Michael Perelman wrote:
>Kelly's question about what Chomsky might have said is very important.
>Chomsky has a few seconds to refute decades of propaganda.
-It never hurts, and isn't entirely disingenuous, to damn the leaders -and flatter the masses.
Why do lefties have so much praising a country that we had so much of a role in creating? The multi-racial multiculturalism of this country, which the Right hates, is based on centures of struggle against slavery, racism, and nativism, a battle that progressives actually largely won, as shown by the mass immigration numbers since 1965 and in our culture anytime you look at the music charts.
Sure damn the policies we hate, but I always liked Frederick Douglas's approach to American instutions, praise the ideals as the norm and damn the deviations as unAmerican. It's the Bennetts of the world who are the betrayers of the American traditio of dissent ad openness. He can claim the traiditon of xenophobia and apologetics for criminal behavior, but telling the government to go to hell when its wrong is the America of Washington, Jefferson, Douglas, Debs and Martin Luther King. And its the America I'll praise any day of the week.
-- Nathan Newman