No. I have nothing but deep respect and admiration for your position, but you wrote yourself earlier:
At 4:56 PM +0000 5/30/02, Justin Schwartz wrote:
>>People want to hear him say and mean it: I live in the greatest
>>country on the planet. they want to hear him say, I love this
>>country so fucking much that I want us to do better. I love the
>>people in this country. I know we're a compassionate people. I know
>>we want freedom and equality and peace. And I want our nation state
>>to do what i know American people stand for because I know they
>>don't stand for death, destruction, and terror.
>>
>>Now, I don't know if Chomsky is capable of that. Are any of us
>>capable of saying the above and meaning it?
>
>Me, pretty much. I believe all that. Except for the "greatest
>country on earth" stuff, which has a PT Barnumish sound to me ("the
>greatest show on earth!"). I've said it too, in public. It doesn't
>help much.
>
>After more than two decades in the peace movement, my mother in law
>still thinks that this federal judicial employee and future big firm
>corporate lawyer is a unpatriotic rotten doctor commie rat who makes
>bombs in the basement. (To the FBI: I do NOT!) This weekend I was
>going about NYC wearing, as I do when I travel, a military-style
>beret. It's easier to carry than my usual fedora. In fact it is
>probably a military beret, I picked it up at an army-navy surplus
>store, My MiL remarked to my espouza, Why does he wear that? Doesn't
>he know that SOME PEOPLE might find it offensive?
>
>Yours in futile patriotism.
>
>jks
Attempts to distinguish the rhetoric of patriotism from American exceptionalism and reclaim it from the Right don't help much and are likely futile. -- Yoshie
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