If I say freedom and democracy are American values, you think, like most Americans, that I cannot say American imperialism is wicked. And vice versa. But I do say both in very strong terms.
You can and do, but what of the culture of US activists? We have an anti-war movement now, but we don't have an anti-imperialist movement.
At 1:20 PM -0800 4/3/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
But I think the problem is precisely to get Americans to recognize that freedom and democracy are American values, that the Patriot Act is unpatriotic, that imposing Empire at the point of the bayonet betrays our traditions, etc.
The Anti-Imperialist League, for instance, said just that in opposition to the Spanish-American War, especially the US annexation of the Philippines. There is nothing wrong with saying that, as there is an aspect of truth in it (most importantly, the United States was founded by revolutionaries who fought against the British Empire), but history tells you that saying so never got US leftists very far, despite the fact that the rhetoric was far more truthful and convincing in 1899 than in 2003.
In 1899, the year when the Anti-Imperialist League was founded, the USA had not been an empire for long, if we set aside the founding of settler colonies, the dispossession of American Indians, the Mexican War, etc. Now, the USA has been an empire for more than one hundred years (longer than its career as a republic born out of struggles against an empire), so it doesn't sound as convincing as it once was to say that imperialism "betrays our tradition." It's not as if the US government were practicing imperialism for the first time in its history.
You can say, however, that imperialism betrays the republican principle, upon which the United States was founded.
At 1:20 PM -0800 4/3/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
As long as affirmation of freedom and democracy as "American values" is not expressed as an exclusive claim, I have no problem,
Well, since I expressly denierd that claim, you should have no problem.
That's your intention, but unaccompanied by a powerful narrative that challenges the exclusivist claim, what most Americans will hear in it is an echo of the dominant ideology.
At 1:20 PM -0800 4/3/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
But since we are talking about political rhetoric, Ms. Paste Queen, why not dig up Douglass' encominiums to the US Constitution?
I don't know why you resort to name-calling, but here's Douglass after the emancipation of slaves, when the US Constitution should have begun to become meaningful in the lives of blacks:
***** ...By law, by the constitution of the United States, slavery has no existence in our country. The legal form has been abolished. By the law and the constitution, the Negro is a man and a citizen, and has all the rights and liberties guaranteed to any other variety of the human family, residing in the United States....
In pursuance of this idea, the Negro was made free, made a citizen, made eligible to hold office, to be a juryman, a legislator, and a magistrate. To this end, several amendments to the constitution were proposed, recommended, and adopted....This is our condition on paper and parchment. If only from the national statute book we were left to learn the true condition of the colored race, the result would be altogether creditable to the American people....
We have laid the heavy hand of the constitution upon the matchless meanness of caste, as well as upon the hell-black crime of slavery....But today, in most of the Southern States, the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments are virtually nullified.
The rights which they were intended to guarantee are denied and held in contempt. The citizenship granted in the fourteenth amendment is practically a mockery, and the right to vote, provided for in the fifteenth amendment, is literally stamped out in face of government. The old master class is today triumphant, and the newly-enfranchised class in a condition but little above that in which they were found before the rebellion....
...When the serfs of Russia were emancipated, they were given three acres of ground upon which they could live and make a living. But no so when our slaves were emancipated. They were sent away empty-handed, without money, without friends and without a foot of land upon which to stand....
(_Life and Times of Frederick Douglass_, Boston, 1892, <http://vi.uh.edu/pages/mintz/46.htm>) *****
Douglass recognized that the Constitution didn't save blacks, even after the end of slavery, without social revolution: expropriation of the old master class, universal franchise, and land to those who till it.
At 1:20 PM -0800 4/3/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
I been in the culture of US leftists for longer than you, Yoshie, my judgment is based on that experience. We disagree, that's all.
At 1:20 PM -0800 4/3/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
Your fervor to deny that anything good could be American is disturbing.
I didn't say anything of the sort. I simply said that there is no evidence that today's US leftists are vociferous about alienation from America, whatever it is.
I beg to differ, both about you and about the American left.
If your point is that I, a foreigner, don't understand the culture of US leftists as well as you do, I may be at least allowed to say that I have known myself longer than you have. :->
For the sake of argument, though, let's say that you are right about me, that you know what I think better than I do, that I "deny that anything good could be American" (though I disagree). Why would that be a problem? I'm not a US citizen. The Japanese Right may perhaps accuse me of being an unpatriotic Japanese, but no one can logically condemn me of being an unpatriotic American.
--
Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>
* Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
* Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
* Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>
