No Need to Dislike Your Country
To a very large degree, Barack Obama, his fellow leading Democrats, and members of the American ‘elite’ media remind me of European progressives. I do not merely mean that they believe that the government should play a bigger role in society, and try to reshape it in order to become ‘better.’
Rather, I mean that they all seem to have one distinctive sentiment in common: they truly do not like America very much.
Whenever the U.S. and its behavior and image in the rest of the world is brought up, on CNN, MSNBC, by Barack Obama himself, or by other Democrats, they all state that the United States has alienated many of its allies, and has done some tremendously bad things in recent years, and even recent decades.
The emphasis constantly seems to be on the mistakes the United States has made, and the interpretation of events is always as negative as possible.
Barack Obama is the same sort of person; he too believes all the above - basically that the U.S. has been a negative force in the world under Bush, and probably before him as well - and then tries to convince voters that they should vote for him if they want to see America behaving in a ‘moral’ and ‘virtuous’ manner.
Although those individuals have every right to speak of the United States in such terms, I cannot help but wonder why it is that so many Americans are seemingly ready and willing to embrace this worldview. As a pro-America European, who is often very critical of the U.S. nonetheless, it makes no sense whatsoever to me for Americans to dislike their country so much right now, that they truly believe that they need to vote someone into office who will be ‘moral superior’ to all his predecessors.
America has made a lot of mistakes, sure. Guantanamo Bay should be closed immediately. Letting it remain open is a major problem, and concern. But overall, America has been a force for good in the world, both under George W. Bush and before him, and it’s worth pointing that out.
It is understandable that Obama tries to convince American voters that their country has behaved horribly, because he wants to win. In order to win, he needs to convince voters that America has basically been evil, and that he is the only one who can turn that around, and change America into a moral country.
But that’s not the truth, and it’s a great injustice to Americans to pretend otherwise.
America can be criticized for a lot of things, but the anti-Americanism raging in the American media and in Democratic circles right now is ludicrous. Stop listening to European and other progressives for a while - for they dislike America because of its capitalist system and relative free market - and start looking at the facts. There’s nothing wrong with being proud of the fact that your country has behaved far better than most other countries in history have done in your situation. They all created vast empires, they all oppressed peoples everywhere.
The U.S. has not done this - despite what radical progressives would like you to believe. There’s no need to hate America, even though many things could and should be improved. There’s no need to be overly negative about what your country has done in recent years and decades for it has mostly been good. And there’s also no use in trying to make everyone love America, for that won’t happen no matter what you do.
Improve your policies, improve your understanding of the world, but never make the mistake to accept the views of progressive Europeans as true.
It is possible to be both proud of America in general and appalled at some of the thing it’s done in recent years. Americans know how to multi-task, like anyone else.
I don’t get a "rawwr America" vibe from Obama. Nor McCain for that matter, despite what some on the left might have you believe.
Disliking one’s government is not the same as disliking one’s country.
If progressives “hate” America for criticizing many of the policies that have been enacted over the years, then libertarians must doubly “hate” America for criticizing the vast majority of the policies that have been enacted.
It’s one thing to point out the blatant hypocrisy and partisanship of Obama and his supporters for criticizing the policies of Bush and McCain while failing to apply the same standards to their own policies. But this questioning of people’s love for their country is getting very old.
I have heard the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Marc Levin call people who have opposed the Iraq War everything from “appeasers” to “un-American” to “hate America crowd” to “socialists.” What if we applied this same standard against people who criticized our tax system, or our education system, or social security, or Medicare?
I have some fundamental disagreements with both Obama (economic populism, gun control, inconsistent foreign policy) and McCain (social conservatism, aggressive foreign policy, inconsistent fiscal policy), but I would never their patriotism or love for their country.