Minor political rant

[velvetpage]

I am sick and tired of the "socialism is anti-American" line of argument. It's fallacious on several levels.

Why, yes, I am going to enumerate them for you! How did you guess?

1) You (whoever you are who says this) do not get to dictate what is and is not acceptable to be an American. America is a nation of 300 million people. You don't speak for all of them. Nobody does.

2) I don't honestly care what the founding fathers said about the nation they were founding. That was two hundred thirty-three years ago. They do not live in it now and nobody is obligated to take their intentions to heart when deciding on the future path of the nation they helped fashion, unless those intentions were codified in the Constitution. Even then, they are open to modern interpretation. There are multiple avenues worked into your system of government to allow for exactly that.

3) Speaking of the Constitution, telling someone that they are un-American if they believe such-and-such is incredibly hypocritical for someone who upholds the Constitution and the founding fathers as the highest authorities on which to base current policies. What it's saying is, "You have no right to call yourself American if you believe that." Problem is, the Constitution says people do have exactly that right. That statement contravenes the rights of freedom of speech, freedom of conscience/religion, potentially freedom of association depending on how you phrase it - I could go on.

If you believe in your own constitution, then you must also believe in the right of any American to believe exactly what they want, and say what they want, and continue to live freely without persecution as a result of what they say or believe, provided their actions surrounding those beliefs are peaceful. How does the saying go - I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it? Anything less than that is hypocritical for someone who points to the constitution for their political and ideological guidance.

For the record, Canada has similar values. We have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms that contains all the same freedoms as yours, with the exception of the right to bear arms. I don't have the right to vote in the United States, and I will likely never seek that right. But the rights I claim as a citizen of my own country are comparable. Much as I disagree with most conservative politicians on most items (not all) I want them to change their opinions - not stop talking about them. They have a right to their opinions and to speak freely about those opinions, and I will never, ever tell them they don't. Democracy depends on a free exchange of ideas amongst citizens. I will never accept less than that of myself or any political discourse in which I engage.

Comments

[paka.livejournal.com]

It's just annoying. The USA faces the same issues as everyone else in the world; roads, healthcare, employment, education, senior issues, veteran issues, anticipating and bracing for natural disaster. And yet we seem obsessed with rhetoric from the 1950s and 1920s (which didn't do our country any favors then either), and we're xenophobic as hell.

I mean, part of it is the nature of right-wingers. I feel that beyond all the associations, conservatives are conservative - people who really don't want to hand the government any more responsibility or money, because they honestly don't see any reason to trust the government. Which, okay, I can see that; but the average conservative isn't the person who might have to pay more taxes, the governments that average conservatives have been voting in have totally overstepped their boundaries and sapped the trust that conservatives would need to have in the government, and meanwhile all these people are getting distracted by these big ticket social issues because they feel like they can't control any of the fiscal stuff.

And the thing about conservatism, sticking to scripts (socialism is bad, taxes will ding us, stay the course etc), is that it stems from a survival mentality - and why do they need to survive and not risk anything new? Because they got themselves royally dicked over, along with us nutjob liberal bleeding hearts, by a batch of rich right-wingers whom they voted into office. Nice self-sustaining cycle, that.

Even though the situation isn't as bad as it was a year ago, when I was honestly thinking of claiming right of return and enlisting in the IDF, this place seems so completely not my country. We can't make any progress without this bullshit weighing us down.