>JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:
>> I _do_ care about my country, and I _am_ proud of many of its
>>traditions and
>> accomplishments.
>
>Why should one be proud of a country that has committed crimes just as bad, if
>not worse, then Nazi Germany? Hitler couldn't even wipe out one people,
>we (the US) wiped out many peoples.
While I don't quite agree with Justin's ideas here, you are attributing to him an idea that is alien to him ("my country, right or wrong"). Based upon Justin's posts in this thread, it is more reasonable to interpret his ideas as follows:
1. One tends to have a special feeling of *political responsibility* for what one's country's government does or doesn't do (why should it be so, Justin doesn't explain, but it is not difficult to assign a reason if you want to -- for instance, we have more capacity to influence what happens here than elsewhere, and political capacity entails a sense of political obligation). In the case of American _leftists_, this implies they have a special political responsibility to *stop U.S. imperialism*. So, caring about one's country in this sense does not at all imply the endorsement of the crimes committed by one's country; in fact, the opposite is the case.
2. One may be justly proud of the _left-wing_ traditions and accomplishments of one's country. This is the other American tradition suppressed by the idea of America presented in the dominant ideology; as Justin puts it, it's the America of "Tom Paine, the Abolitionists, John Brown, Debs and Knight, the Haymarket Martyrs, Frederick Douglass and the Suffragists, Emma Goldman, the IWW and the CIO, Rosa Parks and Dr. King" and countless nameless people whose contributions we should not forget.
Anyway, that's what I think Justin is saying. Why should 1 and 2 be objectionable? You may still disagree with Justin, but if so, you need to refute what he is actually saying.
Yoshie