Obama accused of nuclear U-turn as guided weapons plan emerges

[markpkessinger]

123. Part of the reason policies rarely get changed in any significant way . . .

. . . is that far too many in this country refuse to take the first critical step towards effecting such change: the open and honest admission of our collective errors, hypocrisies and failings and their ramifications. Whenever someone tries to initiate a serious discussion of the ways in which this country is failing to live up to its founding ideals, the "America, love it or leave it" crowd immediately chimes at the top of their lungs with just the kind of boosterism you are engaging in in this thread -- a boosterism borne not of patriotism, but of reflexive nationalism. And with that comes the none-too-subtle implication that those who are engaging in criticism of the country or its policies are somehow less-than-patriotic. Thus do we shield ourselves from having to honestly confront most of our collective demons, even as we continue to thump our collective chest about how wonderful we are. You say that those who care about policies should work on changing them. But in order to do that, one first has to engage the moral conversation, and that is exactly what people who say they are "embarrassed to be Americans" are trying to do.

You say elsewhere in this thread that America is its people, not the government. Well, in a representative democracy such as ours, that distinction really doesn't hold water, and as citizens we really cannot get away with hiding behind that artificial distinction in order to evade taking responsibility for what our country does. But apart from that, I will agree that "America is its people" in the same way I will agree that any other country is "its people." But do you really think we Americans are so existentially different from our fellow human inhabitants of the planet? In a form of government such as ours, the people are MORE, not less, responsible for the actions their elected leaders take on their behalf.

What you might try to understand is that when someone says they are "embarrassed to be an American," generally they are attempting to engage in one of those conversations we as Americans have become all too adept at avoiding. And in most cases, they are motivated by a deep belief in this country's founding ideals, and wish to see the country live up to and uphold those ideals. Indeed they believe that when America fails to live up to those ideals, it ceases to be the America it purports to the world to be.

You really might think about all of this a bit before you so smugly suggest people should leave.