunderstandings that can be talked out; conflict can be overcome by more tolerance and examining of our own faults or by taking disputes to the United Nations. As a personal creed, these benign and humble attitudes are admirable. As the foundation of a policy to confront terrorists who wish to blow up our cities, they are alarming.
These doubts explain why Kerry's two oddest verbal slips--"nuisance" and "global test" --have resonated. In both cases the senator said reasonable things. But the unfortunate term "global test" awakened the suspicion that leading Democrats care more about world opinion and the U.N. than about America's need to protect itself. "Nuisance" strongly implied an inability to be fully serious about terror. So did Kerry's trivializing comparison of terrorism to gambling and prostitution as problems we can't fully eradicate and must learn to live with.
Elites. A wider problem is that a strong segment of the Democratic Party now opposes basic American values once shared across the whole political spectrum. Lawrence Summers, Harvard president and a former cabinet member in the Clinton administration, put this issue on the table when he criticized America's "coastal elites," i.e., the backbone of the Democratic Party, for disregarding mainstream values and urged Harvard to show respect for patriotism and the military. Kerry's people acknowledged Summers's critique when they turned the Democratic National Convention into an improbable flag-waving, pro-military pageant. But this was marketing, not conviction.
At the time of the first antiwar marches, Marc Cooper, contributing editor of the very left magazine The Nation, wrote with alarm that "the American left--or at least a broad swath of it--is more alienated from its own national institutions than its counterparts in any other developed nation. . . . What a warning signal," he wrote, "when you cannot tolerate the sight of your own flag." He warned that the perpetrators of 9/11 must not be viewed as avengers of some oppressed Third World constituency and complained that peace marches were sounding the theme that America somehow invited the 9/11 attacks.
Indeed, that blame-America attitude, once confined to the hard left, has been leaching into the soft left and the Democratic Party. A Pew survey last August reported that 51 percent of Democrats and 67 percent of liberal Democrats believe that America might have motivated the 9/11 attacks by doing something wrong or unfair in dealings with other nations. Admittedly, America's strong support for Israel may have influenced the poll. Still, it's astonishing that so many Democrats are willing to point a finger at their own country for the devastation of 9/11. In the poll, most Americans rejected this notion decisively, and Republicans rejected it overwhelmingly.
In Commentary magazine, Norman Podhoretz wrote of a "trickle-down effect" of virulent anti-Americanism. The anti-Iraq-war demonstrations were a grab bag of contradictory constituencies, many of which had nothing to do with war and peace. But they held out the promise that the hard and soft left, by refusing to criticize each other, could form a powerful alliance. So ordinary Democrats raised almost no objection to the many hate-America themes at these marches. (Few liberals and almost no reporters mentioned that the rallies were organized by unreconstructed Communist-front groups and Maoist fans of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il.) Some of the dumber themes--Bush=Hitler and no blood for oil--moved into the mainstream left. Many stars in the Democratic firmament praised Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which carries some of these themes, including the belief that an evil alliance between the Saudis and the Bush family explains the war in Iraq.
Maybe Andrew Sullivan is right that electing John Kerry can bring the Democratic Party fully into the war on terror. But given the forces at work among Democrats, it's surely a gamble.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/041101/opinion/1john.htm
Well, now that I am informed of the true nature of us liberals (hating american values) I find no further reason to continue to explore the reason I think the way I do (probably a brain defect that made me this way) I can't help meself when it comes to truely hating america and all it stands for. Guess I will just go out and eat worms for the rest of the day, maybe nail my ass to a cross for the weekend and repent, repent, repent.
Vote Kucinich, burn the flag and massacre a christian, it's the liberal thing to do. Have a nice weekend.
I must have missed the line about hating America in there. Are you sure it's there?
"Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong."
The original phrase was coined in April, 1816, by Stephen Decatur, a daring and highly successful U.S. naval officer. At a dinner held in his honor, Decatur raised his glass in a toast.
However, as a military man, of course, Decatur was obligated to obey his commander-in-chief's orders, ethically sound or not. In today's Navy, he would probably have been quietly forced into an early retirement for even suggesting the possibility that "our country" might sometimes be in the wrong "in her intercourse with foreign nations."
And in response to Decatuer's remarks?
"I can never join with my voice in the toast which I see in the papers attributed to one of our gallant naval heroes. I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong. Fiat justitia, pereat coelum ["Let justice be done though heaven should fall" - anonymous, circa 43 B.C.]. My toast would be, may our country always be successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right."
John Quincy Adams
"My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober."
G. K. Chesterton
Quote:A Pew survey last August reported that 51 percent of Democrats and 67 percent of liberal Democrats believe that America might have motivated the 9/11 attacks by doing something wrong or unfair in dealings with other nations. Admittedly, America's strong support for Israel may have influenced the poll. Still, it's astonishing that so many Democrats are willing to point a finger at their own country for the devastation of 9/11. In the poll, most Americans rejected this notion decisively, and Republicans rejected it overwhelmingly.
Do you dispute the Pew poll findings here?
in your own quote "Admittedly, America's strong support for Israel may have influenced the poll" shows this poll to be flawed...but i do reject being anti-american for disagreeing with our foreign policy concerning the war in Iraq...I hate how my country is portrayed in the world by the fanatacism of our current president...If we are to continue being the greatest nation then we must admit our wrongs and correct them...
How would the poll be flawed Willow? If the U.S. being pro-Israel was a factor, would not it still follow that the perception was still a U.S. shortcoming that provoked 9/11?
Foxy, you know this is what I have to write.Your thread headline is absolutely right. I read Sullivan's piece and it was spot on.
America's values have to change, from xenophobic flag waving to international jurisprudence. That's what the Dems are hinting at IMO.
It has nothing to do with being soft on terrorism.
I just don't think the poll has any relevance foxy...we were attacked by terrorists..our Intelligence Agencies failed us...and we definitely misread the warning signs...
I'm thinking about that Panzade, but my instincts are that your take on it very dangerous. Given the mindset out there, I'm in no way ready for a one-world government. There's so much opportunity for bad government among the many that I do not care to trust the whole thing to any one single entity.
Took me a while to find it, but here is the part of the pew survey referenced in the article.
Follow the link for a handy table which details the results from the three years the poll was taken. It helps put things in perspective. In 2002, for example, 31% of Republicans, 32% of Democrats, and 50% of Independents thought that US wrongdoing might have provoked the attacks.
Quote:Most Reject U.S. Blame in 9/11
By a 51% to 38% margin, most Americans do not believe that "there is anything that the U.S. did wrong in its dealings with other countries that might have motivated the 9/11 terrorist attacks." This is largely unchanged from how the public viewed this question in the weeks following the attacks themselves, nearly three years ago.
Even fewer (28%) believe there is any way that the U.S. was "unfair" in its dealings with other countries that might have motivated the terrorist attacks, though this percentage has risen from 23% two years ago, and 21% in late September 2001.
The overall stability in these figures belies a growing ideological and generational divide in perceptions of U.S. wrongdoing prior to the attacks. In the wake of the attacks, about a third in all age groups said U.S. actions may have been a motivating factor. Today, nearly half of people under age 30 (46%) hold that view, while just 19% of those 65 and older continue to say so.
Similarly, views of Republicans and Democrats are increasingly split. Republicans are less likely to see any U.S. culpability today than they were in September 2001 (17% now, down from 27%). By comparison, a narrow majority of Democrats (51%) believe U.S. wrongdoing in dealings with other nations may have motivated the terrorists, up from 40% three years ago. The proportion of independents who now point to problems in U.S. foreign policy prior to the attacks has also risen to 45%, up from 34% immediately after the attacks.
Fully two-thirds (67%) of liberal Democrats say U.S. wrongdoing in its dealings with other countries may have motivated the 9/11 attacks, while 46% of moderate and conservative Democrats agree. Just 13% of conservative Republicans, and a somewhat higher proportion of moderate and liberal Republicans (23%), say there are things the U.S. did wrong that might have motivated the terrorists.
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=866
Foxfyre wrote:I'm thinking about that Panzade, but my instincts are that your take on it very dangerous. Given the mindset out there, I'm in no way ready for a one-world government. There's so much opportunity for bad government among the many that I do not care to trust the whole thing to any one single entity.
But isn't that pretty much Bush's position? That the single entity ought to be us?
W A D Respect McG it certainly is. And even our allies are turning up their noses at the notion of a one world government ...run by the Republicans.
How do you figure? I have followed the Bush administration, I keep up to date regarding the Republican party, I even read every page on the PNAC website and I don't see any desire or wish to have a single world government ruled by the Republican party.
I don't mean it in a literal sense McG. Try thinking outside the box. Try seeing us as other countries see us. I know it's hard but try. In their eyes the US is headed towards world totalitarianism even though we feel righteous and justified in our efforts to reform the ME.
Seems to me that most on the left think the UN should be the one-world government. I have seen zero evidence that the Republicans want to govern anybody other than the Republic of the United States of American under existing constitutional laws. One reason I, a libertarian, more closely aligns with the Republicans is because they resist putting U.S. forces under command of an ineffective, corrupt, and self-serving UN leadership.
Foxfyre wrote:Seems to me that most on the left think the UN should be the one-world government.
I have seen zero evidence of this.
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